Mapping Continents, Inhabited Quarters and The Four Seas. Divisions of the World and the Ordering of Spaces in Latin-Christian, Arabic-Islamic and Chinese Cartography in the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries. A Critical Survey and Analysis

This paper explores the presence and development of large-scale geographic categories in pre-modern cartography (twelfth to sixteenth centuries) in a combination of comparative and transcultural perspectives. Analysing Latin-Christian, Arabic-Islamic and Chinese maps, we demonstrate the varying degrees of importance accorded to large-scale geographic structures. The choice of related as well as independent traditions allows for the identification of specific emphases which reflect the influence of the respective cultural backgrounds and strategies applied in the ordering of space. While the analysed Chinese material concentrates on a geographical space that was perceived to form an ideal political and cultural unity without representing the entire physical world, Latin-Christian and Arabic-Islamic traditions share the focus on the whole “oecumene” that they both inherited from antique models. However, only Latin-Christian maps consistently and explicitly present a tripartite world that resonates with Trinitarian structures in Christian thought.

The Depiction of the Saracen Foreign Rule in the Prophetic Chronicle Through Biblical Knowledge

The intention of this article is to interpret the biblical elements in the Prophetic Chronicle concerning their role in the process of identification of the cultural and religious Other in the Iberian Peninsula. To understand the Christian strategies of identification, the article contrasts the biblical elements in the text with their appearance in the Bible and compares the corresponding narrations. Since the contemporary foreign rulers over major parts of the former Visigothic kingdom were named almost entirely with biblically connoted ethnonyms, understanding these denominations is necessary to investigate both the perception and depiction of the Arab rulers of Hispania. Consequently, this article can point out the importance of the biblical elements in Christian-Iberian historical writing for research on the transcultural Iberian Peninsula and simultaneously offers new insight about the Prophetic Chronicle.