Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī’s Textual Map of the Mediterranean Sea (1282) and Its Evident Source in a Portolan Chart

In 1282, the Persian scholar, Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1311), included in a cosmographical work a description of a ‘Greek’ map of the Mediterranean. Rather than reproducing this map graphically, he placed a square grid over the image, listed the cells covered by the sea, and then itemised the toponyms according to their cell numbers. Once this pixelated map is created as he instructed, it is obvious that the ‘Greek’ map must have been an Italian portolan chart, featuring its unique elements: a realistic outline for the northern coast of Africa, especially the Gulf of Sirte, a simplistic rectangular form for the British Isles, a counterclockwise tilt, and a large size. With a toponymy that matches that on the oldest surviving portolan chart (the Carte Pisane, c.1270) and the next survivor (the Cortona chart), assigned to later that century, the ‘Greek’ map in Shīrāzī’s possession in 1282 seems to be the second oldest portolan chart of which we have specific knowledge. This article recounts how a Persian cosmographer disseminated a cartographic image based on the direct observations of Christian pelagic mariners. This unexpected material evidence confirms that knowledge of those earliest accurate sea charts was not confined to the Latin world, even if such information exchanges were probably rare.La carte textuelle de la Méditerranée de Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (1282) et son évidente source dans une carte portulanEn 1282, le savant persan Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī inclut dans un ouvrage cosmographique la description d'une carte ‘grecque' de la mer Méditerranée. Au lieu de reproduire graphiquement cette carte, il place une grille carrée sur l'image, énumère les cases couvertes par la mer, puis détaille les noms de lieux en fonction de leur numéro de case. Lorsque l’on redessine selon ses instructions cette carte composée de points, il apparaît de manière évidente que cette carte “grecque” devait être une carte portulan italienne, avec ses éléments caractéristiques : un contour réaliste pour la côte nord de l'Afrique, en particulier le golfe de Syrte, une forme rectangulaire simplifiée pour les îles britanniques, une inclinaison de son axe dans le sens inverse des aiguilles d'une montre, et un grand format. Avec une toponymie qui correspond à celle de la plus ancienne carte portulan conservée (la Carte Pisane, vers 1270) et celle de la suivante (la carte de Cortone), datant de la fin du XIIIe siècle, la carte “grecque” en possession de Shīrāzī en 1282 semble être la deuxième plus ancienne carte portulan dont nous ayons une mention explicite. Cet article explique comment un cosmographe persan a diffusé une image cartographique basée sur les observations directes de marins chrétiens. Cette source matérielle inattendue confirme que la connaissance de ces premières cartes marines précises n'était pas limitée au monde latin, même si de tels échanges d'information ont été probablement rares.Un mapa textual del mar Mediterráneo de Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1282) y su fuente evidente en una carta portulanaEn 1282 el erudito persa Qutb al-Din al Shirazi incluyó en un trabajo cosmográfico una descripción de un mapa ‘griego' del Mediterráneo. Más que reproducir este mapa geográficamente, colocó una cuadrícula sobre la imagen y numeró las celdas que cubrían el mar y luego detalló los topónimos según el número de su celda. Una vez que creado fue obvio que el mapa ‘griego’ debió haber sido una carta portulana italiana, presentando elementos únicos: un esquema real del contorno de la costa norte de África, especialmente el golfo de Sirte, una esquemática forma rectangular de las Islas Británicas, una inclinación contraria a las agujas del reloj y un gran tamaño. Con una toponimia que coincide con el más antiguo portulano conocido (la carta Pisana c.1270) y el siguiente que ha sobrevivido (la carta de Cortona) datada después de ese siglo, el mapa griego en posesión de Shirazi de 1282, parece ser el