cartography 193
of Gibraltar) are in Byzantine Christian hands, not Latin Christendom. It is interesting
to note that mainland Italy has no place on this map. At the far right, the anchorages in
the Islamic lands begin, extending from Syria through Egypt to Tunisia and Morocco.
Thus the ports of Byzantium occupy nearly the entire upper half of the oval, and Muslim
anchorages the lower half. While western-Christian Europe is given little attention on
this map, it cannot be said to reflect a Muslim–Christian divide, for Muslim Spain is
equally ignored, and extraordinarily detailed attention is given to Byzantium.
Of the islands in the middle of the map (Figure 12.3), those to the far left (four
columns of circles) are each labeled merely “island” (jazırah̄ ) and given no names.
The remaining islands have names of those in the eastern Mediterranean (Koutelakis,
2008). The Cyclades are in the middle, more or less, and islands near Italy and
Anatolia on the right. There is much disorder and confusion, however, in their
arrangement. Sicily and Cyprus are represented as large rectangles. Furthermore,
Sicily and Cyprus have their own separate maps elsewhere in this treatise.
There is no attempt to delineate any coastline. Projection and quantification associ-
ated with modern cartography are not to be found. Even more than that of the Balkhı̄
School, or at least in a different way, the geometry of circles, ovals, and squares clearly
dominated and determined the anonymous eleventh-century Egyptian’s approach to
map making, There is a simplicity of design that is attractive to the modern sense of
design—though not to the modern sense of “map” which requires it to be mimetic.
This lack of interest in delineating shorelines with any degree of accuracy reflects
the author’s philosophy of map making which he presents elsewhere in the book.^3 He
begins by saying: “These sea maps are not accurate representations.” He argues that,
since the shorelines are always changing, there is little point in indicating them on a
map. Then he gives examples of inhabited lands that were subsequently flooded and
made impassable and uninhabitable, and other examples of lowlands once underwater
but in his day occupied with peoples, all of which argue for the pointlessness of trying
to represent with accuracy a shoreline at any given time. Through this cartographic
philosophy, the anonymous eleventh-century author demonstrates an appreciation for
the tension between ever-changing reality and static pictures, as well as the limitations
of space and precision.
The apparent simplicity of this charmingly geometric presentation of the
Mediterranean illustrated in Figure 12.3 disguises the importance of the map. It is a
detailed list of ports along the eastern Mediterranean, with notations of winds and
capacities to accommodate fleets. It is essentially a portolan, in the classic sense of the
word—that is, a list of ports. The term “portolan” derives from the written lists of
ports (or itineraries) long used by Mediterranean sailors. The eleventh-century
Mediterranean map from the Book of Curiosities is a portolan that has been given a
visual shape, incorporating lists of ports onto an abstract shoreline of the Mediterranean
Sea. The names of ports are written at right angles to the coast and extend “inland”
while the interiors of the landmasses are left empty, anticipating a universal character-
istic of all pre-modern sea charts or portolans. It should be emphasized, however, that
the Book of Curiosities is a literary composition, assembling everything the author
could find regarding the heavens and the earth. It was intended as a highly illustrated,
entertaining read for an urbane audience and not as a navigational guide, even though
the author incorporated into the volume a wealth of material of maritime, naval and
military interest (Rapoport, 2011).