Portrait: AI-generated imagined likeness
Explorer · historian · Writer
A 12th century Islamic geographer who created world maps and geographical books at the Norman court in Sicily. It symbolizes the exchange of knowledge between the Mediterranean and the Islamic world. He is an important figure in medieval geography.
View in catalogCeuta
Birth
Palermo
Work
Nuzhat al-mushtaq
1154
Book
Scholarly exchange in Norman Sicily
Cultural event · Participant
Map: Natural Earth (PD)
Born in Ceuta, he grew up in the academic traditions of Andalus and North Africa. The environment of movement and exchange across the Mediterranean supported his geographical knowledge and observations.
At the court of King Roger II of Sicily, he created the Book of Roger and the world map. It organized information on travelers, classical geography, and knowledge of the Islamic world, and illustrated the world perception of the time through iconography and text.
The Idrisi map is sometimes drawn in a different orientation than the modern Kitakami map. We can see that the orientation and center of a map are not determined naturally, but change depending on culture and usage.
Studying Idrisi reveals that knowledge in the Middle Ages was not completely divided between religious circles, but was shared and translated at intersections like Sicily. You can also understand geographical imagination and information gathering methods before the Age of Exploration.