segundo portulano más antiguo del que tenemos un específico conocimiento. Este artículo relata cómo un cosmógrafo persa diseminó una imagen cartográfica basada en observaciones directas de marineros pelágicos cristianos. Esta evidencia material inesperada confirma que el conocimiento de estas cuidadas cartas marinas no estaba confinado a un mundo marino, incluso si estos intercambios de información probablemente fueran raros.Quṭb-ad-Dīn aš-Šīrāzīs aus Text bestehende Karte des Mittelmeeres (1282) und ihr offensichtlichesVorbild in einer Portolankarte 1282 fügte der persische Gelehrte Quṭb-ad-Dīn aš-Šīrāzī die Beschreibung einer „griechischen“ Karte des Mittelmeeres in ein kosmographisches Werk ein. Statt die Karte graphisch zu kopieren, legte er ein quadratisches Gitter über die Vorlage, listete die von Meer bedeckten Zellen auf und fügte eine Liste der Ortsnamen mit der Nummer ihrer jeweiligen Zelle bei. Rekonstruiert man diese „gepixelte“ Karte nach seinen Angaben, wird klar, dass die „griechische“ Karte eine italienische Portolankarte gewesen sein muss. Sie weist eindeutige Elemente auf, wie den realistischen Umriss Nordafrikas (insbesondere der Großen Syrte), die simplifizierte Rechteckform der Britischen Inseln, eine Drehung gegen den Uhrzeigersinn und ein großes Format. Da sich die Ortsnamen mit denen der ältesten erhaltenen Portolankarte, der „Carte Pisane“ (ca. 1270), und der nächsten, der „Cortona Karte“ (datiert auf das Ende des Jahrhunderts), decken, scheint die „griechische“ Karte im Besitz Šīrāzīs die zweitälteste Portolankarte zu sein, von der wir detailliertere Kenntnis haben. Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie ein persischer Kosmograph ein Kartenbild verbreitete, das auf den Beobachtungen christlicher Seefahrer beruht. The first author would also like to thank Prof. Jamil Ragep and Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan for prompting the first phases of this project, Osama Eshera for generously offering invaluable feedback on various iterations of this article, and Hasan Umut for helping with acquiring manuscripts from libraries in Türkiye.Disclosure statementno potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 We have transliterated only the toponyms that Shīrāzī reported from the ‘Greek’ map; for all other names, including bodies of water, we have used the modern spelling/names.2 Although mediaeval sources usually consider a parasang to be approximately three Arabic miles, the value of the mediaeval parasang or Arabian mile cannot be precisely stated in modern units.3 The Red Sea.4 Waystation is the distance a caravan can take in a day.5 Strait of Gibraltar.6 The Aegean Sea.7 The Adriatic Sea.8 This is probably owing to a misplacing of the diacritical points of the word Bunṭus, which is the Arabized version of Pontus, the Greek name of the Black Sea. One should note that the orthography of the words Nīṭush and Bunṭus, without the diacritical points, is the same in Persian and Arabic.9 The Black Sea.10 Bosporus.11 Roughly Morocco and the western part of Algiers today.12 Roughly Tunisia and the western part of Libya today.13 Strait of Gibraltar.14 Cf. Strabo’s discussion of the existence of an isthmus at the Pillars of Heracles and his rejection of Eratosthenes’ conjecture that “the breaking of the channel at the Pillars of Heracles had not yet taken place and that in consequence the Mediterranean Sea, since it was of a higher level, joined the exterior sea at the isthmus and covered it, but after the breaking of the channel took place at the Pillars, the Mediterranean Sea was lowered and thus exposed the land about Casium and Pelusium, as far as the Red Sea.” Strabo, Geography, vol. 1, ed. Jeffrey Henderson, English tr. Horace Leonard Jones (based on the unfinished version of J. R. Sitlington Sterrett), The Loeb Classical Library, 49, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, reprint 2005), 141.15 By ‘this gulf,’ he means the Mediterranean Sea. Shīrāzī here refers to it as a gulf because, in mediaeval geography, it was considered to be one of the gulfs extending from the Encompassing Sea into the inhabited world.16 In this part Shīrāzī reads the cells