8vo. viii, 56 pp., of Latin text + 27 pp., of Arabic text within red borders, translated by Ernst F. Rosenmuller into Latin, cloth backed marbled boards, title gilt on spine, new spine and endpapers, Ambros Barthii, Lipsiae, first and only edition with the Latin translation and following commentary, 1828.

Synopsis

Muhammad al-Idrisi (born 1100, Sabtah, Morocco (now Ceuta, Spanish North Africa)—died 1165/66, Sicily or Sabtah) was an Arab geographer and adviser to Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily. He wrote one of the greatest works of medieval geography, Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq.
Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq represents a serious attempt to combine descriptive and astronomical geography. That this effort was not an unqualified success apparently stems from the author’s inadequate mastery of the physical and mathematical aspects of geography. He has been criticized not only for failing to make use of the important geographic contributions of other scientists of his times, such as the 11th-century Arab scholar al-Bīrūnī, but also for his uncritical use of earlier Greek and Arab sources. Nevertheless, al-Idrisi’s book is a major geographic monument. It is particularly valuable for its data on such regions as the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans.