Al Idrissi
Al Idrisi Al-Idrisi or Sharif or Al Idrissi, full name ( Arabic : ), known also as the Latin of Drese, is a geographer and botanist Andalusian , born in Ceuta to 1100 and raised in Cordoba Biography Little is known about the life of Al-Idrisi. He was born in Ceuta , which was then part of the empire of the Almoravids , circa 1100, into a noble family of Al-Andalus , a country where it seems to have studied at the city Caliphate of Cordoba (from hence the name Qurtubi). His family certainly came Malaga , dominated by the dynasty of Driss. He had traveled to North Africa , in Iberian Peninsula , and perhaps even in Asia Minor , relating his travels notes on the geography and flora of the regions visited. Little is known about the circumstances of his arrival in Sicily , where he arrived in Palermo in 1138. Norman King Roger II of Sicily would have called for his court in order to achieve a large world map in cash and especially for writing the commentary corresponding geographic. This work will take him 18 years of his life. We lose track of him in 1158 after he performed this work. The historians place the date of his death between 1164 and 1180. The limited information on this scholar Middle Age , is perhaps, according to historian F. Pons Boigues in the fact that the Arab biographers considered al-Idrisi to be a renegade in the service of a Christian king. The main inspiration of Al-Idrisi came from two geographers from pre-Islamic Orosius , a traveler Spanish whose "History," written in the fifth century , includes a volume of descriptive geography, and Ptolemy , the greatest geographers classics, including " Geography , "written in the second century , was completely lost for Europe , but was preserved in the Muslim world in an Arabic translation. It also seems to have been influenced by his compatriot, the astronomer Hispano-Muslim Azarchel , who corrected the geographical data Ptolemy for the region west of the Mediterranean. When he arrived in Palermo in 1139 , he launched under the aegis of Roger II of Sicily "in the constitution of a world map and a comment associated with the Book-of entertainment who want to discover the world (Kitb Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi al-Afaq ikhtirq) - more commonly known as the Book of Roger, who is one of the best works of medieval cartography. He took advantage of the situation in Sicily as a strategic island of the Mediterranean , interviewing the crews of all vessels entering the ports of the kingdom of Sicily. The book includes a description of Roger of Sicily, Italy, his homeland Spain, Europe and North Africa, as well as Byzantium : it is a description that includes resolutely universalist although the physical geography that human activities. His knowledge of the Niger , the Sudan and the Nile is remarkable for its time. The book has benefited from the special situation of the Norman kingdom of Sicily in the twelfth century and the syncretism between civilizations Byzantine, Norman and Arabic that characterized him. To accomplish this work, al-Idrisi drew on the results of its own trips but also the comments under his command to other travelers. It seems that the first version of the book date of 1157. We had not an abstract, published for the first time in Arab Rome in 1592 and translated into Latin under the title of Geographia Nubiensis by Gabriel Sionite , Paris , 1619. Pierre Amde Jaubert , military interpreter , found in in 1829 a complete manuscript in the Bibliothque nationale de France and published in French translation, Paris, 1837 - 1839 , 2 volumes in-4, with notes. This is the only complete translation of the Book of Roger: it is considered unreliable because of the manuscripts of second-hand that it uses. A new edition only partially corrects these errors. Later, al-Idrisi has developed another geographical encyclopedia, even more complete, that the author was entitled Rawd Unnas-wa-Nuzhat al-Nafs (Pleasure of men and delight of the soul), also known as book Kitab al-wa al-Mamalik Masalik (Book of Roads and Kingdoms). Al-Idrisi supported the theory of the sphericity of the Earth and although the cards have the shape of a disk, he explained that the disc only symbolized the way the world: "The earth is round like a sphere, and water is held there and stay there through the natural balance that does not undergo any change. " As suggested by his comments, al-Idrisi think the world is round, not only to insist on this: Contrary to the misconception that everyone believed to Columbus , that the Earth was flat, many scientists and astronomers believed the Earth was a planet at least since the fifth century BC. JC. In terms of medicinal plants , his Kitab al-Jami-li-al-Sifat Ashtat Nabatat (Book collecting fragmentary descriptions of plants) demonstrates his extensive knowledge of botany. He studied and reviewed the literature available in his time on the subject of medicinal plants and has advanced knowledge in this area since the ancient Greeks. A large number of new plants, drugs with their medical evaluation has been given to doctors. He gave the names of the drugs in six languages: Syriac , Greek , Persian , Hindi , Latin and Berber. Apart from botany and geography, al-Idrisi also wrote on fauna , the zoology and therapeutic aspects. His work written in Arabic has been translated rapidly into Latin. His books on geography remained popular for centuries in East and West, and are considered the foundation of modern geography.
Its full Abu Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Abdallah Ibn Idris al-Qurtubi al-Hasani can trace part of his life : The geographer
The botanist
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