Al-Idrisi and the Nuzhat al-Mushtaq: the world map made at a Sicilian court

Imagine this. More than 850 years ago, on the orders of a king of the island of Sicily, in southern Italy, a very large disc of pure silver was cast. The seas, rivers, cities and roads of the whole known world were engraved on it. A book was written to go with the map. It mentions the date groves of Makran, the port of Debal and even the bazaars of Mansura. The book was the "Nuzhat al-Mushtaq". Its author was a Muslim geographer, Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi.

From Ceuta to Sicily

According to the 19th-century British historians Henry Elliot and John Dowson, in their book "The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians", al-Idrisi was born in the city of Ceuta in Morocco in the late 11th century. His family was called Idrisi after an ancestor named Idris. The same family had ruled Morocco in the ninth and tenth centuries. One branch of it ruled the Andalusian city of Malaga.

Al-Idrisi travelled in Europe and finally settled at the court of Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily. According to Elliot, he wrote this book of geography at Roger's request.

Fifteen years of research

In the preface to the book, whose French translation was published by P. Amédée Jaubert in 1836, al-Idrisi describes how the work was done. The king first collected the old books of geography. He then had well-informed travellers sought out across his realm and summoned. Through interpreters, he questioned them separately and together. What all agreed on was accepted as correct. What they disagreed on was left out. According to Elliot, citing a later biographer, sensible men were also sent out on journeys to collect information.

According to the preface, the work went on for more than 15 years. The longitudes, latitudes and distances between cities were then worked out. Each place was marked on a plate with an iron compass. Finally, the king ordered a very large round map of pure silver, weighing 450 Roman pounds, to be cast. Skilled craftsmen were to engrave on it the seven climes, countries, coasts, seas, rivers, inhabited and uninhabited regions, distances along routes and ports, exactly according to that drawing. In a note, Jaubert explains that the Arabic word means a round plate, not a globe, as earlier translators had thought.

The book and the map

The book was written to explain this silver map. The preface says it was to describe cities and regions, farming, seas, mountains, rivers and plains. It was also to cover the crops and fruits of each country, the people's crafts and trade, wonders, population, dress, customs and languages. The full title of the book is "Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-Afaq". Elliot translated it as the recreation of those who wish to wander through the regions of the world. According to Jaubert's translation, the book was completed in the last days of Shawwal 548 AH, that is, in mid-January 1154.

The silver map no longer exists, but maps in the manuscripts of the book survive. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the map is known in English as the "Tabula Rogeriana", or Roger's map. Roger began having it made around 1138. In 1929, the German scholar Konrad Miller joined these maps together to prepare a large copy. One thing surprises the reader today: in the original map, south is at the top and north at the bottom.

The book soon became famous. Elliot writes that a summary of it was printed in Rome in 1592. A Latin translation was published in Paris in 1619 under the title "Geographia Nubiensis".

Makran and Sindh through al-Idrisi's eyes

For our readers, the most interesting part of the book is the chapter of the second clime. After the coast of the Persian Gulf, it describes Makran, Sistan and Sindh. Elliot translated this section into English from Jaubert's French translation.

Al-Idrisi writes that Makran is a vast country, but much of it is desert and poor. Its largest city has many date palms, its land is cultivated and it has considerable trade. To its west lies the small port of Tiz, where ships from Fars, Oman and the island of Kish call. From Tiz to Kiz is five days' journey. In some parts of Makran, sugar cane is grown in large quantities. A sweet called "fanidh" is made from it and traded.

Readers in Balochistan will find this sentence especially familiar: "The people of Makran speak Persian and also a dialect of their own province." Al-Idrisi also mentions their dress. It consists of a shirt, a sleeved robe, a cloak, a waistcloth and a gold-embroidered wrap, just like the people of Iraq and Fars.

Of the Sindh port of Debal, he writes that its land is not fertile and trees are few apart from date palms. But it is a harbour for ships from Sindh and other countries. Ships from Oman, China and India come here. Wealthy merchants of Debal buy goods wholesale and sell them after the ships have left. Of Mansura, he says it is surrounded by a branch of the Mehran (Indus). Dates and sugar cane are abundant, the bazaars are full of people and goods, and the common people wear Persian dress.

He also mentions the Nadha, a warrior people living between Multan and Mansura. They bred fine two-humped camels, which were highly prized in Khorasan and Fars. For buying and selling, they went most often to a city called Qandail.

A book that became a bridge

Al-Idrisi's book gathers in one place the writings of earlier authors and the testimony of living travellers, after testing them. In this way, his book carried the centuries-old tradition of Arab geography to a European court. Even today, it tells us how Makran, Debal and Mansura appeared to the world in the 12th century.