This Apparent Incapacity For Map-Making
Appears To Have Acted As A Heavy Drag And Bar Upon Progress In Geography
Among the Arabs, notwithstanding its early promise among them, and in
spite of the application to its furtherance of the
Great intellects of
some (such as Abu Rihan al-Biruni), and of the indefatigable spirit of
travel and omnivorous curiosity of others (such as Mas'udi).
[Sidenote: Marino Sanudo the Elder.]
83. Some distinct trace of acquaintance with the Arabian Geography is to
be found in the World-Map of Marino Sanudo the Elder, constructed between
1300 and 1320; and this may be regarded as an exceptionally favourable
specimen of the cosmography in vogue, for the author was a diligent
investigator and compiler, who evidently took a considerable interest in
geographical questions, and had a strong enjoyment and appreciation of a
map.[10] Nor is the map in question without some result of these
characteristics. His representation of Europe, Northern Africa, Syria,
Asia Minor, Arabia and its two gulfs, is a fair approximation to general
facts; his collected knowledge has enabled him to locate, with more or
less of general truth, Georgia, the Iron Gates, Cathay, the Plain of
Moghan, Euphrates and Tigris, Persia, Bagdad, Kais, Aden (though on the
wrong side of the Red Sea), Abyssinia (Habesh), Zangibar (Zinz), Jidda
(Zede), etc. But after all the traditional forms are too strong for him.
Jerusalem is still the centre of the disk of the habitable earth, so that
the distance is as great from Syria to Gades in the extreme West, as from
Syria to the India Interior of Prester John which terminates the extreme
East. And Africa beyond the Arabian Gulf is carried, according to the
Arabian modification of Ptolemy's misconception, far to the eastward until
it almost meets the prominent shores of India.
[Sidenote: The Catalan Map of 1375, the most complete mediaeval embodiment
of Polo's Geography.]
84. The first genuine mediaeval attempt at a geographical construction
that I know of, absolutely free from the traditional idola, is the Map
of the known World from the Portulano Mediceo (in the Laurentian Library),
of which an extract is engraved in the atlas of Baldelli-Boni's Polo. I
need not describe it, however, because I cannot satisfy myself that it
makes much use of Polo's contributions, and its facts have been embodied
in a more ambitious work of the next generation, the celebrated Catalan
Map of 1375 in the great Library of Paris. This also, but on a larger
scale and in a more comprehensive manner, is an honest endeavour to
represent the known world on the basis of collected facts, casting aside
all theories pseudo-scientific or pseudo-theological; and a very
remarkable work it is. In this map it seems to me Marco Polo's influence,
I will not say on geography, but on map-making, is seen to the greatest
advantage. His Book is the basis of the Map as regards Central and Further
Asia, and partially as regards India.
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