The Book of Roads and Kingdoms (, Kitāb al-Masālik waʿl-Mamālik) is a group of Islamic manuscripts composed from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. They emerged from the administrative tradition of listing pilgrim and post stages. Their text covers the cities, roads, topography, and peoples of the Muslim world, interspersed with personal anecdotes. A theoretical explanation of the "Inhabited Quarter" of the world, comparable to the ecumene, frames the world with classical concepts like the seven climes.
The books include illustrations so geometric that they are barely recognizable as maps. These schematic maps do not attempt a mimetic depiction of physical boundaries. With little change in design, the treatises typically offer twenty regional maps and a disc-shaped map of the world surrounded by the Encircling Ocean. The maps have a flat quality, but the textual component implies a spherical earth. Andalusi scholar Abi Bakr Zuhri explained, "Their objective is the depiction of the earth, even if it does not correspond to reality. Because the earth is spherical but the [map] is simple".
The first, incomplete Kitāb al-Masālik wa'l-Mamālik by Ja‘far ibn Ahmad al-Marwazi is now lost. The earliest surviving book in the genre was written by Ibn Khordadbeh circa 870 CE, during the reigns of Abbasid caliphs al-Wathiq and al-Mu'tamid. The earliest known version of the idiosyncratic cartography was composed by al-Istakhri circa 950 CE, although only copies by later artists survive. As he was a follower of Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, this style of map-making is often referred to as the "Balkhī school", or the "Classical School". The maps are sometimes called the "Atlas of Islam", or abbreviated as KMMS maps. This tradition of mapping appears in related works including Ibn Hawqal's Ṣūrat al-’Arḍ (; "The face of the Earth").
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See also
Geography and cartography in the medieval Islamic world
Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Jayhani
Muhammad ibn Yūsuf al-Warrāq
Muhammad al-Idrisi
Piri Reis
Book of Roads and Kingdoms (al-Bakri) Islamic Golden Age Mappa mundi T and O map
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References
Accessed 2023-05-27.