The crisis of the Arab-Islamic geographical heritage

The crisis of the Arab-Islamic geographical heritage

Prof. Dr. Dhyaa Khamis Ali Al-Dulaimi / University of Anbar - Center for Strategic Studies

Geographical heritage is an integral part of Arab culture and civilization, but that heritage has been exposed to historical challenges that negatively affected its content and place among the assets of human knowledge. In order to identify such challenges, it is necessary to know the historical or civilizational conditions in which this heritage arose and the stages it passed during its development.

   When returning to the diagnosis of Arab knowledge before Islam, it was limited and represented in certain fields of knowledge, the most important of which are language, poetry, and the genealogy of tribes that represent an aspect of history. However, the island’s population’s need for descriptive and astronomical knowledge, its beginnings appeared when the Bedouin clans moved across the vast island. It is necessary to know the correct paths to the pasture habitats and to know the locations of the wells that were considered the keys to the desert. Those are the first beginnings of the emergence of Arab geography by some Bedouins as professional geographers whose geographical activity does not exceed being “guides” enjoying some diverse geographical culture, they were interested in knowing plants and animals The desert and some of the topographical characteristics of the surface and some of the paths of the stars and planets within the concept of astronomical geography because the nature of their lives in permanent wandering, day or night, summer or winter, imposed on them, especially since the sky of the region has been distinguished since ancient times with its purity and clarity most months of the year, and that the ingenuity of Arabs in astronomy is due to the validity of The natural environment, and the moon had an important place in astronomical knowledge, they distinguished from an early age the relationship of the moon with the stars in He arked and identified their homes with (120) homes called (the homes of the moon) and each one of them was given a purely Arabic name, and by observing some stars they were able to predict the weather and determine the seasons of the year suitable for agriculture for the settled ones, or what is called annu’ (plural of Anwa’(.

   It is clear from the above that geographical knowledge was descriptive and simple astronomical before the advent of Islam. However, after the advent of Islam, a radical development took place in that knowledge through a set of motives and factors, the most important of which are the following:

1-       Contacting Greek, Indian and Persian foreign thought through translation.

2-       The expansion of the Islamic state at the end of the Umayyad rule until it reached large parts of the three ancient continents (Asia, Africa and southwestern Europe).

3-        The flourishing of commercial activity, which played a double role in enriching geographical knowledge until some merchants became prominent geographers.

4-       Islamic duties and acts of worship that have contributed to encouraging astronomical and descriptive geographical knowledge. Prayer and fasting require geographical and astronomical knowledge to control their times. Hajj provokes Muslims in various Islamic countries to embark on a journey to Mecca, as well as acquiring religious sciences from its main sources in Makkah and Madinah. Arab geography by many travelers who added precious wealth to the geography of the Middle Ages with their travels, such as Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta.

The books of Hisham bin Muhammad al-Kalbi (d. 820 AD) are among the most important early works of Arab-Islamic geography, such as (The Great Book of Countries), (The Small Book of Countries), (The Book of Rivers) and (The Book of Regions) and one of the pioneering geographical books is (The Book of Wonders). Al-Hasan bin Al-Mundhir .

The most important characteristic of Arab-Islamic geography is its transition since the beginning of the second half of the third century AH to a new stage, which is the stage of contact of Arab thought with foreign thought, where Indian and Greek thought was translated into the Arabic language, especially the views of Ptolemy in astronomy and geography. At this stage, the focus was on astronomy, which became the obsession of rulers and scholars by the Abbasid Caliphs since the time of Caliph Abu Jaafar Al-Mansur, which reached its climax at the hands of Caliph Al-Ma’mun, who is primarily responsible for the flourishing of this type of geographical literature, which can be considered the beginning of real geography .

  The period between the beginning of the fourth century AH until the beginning of the sixth century AH, is the pinnacle of the prosperity that Arab geography reached. It also represents the true personality of authentic Arab geography, as its information depended on study, field observation and personal testing, which made it highly efficient and confident. The trip was The basis for this type of writing .

   The wide interest of rulers in geography reflected negatively on its content and content. A large number of people with other specialties, especially historians, doctors and philosophers, turned to writing in geography, which lost its content, such as Al-Masoudi and Ibn Rastah.

   In conclusion, the disintegration of the Islamic state since the beginning of the sixth century AH and its political dissolution led to the loss of pure geographical knowledge of its authenticity and further away. Adding anything new to the Arab geographical science, and they confined themselves to the task of quoting from the works of the previous ones, and this behavior is effective to our time, and the geographical patterns and branches varied, but the focus was on geographical dictionaries, encyclopedias, and trips. The works that belong to the style of nautical geography or marine geography and later were in Persian and Turkish .