of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to its utmost eastern coast in the form of vertical clusters, leaving the coverage of the Adriatic and Aegean seas for the following paragraphs.17 Again, he means the Mediterranean Sea.18 The Adriatic Sea.19 These two cells had already been designated as sea cells in the previous paragraph as part of the cluster of cells from (22, 5) to (22, 16).20 Sea of Azov.21 The North Sea.22 ‘(6, 13) to (6, 29)’ was dropped in all manuscripts of the Ikhtiyārāt that we have examined except one: Süleymaniye, MS Ayasofya 2574, copied two centuries after the original composition. It was later added in the margin in some early manuscripts of the Tuḥfa (Süleymaniye, MS Ayasofya 2587, Leiden, MS Or. 192 and Majlis, MS Shūrā 6130), which were copied during Shīrāzī’s lifetime, and found its way to the body of some other early ones, such as, Central Library of the University of Tehran, MS Adabiyāt 89 and Millī, MS 19040.23 Here, again all manuscripts of the Ikhtiyārāt that we have used, except one (Süleymaniye, MS Ayasofya 2574), have the extra phrase ‘from (8, 15) to (8, 29) and from (8, 16) to (8, 29),’ which seems redundant. Two early manuscripts of the Tuḥfa (Süleymaniye, MS Ayasofya 2587 and Millī, MS 19040) do not have this seemingly incorrect phrase. A later reader of the Tuḥfa in Majlis, MS Shūrā 6130, writing in the margin of f. 107b, rectified this mistake and tells us that he made this correction “according to the grid (jadwal).” This scholium suggests that some readers of Shīrāzī not only drew the map according to his instructions but engaged his text in a critical manner.24 Starting from this paragraph we only mention Shīrāzī’s transliteration of the toponyms. Modern and portolan equivalents of each mainland toponym are provided in Table 1. For modern equivalents of inland toponyms, names of islands, and provinces/regions respectively see Tables 3, 4, and 5.25 All along the north African coastline from here, except for the Gulf of Tana and Bernic, Shīrāzī only gave horizontal coordinates, probably because the coastal outline was already marked by the blanket sea coverage. So, the vertical coordinate can be inferred from the sea coverage.26 Shīrāzī has ‘then Lakharaz, then Marsā’ but apparently, they should together represent Marsā al-Kharaz.27 Shīrāzī’s use of the word ‘above,’ here and in its two next occurrences, indicates that he considered the orientation of the ‘Greek’ map to be southward. In fact, in today’s northward maps, Mahdiya is below (or south of) Tūnis.28 Lit., gulf.29 As explained in note 27, Shīrāzī’s use of the word ‘below,’ here and in its next occurrence, is an indication of his considering the ‘Greek’ map to be southward. In today’s northward maps, Ṭulmaythā is above (or north of) Barnīq.30 Lit., cape.31 The Mediterranean.32 This is where the Battle of La Forbie took place in 1244 and was known to the Crusaders as ‘Forbie.’ See, Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1995–96), 4: 246, where he mentioned this name with a slightly different orthography and suggested a different spelling, Farbiyā, as a village within the administrative jurisdiction of ʿAsqalān.33 The Mediterranean.34 Lit., castle.35 Ancient Mount Tmolus and modern-day Bozdağ, in Türkiye.36 Turkmens of the frontier areas in Anatolia in the 12th–13th centuries. For more information on Udj Turkmens see Speros Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor: and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh Through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 133, 136, and 191–192.37 See paragraph [9–10] above where he explains the sea coverage of cell (30, 16).38 Inland Kastamonu.39 One cell away from the sea.40 One cell away from the sea.41 He means the other side of the Kerch Strait.42 In the Tuḥfa: Dhunawī. Idrīsī has it as Danū and Ibn Bībī as Dūnāb. For Ibn Bībī’s spelling see: Muḥammad Javād Mashkūr, Akhbār-i Salājiqa-yi Rūm, (Tehran, 1971), 298.43 Previously defined as a water cell.44 Previously defined as a water cell.45 Lit., land of Gyrfalcons, which might refer to Norway. For the important role of gyrfalcons in the Middle Ages, see Thierry Buquet, “The Gyrfalcon in the Middle Ages, an Exotic Bird of Prey (Western Europe and Near East),” ed. Charles Burnett and Baudouin Van Den Abeele, Falconry in the Mediterranean Context During the Pre-Modern Era, 9, Droz, 79–98, 2021, Bibliotheca Cynegetica, 978-2-600-06236-7, accessible online: https://hal-normandie-univ.