An Islamic Map for a Christian King
Most maps made in twelfth century Europe were based on tradition and myth rather than scientific information. The only practical maps were mariners’ charts that showed coastlines, ports of call, shallows and places to take on provisions and water. Roger II, the Christian king of Sicily, wanted a map of the known world that was a factual as a mariner’s chart. In 1138, he hired well-known Muslim scholar al-Sharif al-Idrisi to collect and evaluate all available geographic knowledge and organize it into an accurate picture of the world.
For 15 years, al-Idrisi and a group of scholars studied and compared the work of previous geographers. They interviewed the crews of ships who docked at Sicily’s busy ports. They sent scientific expeditions, including draftsmen and cartographers, to collect information about relatively unknown places.
Finally, al-Idrisi was ready to make his map. He began by making a working copy on a drawing board, using compasses to accurately site individual places. The final copy was engraved on a great silver disk that was almost eighty inches in diameter and weighed over 300 pounds. Al-Idrisi explained that the disk was just a symbol for the shape of the world: “the earth is round like a sphere, and the waters adhere to it and are maintained on it through natural equilibrium which suffers no variation”
Al-Idrisi's map was accompanied by a descriptive geography that contained all the information his college of geographers had collected. Its formal name was Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-Afaq, or The Delight of One Who Wishes to Traverse the Regions of the World. It was more commonly known as Roger’s Book.
In 1160, the Sicilian barons revolted against Roger’s son, William. They looted the palace and burned the library, including Roger’s Book. Not surprisingly, the silver map disappeared. Al-Idrisi fled to North Africa with the Arabic text of Roger’s Book. His work survived in the Islamic world, but it was not available in Europe again until the Arabic text was printed in Rome in 1592.
In Search of Hiawatha
Several months ago, on a visit to Fort Michilimackinac, I was startled to read an exhibit sign that referred to Hiawatha as a real person.
As far as I knew, Hiawatha was the fictional hero of a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem: "By the shore of Gitche Gumee" and all that. On the other hand, as I thought about it I realized that much of what I know about Paul Revere also comes from a Longfellow poem. Perhaps Longfellow's mythical Indian chief wasn't so mythical after all and I was the only one who hadn't caught on.
When I finally got a chance to poke around, I discovered that the question of Hiawatha, Longfellow, and reality is a complicated one. I immediately found that there was indeed an historical, or at least semi-mythical, Hiawatha. He was a leader of the Onondaga (or possibly Mohawk) tribe who was one of the founders of the Iroquois Confederacy in the 16th (or possibly 15th) century, depending on who you read. Further research, however, made it absolutely clear that the historical Hiawatha was not the subject of the Longfellow poem
In the 1850s, Longfellow set out to write what he described as an "Indian Edda": an epic poem combining Native American themes with a structure and "primitive"* meter borrowed from the Finnish epic, the Kalevala.** He found his local material in large part in the ethnological writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. An Indian agent in the western wilds of Michigan whose wife was half-Ojibwe, Schoolcraft collected Native America lore, was the first to translate Native American poetry into English, and was a serious student of Native American religious legends.
Longfellow loosely based his story on Schoolcraft's account of an Ojibwe trickster-hero named Manabozho. Somewhere along the way he decided to change the name to Hiawatha, stating in his journal that it was "another name for the same personage". *** Obviously the confusion was Longfellow's, not mine.
I feel so much better.
* His term, not mine. If it makes the occasional Finnish reader feel any better, he also described the Kalevala as "charming".
** Itself a nineteenth-century creation, assembled from pre-Christian Finnish songs and folk tales by folklorist Elias Lönnrot in the early 1830s. The twisty relationship between national identity and folk culture is fascinating--and a topic for another day.
*** To be fair, some of my sources blame this confusion on Schoolcraft. I'm not prepared to track this down further. Take your choice.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Road Trip Through History: Thinking About the Bucket List
My Own True Love and I recently sat down to synchronize our calendars for the coming year--a terrifying process. (We already have things scheduled well into September? Really?) As always, it gave me the travel itch and made me think about the places I really, really want to see. Some of them have been on the list for years decades a long time. Others are relatively new.
Here are a few road trips through history that I'd love to make:
- The Minoan Palace and Archeological Museum at Knossos: This one's been on my list since I was a kid. (Thank you, C.W. Ceram.) English archeologist Arthur Evans. like Heinrich Schliemann* before him, used ancient legends to guide his excavations on Crete, long associated with the legend of the minotaur and the labyrinth. The story of his discoveries, the later story of how the script was deciphered, and the sheer beauty of the artifacts continue to fire my imagination.
- The Plains of Abraham: In recent years, My Own True Love and I have grown increasingly interested in the history of the French in North America. The Plains of Abraham in Quebec is the site of a critical battle in the French and Indian wars, which ended with North America in the control of the British--if not for long.
- The Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, Nebraska: It's just one small step from being interested in the French in North America to being interested in the North American fur trade.
- The Alhambra: I assume this needs no explanation. Who wouldn't want to see the Alhambra?
What road trips through history are on your list?
* Retired German businessman Heinrich Schliemann ignored conventional academic wisdom, insisted that the stories of the Trojan War were true, and used Homer's descriptions to discover an ancient city.
Image credit: clabert / 123RF Stock Photo