As that of the claimed greatest Muslim and greatest medieval geographer, the name of Muhammad al-Idrisi (c.1100-1065/6) has long held a fascination for me. Yet, having known little more than the basic details of his life and work, I had hoped to find and present a full picture of him. However, it turns out that details about the life of this great scholar are either sparse, or I was unable to uncover them. It may therefore seem excessive that I have prepared a two-part piece on al-Idrisi. Nevertheless, I believe his life deserves contextualization, particularly in terms of what it reveals about the relatively unknown science of geography in the Islamic Golden Age and the history of Muslims in medieval Sicily, where the Moroccan al-Idrisi composed his great work. I think this context is of legitimate interest. Then to cover these topics as well as giving a brief overview of al-Idrisi’s life would not enable me to also investigate the work upon which justified fame rests within a single piece. That is why I have decided to write this in two parts, this first placing the life of al-Idrisi in context and the second an examination of his geographic work, which will come out on this day next week.

Geography in Islamic Golden Age

It is a sad fact that one of the greatest intellectual flourishing in human history, that of the Islamic Golden Age, is still so little known. It is maybe even a sadder fact that among those who do know of it, it is sometimes regarded simply as a phase through which the works of Ancient Greece were passed on to Western Europe, in which they set off the Renaissance and thus established the foundations of modernity. That this idea can be held by Westerners is unfortunate, yet I have also, surprisingly, encountered it in Muslim scholarship.

As with many erroneous ideas, this one does contain an element of truth. It is undeniable that the intellectual achievements of the Islamic Golden Age could not have been made without the knowledge made available to its scholars by the Translation Movement by which much of the wealth of knowledge accrued in earlier times by the Greeks was rendered into Arabic. It is also true that this wealth of knowledge was passed on through Arab scholarship to that of Western Europe from the High Middle Ages onwards. Yet, it would surely be odd for one civilization to simply want to act as a courier between two others. And this of course was neither what the scholars of the Islamic Golden Age intended nor what they did. For they translated ancient texts in a desire to improve their own knowledge not that of a later civilization. It is also true that they treated what they translated respectfully. However, that should not be taken to mean that they handled it passively. For the thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age took what the ancients had left and improved upon it. This was understood in medieval Europe itself, evidenced, for instance, by the devout Christian Dante Alighieri placing on the same posthumous level the Islamic philosophers of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) with Plato and Aristotle whose ideas they had absorbed and developed upon.

The relationship of the intellectual developments of the Islamic Golden Age to that of Ancient Greek knowledge is a subject far too large for me to develop further here outside of its direct relevance to al-Idrisi. Yet, for anyone wishing to follow up how this occurred, I cannot recommend too strongly the book Pathfinders by Jim Al-Khalili. Here, though, simply what Al-Khalili says in it concerning the science of geography will be drawn upon. For from Al-Khalili it is clear that while al-Idrisi may be the greatest Muslim geographer, he is certainly not the only one, nor the founder of this science in the Islamic world. That foundation dates back to the ninth century, and seems to be built upon the translation of the work of the Greek geographer Ptolemy. That this work, which focuses on the Mediterranean world, would be of interest to Muslim scholars is unsurprising considering that Islamic conquests had led to much of that world now being under Muslim rule. Yet, those scholars expanded upon it, widening its focus into areas that were peripheral to the Greek world but central to the Islamic one, such as the Hijaz containing the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, or southern Iraq from where the Caliphs ruled.

Thus, they expanded the work of Ptolemy and, in examining him, also improved upon him. Al-Khalili reveals that, for instance, Muslim scholars used the knowledge of Arab traders to correct Ptolemy’s mistaken assertion that the Atlantic and Indian oceans are closed seas like the Mediterranean. They also found that Ptolemy had hugely miscalculated the length of the Mediterranean and they reduced it to something closer to its real size.