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02139381/document46 King Edward I of England sent gyrfalcons as gifts to Arghūn in a diplomatic mission that left England in 1291, led by Geoffrey of Langley, see Lockhart, “The Relations,” 27. Buscarello de’ Ghizolfi (see note 14 of the main text) accompanied Geoffrey of Langley in this mission.47 We are not sure what is being referred to by Urkīna. It sounds like Orkney, an archipelago north of mainland Scotland, comprising over seventy islands, with the largest known as ‘Mainland,’ but it is unlikely that Shīrāzī referred to them as a single island.48 Romans here means Byzantines.49 Since Shīrāzī considered the orientation of the ‘Greek’ map to be southward, in our northward reproduced map, Iqrītish, or the modern Crete, is indicated by colouring the upper halves of (27, 10) and (28, 10) in light grey.50 Cephalonia.51 All Ikhtiyārāt manuscripts supply an orthography that can be dotted to be read as Māyuṭ. This orthography is close enough to the Persian/Arabic orthography of Mālṭ for us to maintain the latter as our preferred reading and the former as an early textual corruption.52 All Ikhtiyārāt manuscripts supply an orthography that can be read as Mardāniyā. As before, this orthography is close enough to that of Sardānyā to justify the latter as our preferred reading and to view the former as an early scribal error in the transmission history of the Ikhtiyārā.53 Shīrāzī’s use of ‘below’ here indicates that he considered the orientation of the ‘Greek’ map to be southward. In fact, in our northward maps, Kūrsikā (Corsica) is above (or north of) Sardānyā (Sardinia).54 All Ikhtiyārāt manuscripts supply an orthography that can be read as Qābis. This too can be justifiably read as Yābis.55 All Ikhtiyārāt manuscripts have (36, 15). This cannot be correct because, with this coordinate, Sīwās would not be across from Dimashq, which is in (37, 9). Indeed, in all manuscripts of the Tuḥfa that we consulted, the coordinate of Sīwās has been correctly given as (37, 15).56 Seine River.57 Lit., city of the Pope.1 For transliterating Arabic and Persian words, we used International Journal Of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration system: cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/57d83390f6ea5a022234b400/TransChart.pdf. Shīrāzī was born to a family of physicians in 1239 in Shiraz (modern-day Iran). At the age of fourteen, after his father’s death, he started working as a physician and ophthalmologist at a hospital in Shiraz. After ten years, Shīrāzī abandoned that post and travelled to Khurasan in order to find a scholar with whom to study and improve his knowledge of medicine. There, he also studied philosophy and astronomy with the most renowned scholars of his time. He then went to Qazvin (also in modern-day Iran) where he studied law. Later, in Maragha (also in modern-day Shīrāzī and After in and and in and other Shīrāzī in Anatolia for in Anatolia covered an even of from and writing different to as a and a diplomatic mission to the in In he left Anatolia for where he his in and was and Through his and Shīrāzī to a of some of which were even at his time. Shīrāzī’s are especially because they some that have not See and Osama al-Dīn on Ibn in and of the of the For a more of see and Context of with a on Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s of Islamic For this see al-Dīn ed. Muḥammad The author of this al-Dīn (d. is a and of the note that all from Persian and Arabic in this article were provided by See and where explains how Shīrāzī the of a map of the Mediterranean in Ikhtiyārāt a reproduced version of the map following Shīrāzī’s and points to its portolan of the Ikhtiyārāt is Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s for The Tuḥfa has not been For a of the part of Tuḥfa see sources de la du de Quṭb al-Dīn in and Arabic and Islamic