“Surat Bahr al Rum” (Picture of the Sea of Byzantium): Possible Meanings Underlying the Forms
In this paper I will display, examine, and deconstruct the ‘classical’ medieval Islamic conception of the Mediterranean as seen through colorful, miniature maps found in medieval Arabic and Persian geographical manuscripts from the 11th to 17th centuries.
Al-Idrisi and His World Map (1154)
Working for eighteen years under the patronage of the Norman King Roger II Guiscard of Sicily, who gathered scholars from many regions at his court in Palermo, the Moroccan geographer Al-Idrīsī in 1154 completed a description and an atlas of maps of the known world.
Fra Mauro’s world map (c. 1448-1459): mapping, mediation and the Indian Ocean world in the early Renaissance
Begun around 1448 and completed some time before 1459, Fra Mauro’s World map, illustrated in the figure accompanying this article, is a beautiful object.
The Power of Disembodied Imagination: Perspective’s Role in Cartography
The Renaissance flowering of cartographic activity following rediscovery of Ptolemy’s formulae for map projection is well documented, as are connections between this rediscovery and the oceanic expeditions subsequently undertaken during ‘The Age of Discovery’
The Medieval and Renaissance Transmission of the Tabula Peutingeriana
Some time ago close correspondences were discovered between the content of the Tabula and a very unusual text composed in the eighth century, the Cosmographia of the Anonymous of Ravenna.
More Vinland maps and texts. Discovering the New World in Higden’s Polychronicon
This present essay seeks to contribute to the debates over the early mapping of America by investigating the possibility that the Vinland Map (regardless of authenticity) is not the sole visual representation of Norse America, and certainly not the earliest. Rather, the earliest surviving maps of America appear to be a series of T–O derivative maps produced roughly 150 years before the voyages of Columbus as illustrations to Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon.
Fiorenza: Geography and Representation in a Fifteenth Century City View
Of the representations studied by art history, topographic images – and city views first in time – are among the most likely to share the informational requirements of modern map making.
Local and Regional Cartography in Medieval Europe
This article examines medieval cartography.
Mapping Ancient Germania: Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code
A 2nd century map of Germania by the scholar Ptolemy has always stumped scholars, who were unable to relate the places depicted to…
The Appearance of Lighthouses on Portolan Charts: 1300-1600 AD
The Appearance of Lighthouses on Portolan Charts: 1300-1600 AD By Kevin Sheehan North and South, East and West: Movements in the Medieval World: Proceedings…