Al-Idrisi's Tabula Rogeriana (1154): A World Map for Sicily

The Tabula Rogeriana is the world geography and set of maps completed in 1154 by the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi for King Roger II of Sicily. Known in Arabic as Nuzhat al-mushtaq and to contemporaries as the Book of Roger, it described the known world in seventy regional maps with detailed text. Made at a Norman court in Palermo by a Muslim scholar, it is one of the outstanding achievements of medieval geography.

Background: Roger II and Norman Sicily

Sicily had been ruled by Muslims for more than two centuries after the Muslim conquest of Sicily began in 827. Norman adventurers conquered the island between 1061 and 1091, but they kept much of its Arabic-speaking administration and its mixed population of Muslims, Greeks and Latins.

Roger II became the first king of Sicily in 1130 (see Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II). His court in Palermo combined Latin, Greek and Arabic culture: royal documents were issued in three languages, and Arab craftsmen decorated his palaces and churches. Roger was deeply curious about the world and wanted an accurate description of his own and other lands.

Al-Idrisi

Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi was born around 1100, probably in Ceuta on the North African coast. He belonged to a branch of the Idrisid family, descendants of the Prophet who had ruled parts of Morocco in the ninth and tenth centuries. He studied in Córdoba and travelled in al-Andalus, North Africa and, by his own account, Asia Minor in his youth.

Around 1138 he accepted Roger’s invitation to Palermo. Later Arabic writers suggest that the king valued his noble lineage and learning, and that al-Idrisi was safer under Christian protection than he might have been in lands ruled by rivals of his family.

Making the Book of Roger

According to the preface, the project took about fifteen years. Roger and al-Idrisi gathered the works of earlier geographers, especially Ptolemy’s Geography and Arabic writers such as Ibn Hawqal, and questioned travellers, merchants and pilgrims who passed through Palermo. Where accounts agreed they were accepted; where they differed, they were set aside. Distances and positions were checked and plotted on a drawing board.

The results were recorded in three forms. A large planisphere, a disc of silver engraved with the map of the world, was made for the king. The book itself, completed in January 1154, a few weeks before Roger’s death on 26 February, combined a small circular world map with seventy sectional maps and a detailed text.

How the maps work

Following Greek tradition, al-Idrisi divided the inhabited world north of the equator into seven “climates”, horizontal bands running from west to east. Each climate was split into ten sections, giving seventy rectangular maps. Placed side by side, they form a large map of the world from the Atlantic to China.

As was usual in Arabic cartography, south is at the top. The text for each section describes towns, rivers, mountains, distances between places, products and customs. Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa are treated in remarkable detail, including places in France, Germany, Scandinavia and the British Isles. Further away the information becomes thinner: the Nile is shown rising from the legendary Mountains of the Moon, and the Indian Ocean coast of Africa bends eastward.

What the book contains

Beyond geography, the Book of Roger is a rich source for twelfth-century trade and society. It describes the commerce of Mediterranean ports, the gold trade of West Africa south of the Sahara, and the cities of al-Andalus. It also preserves the story of the “adventurers” (al-mugharrarun) who sailed from Lisbon into the Atlantic to find its limits and reached islands before returning by way of the African coast.

Al-Idrisi later wrote a second geography for Roger’s son William I, of which only an abridged version survives, and a work on medicinal plants. He is generally thought to have died around 1165, possibly back in North Africa.

Key people

Roger II (1095–1154) was the son of Count Roger I, the Norman conqueror of Sicily. Crowned king at Palermo on Christmas Day 1130, he ruled Sicily and southern Italy and, at times, parts of the North African coast. Arabic writers who visited his court praised his knowledge of mathematics and his interest in learning, and the Book of Roger was in many ways his personal project.

Muhammad al-Idrisi was the scholar who organised the material, wrote the text and directed the drawing of the maps. Little is known of his private life, and most biographical details come from brief notices by later writers. His work shows a wide reading of Greek and Arabic geography and a strong interest in practical details such as routes, distances and trade goods.

Konrad Miller (1844–1933), a German priest and historian of cartography, published editions of medieval maps, including a large series on Arabic maps. His reconstruction of al-Idrisi’s world map, with names transcribed into Latin script, made the work accessible to modern readers.

By the numbers

Survival and rediscovery

The silver planisphere and the original manuscript are lost; the disc is thought to have been destroyed during unrest in Palermo soon after Roger’s death. About ten manuscript copies of the book survive. The oldest, made around 1300, is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, and an important copy dated 1553 in the Bodleian Library in Oxford includes the circular world map.

An abridged Arabic text was printed in Rome in 1592, one of the earliest books printed in Arabic in Europe, and a Latin translation appeared in Paris in 1619 under the title Geographia Nubiensis. In the 1920s the German scholar Konrad Miller assembled the seventy sectional maps into a single large world map with transliterated names, the version most often reproduced today.

Myths and facts

• Myth: The Tabula Rogeriana is a single original map. Fact: The name refers to a book with many sectional maps; the familiar single map is a modern assembly.
• Myth: The map is “upside down” by mistake. Fact: Placing south at the top was a deliberate and common convention in Arabic cartography.
• Myth: Al-Idrisi drew the Americas. Fact: His map shows only Europe, Asia and Africa; the Atlantic is treated as an unknown “Sea of Darkness”.

Timeline

• c. 1100: Al-Idrisi is born, probably in Ceuta.
• 1130: Roger II is crowned king of Sicily.
• c. 1138: Al-Idrisi arrives at Roger’s court in Palermo.
• 1154, January: The Book of Roger is completed.
• 1154, 26 February: Roger II dies in Palermo.
• c. 1165: Death of al-Idrisi.
• c. 1300: Date of the oldest surviving manuscript copy.
• 1592: An abridged Arabic text is printed in Rome.
• 1619: Latin translation published in Paris as Geographia Nubiensis.

Why it matters

The Book of Roger shows how Greek, Arabic and Latin knowledge could be combined at a single court in twelfth-century Sicily. For historians it remains a valuable source for places and trade routes across the medieval world, and for map lovers it is a landmark between Ptolemy and the great travel accounts of writers such as Ibn Battuta.