Al-Idrisi
c. 1100 CE–c. 1165 CE · Ceuta
Abu Abdallah Muhammad al-Idrisi (born c. 1100, Ceuta; died c. 1165) was a geographer and mapmaker who produced some of the most influential cartography of the medieval Mediterranean. Tradition holds that he descended from the Hammudids, a dynasty in North Africa and al-Andalus that claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad through the earlier Idrisid line; this prestigious lineage is widely reported, though early biographical detail about him is thin. He is reported to have studied at Cordoba and to have traveled in North Africa and Mediterranean lands, gathering geographical information.
His enduring fame rests on his years at the court of Roger II, the Norman Christian king of Sicily, in Palermo. There he compiled the "Nuzhat al-mushtaq" ("The Excursion of One Eager to Penetrate the Horizons"), completed in 1154 and known in Latin tradition as the Tabula Rogeriana, or "Book of Roger." Working over many years, he combined inherited Greek and Arabic learning with travelers' reports to produce a descriptive geography accompanied by a sectional world map and, by report, a silver planisphere. The work is a striking instance of cross-cultural collaboration: a Muslim scholar serving a Christian monarch.
Little is documented about his final years. Sources disagree on where he died: some place his death at Ceuta, others say he remained in Sicily. Because the surviving record is sparse, both the exact date and the place of death remain uncertain.
Did you know?
A silver world map for a Christian king
Around 1154, the geographer al-Idrisi completed at the court of the Norman king Roger II of Sicily a book of world geography (the "Book of Roger") together with a large planisphere: a disc of silver reportedly some two metres across and weighing about 400 pounds, engraved with the seas, rivers and cities of the known world. He finished the work the same year Roger II died; the silver map was later broken up during civil unrest and lost.
How we know
al-Idrisi c.1100–1165; Book of Roger + silver planisphere (~400 Roman ratls, ≈2 m diameter) completed Jan 1154, weeks before Roger II of Sicily (b. 22 Dec 1095, d. 26 Feb 1154) died; map destroyed in unrest c. 1160.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →
Ceuta
What they did here
Al-Idrisi was born around 1100 in Ceuta (Arabic Sabtah), on the North African coast, then under Almoravid rule. Britannica gives Ceuta as birthplace; the year (c. 1099-1100) is a traditional estimate.
About Ceuta
Ceuta (Arabic Sabta), on the North African coast at the Strait of Gibraltar, is today a Spanish autonomous city bordering Morocco, which disputes Spanish sovereignty. Taken by Muslim forces around 710, it became an important port and scholarly town of the medieval Muslim west: the Maliki judge and biographer al-Qadi Iyad (1083-1149), author of al-Shifa, was born there and served as its judge from 1121 to 1136, and the geographer al-Idrisi is believed to have been born there around 1100. The city also had a Jewish community; Joseph ben Judah of Ceuta, the disciple to whom Maimonides addressed his Guide for the Perplexed, took his name from it. Portugal took Ceuta in 1415; it passed formally to Spain in 1668.
Across the traditions, in Ceuta at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Al-Idrisi’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Al-Idrisi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.