Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Middle Age

Revision and correction of Ptolemaic cartography — Al-Khwarizmi

~833 AD · Transmission: Silenced
AstronomyMethodArab

Al-Khwarizmi supervised the production of the Kitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ, a systematic revision of Ptolemy's Geographia that corrected erroneous coordinates, added updated Islamic geographic information, and reoriented the map with south at the top, following Arabic convention. His cartographic contribution is usually overshadowed by his fame in algebra, but it is an essential link in the chain running from classical antiquity to medieval Mediterranean cartography.

InstitutionHouse of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma)
Historical regionBaghdad
Primary sourceKitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ (Book of the Image of the Earth) — c. 833
Secondary sourceTibbetts, G.R. — The Beginnings of a Cartographic Tradition, in Harley & Woodward, History of Cartography, vol. 2 (1992)
Original languageClassical Arabic
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