The high standing of the geographical knowledge established in this way in the Muslim world explains why in the twelfth century, a Christian ruler of Sicily, Roger II, invited al-Idrisi to work at his court, for his knowledge would surpass that of any Christian scholar of the time. The reason that al-Idrisi would accept the invitation, perhaps less so. Yet, it was the case that in relocating himself to Sicily in 1139, the Moroccan was not entering a world that would have been completely alien to him. To explain why, it is necessary to look at the story of Muslim Sicily and the Norman conquest.

Muslim Sicily

Prior to Norman rule, Sicily had Islamic roots of its own, having, from the ninth century, been ruled over by Muslims for about two hundred years. It was the Arab Aghlabid Dynasty of Tunisia who began this by conquering Sicily for Islam. As in the case of the Iberian Peninsula, here the Arabs were actually invited onto European soil. This invitation was given by the former and disgraced Byzantine governor of the island who rose up against Byzantine rule and desperately needed support. Yet, the Aghlabids, after having come over and done the heavy work of defeating the Byzantines quite naturally decided to keep the island for themselves. They made Palermo their capital in 830, yet the conquest of the whole island was slow. Messina was captured in 843, Syracuse as late as 878 and some small areas in eastern Sicily continued to resist the Islamic tide into the tenth century.

Although the population of Sicily today is majoritively Italian Catholic, at this time the Christian population was overwhelmingly part of the Greek-speaking church, being Greek themselves. Now under Arab rule, they had to pay the jizya or poll tax. Yet, the historian John Julius Norwich avers that "many must have preferred” this "to the heavy taxation and compulsory military service” which Byzantium imposed. Moreover, this tax allowed them the practice of their religion and this system of tolerance, as Norwich notes, "permitted the churches and monasteries and the long tradition of Hellenic scholarship to flourish as much as ever they had done.” Norwich also reveals that under Muslim rule, the agricultural system on Sicily was improved, with new crops such as cotton, melon, citrus trees and date palms being introduced and Sicily becoming a major sugar exporter.

This reflects Sicily’s new integration into an intercontinental trading system, with it rapidly, as Norwich notes, becoming "one of the major trading centres of the Mediterranean, with Christian, Muslim and Jewish merchants all thronging the bazaars of Sicily.” A culture of Arab scholarship also began to flourish on the island.

Norman Sicily

In time, however, and also much like the Iberian situation, the Muslim political class became divided. Indeed, the fall of Islamic rule on Sicily was due to an appeal for help in 1035, not this time by a rebel against Byzantium but by the Muslim legitimate ruler, facing a rebellion led by his brother, to Byzantium. Through a series of historical twists, this led to the island being conquered by the Normans, a people with Viking roots who had become French-speaking Catholics. As for the Sicilian Muslims, their fate, now being under Christian rule, was, as the historian Albert Hourani puts it, that they "continued to exist for a time, but in the end they were to be extinguished by conversion or expulsion.”

Hourani’s comment implies that from the moment the Normans took over Sicily, the situation for its Arabic-speaking Muslim population was one of loss and decline. Certainly, many Muslims fled as the Norman conquest began. However, between this initial reaction and the suppression of the Muslim population mentioned above, there is actually a relatively lengthy period in which Muslim culture continues to thrive on the island.

For the trepidation felt by the Muslims who fled the island turns out to have been unwarranted and indeed some who fled actually returned. The reason is due to the conqueror of Sicily, the formidable warrior Count Roger, who led the Norman conquerors. In the intolerant era that produced the savagery of the First Crusade, Roger contrastingly stands out as a tolerant Christian prince who, rather than attempt to massacre or forcibly convert the Muslims now under his dominion, permitted them free worship in their mosques, the continuance of Islamic law in their lives and gave Arabic co-equal status as a language on the island. He even allowed that the regions of Sicily in which Muslims were in the majority be left governed by Muslim emirs. Under such open-minded rule, the Muslim population naturally came to lose its fear of the new rule by the Normans, and Roger himself came to place increasingly large numbers of Muslims in his administration due to his recognition of their abilities, especially in financial matters.

