Cihānnümā is the summa of Ottoman geography and one of the axial texts of Islamic intellectual history. Kātib Çelebi (d. 1657) sought to combine the Islamic geographical tradition with the new European discoveries, atlases and…
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abdullah Al-Idrisi, also known as AsShareef Al-Idrisi, was one of the greatest geographers and cartographers in the 12th century CE. Al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta in Morocco — occupied…
This article presents a historical analysis of the various constructions built on the ancient overland Hajj route from Iraq to Makkah and the role of Lady Zubayda with especial reference to her Makkah water projects.
Dan Gibson, a Canadian amateur archaeologist, is the latest of a number of revisionist historians of early Islam who are desperate to show that Islam did not start in Mecca, and hence that early Islamic…
The Tinmal mosque was built by the first Almohad caliph, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, around 1148 next to the tomb of the mahdī Ibn Tūmart, the founder of the Almohad creed (d. 1130). The official pilgrimages (ziyāra)…
Since the Quran said every able-bodied person should make a pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca at least once in their lifetime, thousands travelled from the farthest reaches of the Islamic empire to Mecca, beginning in…
A survey of the historical sources with an appendix on some recent fallacies about mosque orientations
Carved in the 13th century bce, fine bas-reliefs on the walls of the tomb of Seti i in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings show elaborately carved hieroglyphs, a term that comes from the Greek for…
[Ibn Khordadbeh] grew up to be a knowledgeable scholar, and during the reign of Caliph al-Mu`tamid (256-279 A.11/870-892) he was appointed as Director of Post and Information in the province of Jibal...
Rayy was a city in the old Persian region of Media, during the Islamic times in the province of Djibal...
Throughout history, trade routes played a central role in the transfer of goods and exchange of ideas between different parts of the world. The historic Silk Roads, which were a network of trade routes across…
Islamic geographical texts are not only valuable in terms of geographical research, they also constitute an essential resource in the study of Arab-Islamic civilisation - its literature, history, learning and economics. This chapter will attempt…
"Did you know the word 'turquoise' is a French word that simply means 'Turkish'?
The studies on the Islamic view of environment protection and the links between Islamic classical culture and ecology knew recently a notable progress, testified by numerous valuable publications in various languages. The following is a…
Recent scholarly interest in the genesis of social sciences in Islamic culture is a noteworthy shift. Until recent times, the development of these fields was credited exclusively to the modern Western tradition, especially to the…
Meeting of the Muslim Heritage Awareness Group (MHAG) in London
Most educational systems, particularly those of Western countries, teach that industry was born in Europe and that the Industrial Revolution was the mother that delivered industrial mass production. Salim Al-Hassani, Chairman of FSTC and eminent…
Kâtip Çelebi was arguably the most important Ottoman intellectual figure of the 17th century. Being the author of many works in the fields of bio-bibliography, geography, history and economics, he held reformist opinions and cultivated…
The article of Professor Dr. Bekir Karliga on the horizon of Katip Çelebi's thought is a tremendous analysis of the reformist efforts deployed by the renowned 17th-century Ottoman scholar Katip Çelebi Mustafa bin Abdallah, known…
This is a review of the book prepared by Prof. Dr. Idris Bostan for the Turkish Undersecretariat of Navigation in order to provide a useful and important scientific resource on the naval history of the…
A notable fact that should be remembered when we talk about the different areas of knowledge in Muslim heritage—and which should be emphasised in these troubled days marked by the tragic situation in the Middle…
The aim of this paper is to investigate the various aspects of preparedness and response to natural disasters in the Arabic speaking lands during the 15th and 16th centuries, with comparison to earlier writings. Two…
Yâqût al-Hamawî was a Syrian biographer and geographer known for his encyclopaedia writings of the Muslim world. His Mujam al-Buldan, a geographical dictionary that includes much biographical, historical, and cultural data, is a primary source…
A study of historical maps and sea charts indicates that cartographers have often considered map making as an art as well as a science and aimed to record the different parts of the world not…
Turkish contributions to geography are vast in content and have a very significant place in the history of geography. Turkish geographers, especially cartographers made major contributions and formed a bridge between medieval Islamic and modern…
This article is an edited version of the article originally written by the late Professor Mohammed Hamidullah, "Muslim Discovery of America before Columbus", Journal of the Muslim Students' Association of the United States and Canada.…
The Ottoman Turk Pîrî Reis is truly a great figure in the history of cartography. Pîrî Reis has become well known for his two world maps and for his portolan, the Kitab-i Bahriye. By merging…
Although the Japanese map was included for the first time in a world atlas in the 15th century, the very first map of Japan was drawn by Mahmud of Kashgar in early 11th century.
Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi is one of the greatest scientific minds of the medieval period and a most important Muslim mathematician who was justly called the 'father of algebra'. Besides his founding the science of…
Ibn Jubair is widely recognised as one of the greatest travellers and geographers of Muslim history. From excerpts his work, The Travels of Ibn Jubair, as presented in this short article we are able to…
The landscape in the areas under Muslim control from the 7th Century changed radically. Their rich contributions are most notable within the fields of irrigation, farming techniques, encyclopeadic works in botany, and the introduction new…
The city of Baghdad was founded under the second Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur (ruled 754-775). After a lengthy research along the course of the Tigris as far north as Mosul, he decided to construct a palace…
Many Muslim scholars dealt with minerals and gems and wrote monographs on the subject. The golden age of their writings was the 4th-5th century after Hijra (AH) (10th-11th century CE). They used almost all the…
Al-Muqaddasi (or Al-Maqdisi), originally from Al-Quds (Jerusalem), hence his name, is by far one of the most instructive of all early Islamic writers on the society of Islam.
Born in Valencia, Ibn Jubair (Ibn Jubayr) travelled widely, offering good accounts of the life of Muslims and their surroundings in both Eastern and Western parts.
In his Rihla/Risala (travel narrative, account or journal), Ibn Fadlan, who in the tenth century, accompanied a mission from the Caliph al-Muktadir to the Volga Bulgars, describes his experiences and the people and places he…
When dealing with Turkish history, whether during the Ottoman period or after, one comes across horrendous claims and errors by countless historians which utterly distort the subject. To try and write correctly Turkish history is…
In 1513 Piri Reis presented his famous map of the New World to the Sultan, giving the Ottomans, well before many European rulers, an accurate description of the American discoveries as well as details about…
Islam is seen by many scholars as an urban religion, which favours communal practice on individual worship. Although, piety is the only source of appraisal, it is widely accepted that most of Islam's teaching is…
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