Shorting Africa: Late Medieval Latin and Arabic Mapping Schemes
Amanda Gerber, Associate Professor of English, James Madison University
In Greco-Roman antiquity, West meant Africa. Replete with gold as well as early Christians and Muslims, Africa’s history arrived in the Middle Ages with more background than most of Europe. What happened to that history? One answer starts emerging in fourteenth-century Latin and Arabic cartography, whose schematic manuscript maps began truncating the African continent along with its formerly renowned peoples. Some of these truncated schematics even partially copied more detailed and realistic sources. Analyzing a collection of such maps, this paper asks: what prompted cartographers from two different Abrahamic traditions to reduce Africa’s geographical history?
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