ABSTRACT
The Arab maps may be divided into three phases: the earliest phase, which was influenced by Ptolemy and other Greek scholars; the middle phase of purely Islamic cartography; and the late Norman-Arab phase. The first phase of Arab cartography is the epoch of imitation of European art. The first representative of this group is Muhammad ibn Musa aUQiwarizmi, who wrote the descriptive text to a map, basing his work on the text of Ptolemy's Geographia or on the Syrian version of some Byzantine map. The succeeding phase of Arab cartography is characterised by collections of distinctive maps accompanying geographical treatises, although these treatises are mostly alike in both the number of maps and the information they contain. The Arab maps of this second group are artistic and ingenious schematic drawings. The third phase of Arab cartography is the Norman-Arab, and since it saw the production of Idrisi's notable work, it might well be called the Idrisi-period.
