Islamic geography had three major fields: exploration and navigation, physical geography, and cartography and mathematical geography.
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14 Facts About Islamic geography
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Islamic geography reached its apex with Muhammad al-Idrisi in the 12th century.
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3.
Islamic geography began in the 8th century, influenced by Hellenistic geography, combined with what explorers and merchants learned in their travels across the Old World.
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4.
Various Islamic scholars contributed to the development of geography and cartography, with the most notable including Al-Khwarizmi, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, Al-Masudi, Abu Rayhan Biruni and Muhammad al-Idrisi.
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5.
Islamic geography commissioned several geographers to perform an arc measurement, determining the distance on earth that corresponds to one degree of latitude along a meridian.
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6.
Islamic geography showed the lake Issyk-Kul as the centre of the world.
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7.
Islamic geography considered the extent of the known world to be 160° and had to symbolize 50 dogs in longitude and divided the region into ten parts, each 16° wide.
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8.
Islamic geography used trigonometry to calculate the radius of the Earth using measurements of the height of a hill and measurement of the dip in the horizon from the top of that hill.
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9.
Islamic geography's estimate was given as 12,803,337 cubits, so the accuracy of his estimate compared to the modern value depends on what conversion is used for cubits.
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10.
Islamic geography argued for its existence on the basis of his accurate estimations of the Earth's circumference and Afro-Eurasia's size, which he found spanned only two-fifths of the Earth's circumference, reasoning that the geological processes that gave rise to Eurasia must surely have given rise to lands in the vast ocean between Asia and Europe.
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11.
Islamic geography theorized that at least some of the unknown landmass would lie within the known latitudes which humans could inhabit, and therefore would be inhabited.
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12.
Islamic geography incorporated the knowledge of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Arab merchants and explorers with the information inherited from the classical geographers to create the most accurate map of the world in pre-modern times.
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Islamic geography then uses the compass to determine the north point, the meridian, and the Qibla.
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14.
Islamic geography invented it for the purpose of finding the times of prayers.
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