INTRODUCTION.

THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE
CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.


Arabic science constitutes one of the main links between the older
learned world of the Greeks and Latins and the Europe of Henry the
Navigator and of the Renaissance. In geography it adopted in the main
the results of Ptolemy and Strabo; and many of the Moslem travellers and
writers gained some additional hints from Indian, Persian, and Chinese
knowledge; but, however much of fact they added to Greek cartography,
they did not venture to correct its postulates.

And what were these postulates? In part, they were the assumptions of
modern draughtsmen, but in some important details they differed. And
first, as to agreement. Three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, an
encircling ocean, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Caspian, the Red
Sea and Persian Gulf, the South Asiatic, and North and West European
coasts were indicated with more or less precision in the science of the
Antonines and even of Hannibal's age. Similarly, the Nile and Danube,
Euphrates and Tigris, Indus and Ganges, Jaxartes and Oxus, Rhine and
Ebro, Don and Volga, with the chief mountain ranges of Europe and
Western Asia, find themselves pretty much in their right places in
Strabo's description, and are still better placed in the great chart of
Ptolemy. The countries and nations from China to Spain are arranged in
the order of modern knowledge. But the differences were fundamental
also. Never was there a clearer outrunning of knowledge by theory,