Muhammad al-Idrisi
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Al-Idrisi (b.1100-d.1165 or 1166), full name Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد الإدريسي) was an Arab cartographer, geographer and traveller who lived in Sicily, at the court of King Roger II. Muhammad al-Idrisi was born in Sabtah, then belonging to the Almoravid Empire (nowadays Ceuta, Spain) and died in Sicily, or maybe in Sabtah. Al Idrisi was a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad.
In 1154 al-Idrisi made a large, south-oriented mappa mundi known as the Tabula Rogeriana and an accompanying book, named Geography. Taken together, they were named Nuzhat al-Mushtak by Roger, but Kitab Rudjar ("Roger's Book") by al-Idrisi.
Al-Idrisi constructed a world globe map of 400 Kg pure silver and precisely recorded on it the seven continents with trade routes, lakes and rivers, major cities, and plains and mountains.[citation needed]
His world map was used in Europe for centuries to come. It is worth mentioning that Christopher Columbus used the world maps , which was originally taken from Al-Idrisi's work.
A second, expanded edition was produced in 1161 with the remarkable title The Gardens of Humanity and the Amusement of the Soul, but all copies of it have been lost. An abridged version of this edition, named Garden of Joys -- but usually referred to as the Little Idrisi -- was published in 1192.
The book is not a perfect historical source, as al-Idrisi (as was common then and for many more centuries) relied on other sources for it. For example, when writing about Poland he has conflated it with the land that is the modern-day Czech Republic, because he wrote about "a country surrounded by mountains".
[edit] Legacy
A widely used and well known Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software, developed by Clark Labs in USA, is named Idrisi as a dedication to the Arab geographer.