Sicily was truly a multicultural island at this time, in which, as Norwich notes, "all races, creeds, languages and cultures were equally encouraged and favoured.” As for these Muslims, this meant, as Norwich also reveals, that "the old Arab artistic and intellectual traditions were reawakened; poets, scientists and craftsmen appeared anew and were greeted with admiration and encouragement.”

Roger I died in 1101, and his domain was soon, after a short interval, inherited by his son Roger II. The reign of the latter, which Norwich has called Sicily’s "golden age,” spanned almost half a century. This was the case because Roger II, who in 1130 raised his status from count to king, did not simply inherit his father’s rule but also continued his policies of tolerance. With his hatred for war, his gift for statesmanship, his multilingualism and a passionate interest in intellectual pursuits, Roger II is an attractive figure. Under him, Sicily flourished and his court, as Norwich reveals, "was by far the most brilliant of twelfth-century Europe.” At the centre of it was Roger II with what Norwich calls his "insatiable intellectual curiosity” that caused him to invite there Muslim intellectuals, with whose discussions he would take part. One of these scholars, indeed the greatest of them, was Muhammad al-Idrisi.

The man and his work

Having established the intellectual and historical context of the invitation by Roger II to al-Idrisi to live and work for him in Sicily, it is time to take a look at the recipient of this invitation himself. Muhammad al-Idrisi was mistakenly known in Europe as Geographus Nubiensis, "the Nubian Geographer” which would place him in what is today Sudan. He was indeed an African, though from further to the northwest, belonging to that amazingly rich culture that during the Golden Age of Islam spanned the Straits of Gibraltar and encompassed the Maghrib and al-Andalus, the latter consisting much of what is now Spain. Al-Idrisi’s actual birthplace was the city of Sabtah (now Ceuta) and he was born there sometime around the year 1100. He was a sharif, that is, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He received his education in Cordoba, the most important city in al-Andalus, being home in the same century, for instance, to the aforementioned Ibn Rushd. al-Idrisi was not what we might call an "armchair” or perhaps more suitably a "divan” geographer, for he saw much of the world on which he was to write, the historian Marina A. Tolmacheva revealing that he "traveled in Asia Minor, Europe and North Africa.”

In 1137, al-Idrisi arrived in Sicily, whose atmosphere with its Islamic roots and support for Muslim scholarship he must have found congenial. Additionally, the connection he formed with Roger was not one of an intellectual servant to the king. Rather, Norwich calls al-Idrisi Roger’s "friend” and the scholar "whom he most admired.” The respect was mutual, for al-Idrisi in turn claimed of the Sicilian king that there is no "limit to his knowledge of the sciences, so deeply and wisely has he studied them in every particular.”

Roger set al-Idrisi the task of, as Norwich puts it, producing "one compendious work which would contain the sum total of all contemporary knowledge of the physical world.” The result of this was a map of the world on a huge silver disk which weighed the astonishing amount of about 150 kilograms and which he humbly attributed to his patron. The map did not stand alone though, for al-Idrisi spent fifteen years producing a textual explication of it which is called Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq which translates as the delightful "Entertainment for One Desiring to Travel Far," but it is also more simply known as "Kitab Rujjar" or "The Book of Roger," after its sponsor. Unfortunately the silver map itself has been lost, it being destroyed in a period of unrest in the reign of Roger’s successor, presumably the value of its material being of more interest to the rioters than the wealth of knowledge engraved upon it. Nevertheless, of "The Book of Roger itself," copies of it have survived and the written text is accompanied by numerous maps.

Al-Idrisi put together this magnum opus from his own observations, from books and from information obtained from travellers from both the Islamic world and Europe. As such, it is literally a cross-cultural masterpiece of knowledge and Tolmacheva describes it as being "unsurpassed in narrative geography and maps of the Middle Ages.”

In the second part of this two-part series next week, I wish to look in more detail at this magnificent work.