Overview

The most important writings on geography and exploration during the period from the tenth to the twelfth centuries emerged from the Muslim world. There a series of journeyers and geographers chronicled their travels and categorized the towns and physical features of the Islamic realms, a vast network of empires that stretched from Spain to India, and from eastern Europe to the desert kingdoms of West Africa. Among the first of these writers was al-Maqdisi, who traveled throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world, and who in 985 began writing about his journeys in Best Division for Knowing the Provinces.

Background

It is understandable that both scientific geography and the art of travel writing would flourish in the realms controlled by the Muslims. Not only did those lands enjoy the greatest flowering of civilization in the Western world...