al-Idrisi
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Idris al-Idrisi , Arabic أبو عبد الله محمد بن محمد بن عبد الله بن إدريس الإدريسي, DMG Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allaah b. Idrīs al-Idrīsī , latinized Dreses (* around 1100 in Ceuta ; † 1166 in Sicily ) was a cartographer , geographer and botanist .
He studied at the University of Cordoba and lived in Sicily at the court of the Norman king Roger II . His travels took him to Spain , North Africa and the Middle East, among others .
Childhood and youth
Muhammad al-Idrisi came from a long line of princes, caliphs and Sufis . As a direct descendant of the Hammudids (1016-1058), who in turn form a subsidiary branch of the Idrisids (789-985), he was able to trace his family tree back to the Prophet Muhammad .
Al-Idrisi was born around 1100 AD in Ceuta , where his family had fled 40 years earlier after the fall of Málaga . At a young age he traveled large parts of Spain and North Africa to Anatolia . He studied at the University of Cordoba and then taught in Constantine (Algeria) . His field research took him across Europe , from Portugal over the Pyrenees , along the French Atlantic coast to the Kingdom of Jórvík , but also to Hungary and the Muslim world.
Due to the unstable political situation in Andalusia , like many of his contemporaries, Al-Idrisi sought refuge in Sicily , where the ruling Normans (according to Ibn Jubair ) “tolerated and encouraged a few Arab families in return to benefit from their knowledge”.
Al-Idrisi, the geographer
Al-Idrisi achieved lasting fame through his geographical studies. He used information from Claudius Ptolemy and early Islamic scholars, but also what he himself had learned without the christological themes that were common in the medieval Mappae mundi at the time. His maps also deal with areas that have been inaccessible to research and knowledge acquisition in Europe since late antiquity . As a Muslim-Arab resident of a large empire, al-Idrisi had access to areas such as West Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, China and Central Asia. In accordance with the geographical focus, Northern Europe is presented in comparatively little detail in his writings.
His work inspired and influenced Muslim geographers such as Ibn Battuta , Ibn Chaldun and Piri Reis as well as the Christian navigators Christoph Columbus and Vasco da Gama .
Tabula Rogeriana
His main work / نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق / nuzhatu ʾl-muštāq fī-ʾḫtirāqi ʾl-āfāq / Journey of the longing to cross the horizons was written by Roger II Idrisi from 1138 to 1154 for Sicily . In it he divides the world into seven climate zones and, in addition to precise maps, provides detailed descriptions of the cultural, political and socio-economic conditions of the respective regions. The book is supplemented by a map of the world known at the time, engraved on a solid silver disc 2 m in diameter.
In it, al-Idrisi linked the knowledge that had been gathered over the centuries by Islamic merchants and researchers about Africa , the Indian Ocean and the Far East with the information of Norman sailors about the northern world to create the most accurate map of the premodern . However, while the Eurasian continent was shown in its entirety, only the northern part of the African continent was shown. In addition, details of the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia are missing . The identification of the documented place and landscape names is made more difficult, however, by the fact that they are mainly based on verbal information, which al-Idrisi recorded with Arabic letters.
The work is now available in the carefully ordered edition of the Istituto Italiano per il Medio e l'Estremo Oriente at Rome with the participation of several scholars: Opus Geographicum sive liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant. The map series is accessible in German through Miller’s "Mappae Arabicae". The corresponding text can be found in French in a more recent edition by Flammarion.
With the Nuzhat al-Mushtak fi-ichtiraq al-afaq , al-Idrisi created a compendium that remained the standard work of cartography for over three centuries. The original silver plate was destroyed in the course of an uprising. The partial maps, however, have been preserved and allow a reconstruction of the destroyed world map.
Al-Idrisi, the biologist
Al-Idrisi also studied all the medicinal plants known at the time . Since, in his view, science had made little progress since ancient times, he began to collect plants himself, to catalog them and to research their effects. He summarized the results of his work in various books. The most important of these is the Kitab al-Dschami-li-Ashtat al-Nabat / كتاب الجامع لأشتات النبات / kitāb al-ǧāmiʿ li-aštāti ʾn-nabāt / The collection of plant species , whose manuscript was written in 1928 by the German orientalist Hellmuter Istanbul Fatih Manuscript Library.
reception
- The novel “The Sultan of Palermo” by the British author Tariq Ali traces al-Idrisi's life at the court of Rogers II between science and politics. Although fiction, the plot gives a factual and detailed insight into medieval Europe between the Orient and Christianity shaped by the popes, as well as into the work of al-Idrisis.
- Al Idrisi is the title character of Jon Fasman's book "The Alchemist's Library".
- The work of Mohammed al-Idrisi had a strong influence on other European authors such as Marino Sanudo the Elder , Antonio Malfante († 1450), Jaume Ferrer and Alonso Fernández de Lugo .
- The geo-information system IDRISI, which was developed by Clark University , bears his name in honor of Mohammed al-Idrisi. The data thus researched support environmental management and sustainable resource management.
- The IAU named a mountain range on Pluto Al-Idrisi Montes .
literature
- Konrad Miller: Mappae Arabicae . Reprint 1994 d. Edition Stuttgart 1926–1931. University of Frankfurt Inst. F. Business d. Arabic-Islamic Science ISBN 978-3-8298-1218-4 .
- Idrîsî, La Première Géographie de l'Occident. Flammarion, Paris 1999. ISBN 2-08-071069-9
- Wilhelm Hoenerbach : Germany and its neighboring countries after the great geography of the Idrisi . (1162, Sections 5, 2 and 6, 2), Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1938
- G. Oman: Note bibliografiche sul geografo arabo al-Idrisi (XII secolo) e sulle sue opere . In: Annali dell 'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli (AIUON). Neue Serie XI (1961), 25-61, XII pp. 193-194
- JH Kramers: La Littérature géographique classique des musulmans . In: Analecta Orientalia, 2 (1956), pp. 172-204
- M. Amari: Dal Kitab Nuzhat al-mushtâq ecc. (Sollazzo per chi si diletta di girare il mondo) per Abû 'Abd Allaah Muhammad Ibn' Abd Allaah Ibn Idrîs. In: Biblioteca Arabo-Sicula. Turin-Rome 1880, IS 33-133
- The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Brill, suffering. Vol. 3, p. 1038.
- Tariq Ali: The Sultan of Palermo . 2005, ISBN 3-7205-2637-2
- Jean-Charles Ducène: Le delta du Nil dans les cartes du Nuzhat al-Mustaq d'al-Idrisi. In: Journal of the German Oriental Society (ZDMG), Volume 154 (2004), pp. 58–71
Web links
- Literature by and about Al-Idrisi in the catalog of the German National Library
- Idrisi at www.mscgis.info ( Memento from April 14, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) - a review of Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi as the namesake for the IDRISI software package
swell
- ↑ Eds. F. Cerulli, G. Gabrieli, Lévi Della Vida u. a., Naples, Rome 1970 ff.
- ↑ Pluto Features Given First Official Names. September 7, 2017, accessed September 9, 2017 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | al-Idrisi |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Dreses; al-Idrisi, Muhammad; al-Idrisi, Abu Abdullah Muhammad |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Cartographer, geographer and botanist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1100 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ceuta |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1166 |
| Place of death | Sicily |