ABSTRACT
In attempting to understand how space has been conceived and represented at any given time, examining works of geography and cartography is an obvious approach. But in the Middle Ages, this approach becomes complex, because the work in question was conceived in a scientific and cultural tradition on the frontiers of the Latin intellectual world. Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muhammed Al-Idrīsī, known simply as Al-Idrīsī (1099–1165 or 1175), worked on behalf of King Roger II of Sicily (r. 1095–1154), while employing the methods and sources of Arab polygraph scholars. His geographical work is unparalleled in this period, and it is an ideal intermediary through which to determine how geographical space was apprehended and imagined in the twelfth century. Indeed, the two geographical works of Al-Idrīsī, the Nuzhat al-muštāq (or, “Book of Roger”), and Uns al-muhaj (or, “The Conviviality of Hearts”), consist of both text and maps. And while it is the text of the Nuzhat al-muštāq that is often mined for the geographical or historical information that it can reveal, one must keep in mind that the map was developed and executed first.