Studies in Europe and et en Europe et referred to Shīrāzī’s of a map of the Mediterranean during his with the of It seems that Shīrāzī was in a map, writing the part of Tuḥfa especially in his description of the because he une par à une en que à il la forme de que si on a un en des not Shīrāzī’s to a map of the Mediterranean Sea his description of this sea in the part of the he Shīrāzī’s transmission of this map in a later in the same part of the As for the of the it was in the that was in the manuscripts of the In the of the the only known material evidence of its is an Arabic note in at the of one of its manuscripts by the anonymous of the main text MS f. for a reproduced image of this see For more information about this of cosmographical see J. al-Dīn on and J. in of ed. et to For more information about the of of this of cosmographical see and In the Shīrāzī his sources the as and by such as the authors of the of and and MS It is that the and of in this were by Shīrāzī and refers to a of writing in the premodern Islamic The to this a and description of and the of that The earliest of this is of and by Ibn (d. of and Two of this are (d. and and Ibn (d. after of the For a discussion of the of the and and its on the of the cosmographical in the premodern Islamic world, see and the description of the Shīrāzī was of his I found their and their because most of the the seas in their are such that their cannot be by or by MS MS MS MS In the Shīrāzī that it is to the map on to the large size. de MS f. In order to have a of the consider the that each of the of the Tuḥfa MS which was copied Shīrāzī’s approximately as the of a portolan In the the description of the Mediterranean Sea in the Shīrāzī that he not the map of the and its gulfs because the would the map after it or and the MS f. In Persian and refers to and For Shīrāzī in Ikhtiyārāt for the of the inhabited being below the MS f. For more information about de’ Ghizolfi and his diplomatic between the Christian and Islamic see Lockhart, between Edward I and Edward of England and the of to the of for the of by the mission was to interest in with the the Shīrāzī was sent by the previous on a diplomatic mission to the mission was especially and the sources are about See respectively and of the Shīrāzī later to the sea coverage by cells for some of the et by der For his and of the of the Tuḥfa and his reproduced map, used Leiden, MS Or. By our is based on manuscripts of the Ikhtiyārāt and manuscripts of the This explains the between and not comment about Shīrāzī’s map or its but he must have that its was a since he included it in a to that the in the early 1. It should be that on and in the of on mentioned Shīrāzī’s as the source of the For the Cortona chart, see carta For an study of portolan chart see in the of Medieval and 2021, See by the The Carte from of or for some other the of the Black Sea, no than in the north and and along the south The in which the toponymy is placed at the of the that had not been because of their to Mediterranean In the of the Adriatic on charts but the are too large for that to be and of The of and on from the Century The Journal of the accessible online: The earliest surviving Greek portolan chart from and the first with Greek was from the See The Greek A to the Mediterranean of the Modern cartes la mar de de la or in is not to that the portolan chart not be with as can be for on the and See La carte la Méditerranée à la from the and is in de (see the note this on the ‘Greek’ map is because it is unlikely that Shīrāzī that textual to the and as far south as is on portolan chart and more than three after the ‘Greek’ de see Carte et portulan au le de et forma de de del con for the del of Red on the portolan charts to The of how the coastal toponyms on the pixelated map are on the Carte is as in in in areas not covered on the Cortona and three MS f. Here, to have a of the of names between and it would be to mention their and For in Tables 1, and 3, the toponyms are provided with their in a in a and of portolan chart toponyms along the coastline from to to including the names from the de and de as

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