Abu Abd Allah al-Idrisi
Abu Abd Allah al-Idrisi
1099-1165 or 1166
Geographer
Early Years. Born to a Muslim in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on the North African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, al-Idrisi was educated in Cordoba. At age sixteen he began traveling through Muslim lands around the Mediterranean.
Court Geographer. Around 1145 Roger II (ruled 1105-1154), the Norman king of Sicily, invited al-Idrisi to Palermo to become his court geographer. There he was commissioned to write an encyclopedic compendium of geographic knowledge of the world, eventually producing Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq (Amusement for One Who Desires to Travel around the World, 1154), also known as Kitab al-Rujari (The Book of Roger). This work was a compendium of virtually all geographical data on the known world, including the Western Sudan. He also created the most scientifically accurate maps ever made to that time. Al-Idrisi’s work supplanted that of Ptolemy, which had been the primary geographical authority in Europe for centuries. During his later years al-Idrisi made several revised versions of his geography. An abridgment of the Arabic original and an extremely influential Latin translation were published in 1592.
Sources
J. H. Kramers, “Geography and Commerce,” in The Legacy of Islam, edited by Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931).
G. Oman, “al-Idrisi,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, CD-ROM version (Leiden: Brill, 1999).