Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 -

Books like Lost Maps of the Caliphs are the reason many students choose to become scholars. Couched in a tale that resembles an academic mystery novel--the accidental discovery of an 11th-century manuscript--the central chapters of the work demonstrate vividly how a single, previously unstudied text can expand, or upset, the conventions underpinning well-established humanistic fields. The text studied here is The Book of Curiosities, a collection of maps and commentaries produced by an anonymous Fatimid scholar working before the famous cartographer al-Idrisi and after the equally renowned al-Khwarizmi's interpretation of Ptolemy's geographies. The ensuing narrative weaves together Fatimid history, medieval science and technology, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean history, and the theory and history of spatial representation. The authors have chosen their focal points from the dense source material well. They develop sharp analyses, for example, of the relations between heavens and earth in Islamic science, of Fatimid involvement in the controversy surrounding the sources of the Nile, and of an intriguing, alternative, 11th-century route to China (through Tibet, rather than by sea or across Central Asia). Finally, for those not convinced of the manuscript's value by the main chapters, the virtuosic appendix on medieval Islamic astrology will allay any lingering doubts.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.