If geography was Greek in Antiquity, it was Arabic in the Middle Ages. At that time, in the Islamic world, great treatises on universal geography were written, and these writings were intimately linked to the existence of an empire that stretched from the Indus to the Pyrenees and spanned three continents. This powerful geographical discourse, written in Arabic, rehabilitates the medieval period as an essential moment in the constitution of the discipline

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Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil
Université Paris-Nanterre

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Al-Idrīsī is the best known of the geographers of the Middle Ages. His work, dedicated in 548/1154 to the Sicilian king Roger II, the Kitāb Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (“The Pleasure of One Passionate About Peregrination Across the World”), also known as the Kitāb Rujār, the “Book of Roger”, is the first work of Arabic geography to include a representation of the Latin West. The geographer indicates that he spent more than fifteen years (between 1139 and 1154) painstakingly gathering information from sailors, merchants and even special envoys dispatched for this purpose by the King of Sicily. The book was intended to complement a silver planisphere on which a map of the world was engraved. Indeed, the book reinforces the pre-eminence of the graphic medium, since it contains seventy maps inserted at the end of each chapter. Both the maps and the book depict the oekoumene, i.e. a large quarter of the earth north of the equator. However, its great originality lies in the fact that each of the seven climates has ten sections or compartments, making it possible to draw up a grid of the world.

Al-Idrīsī is truly innovative in the portrait he paints of the Latin West: the Frankish territories emerge from the shadows in which they had been confined by Baghdadian geographers of the ninth and tenth centuries.¹ Unsurprisingly, the descriptions of England, Normandy and France – countries that were well known in Palermo, where a Norman king reigned and traders from Western Europe flocked – are fairly accurate. Al-Idrīsī was also the first of the Arab geographers to produce a true portrait of Christian Spain (which he called Ishbâniya), whereas his predecessors merely listed the peoples bordering al-Andalus. He was aware of the prominent role now played by the Christian kingdoms and gave Toledo as the centre of the Peninsula. The symbolic political centre, always equated with Cordoba, was therefore replaced here by a geographical centre, justified by distance but also by geopolitics, since 478/1085 it had been one of the capitals of the Christian states of the peninsula.

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The works of these geographers were reprinted and anthologised in later centuries.

This practice, which was an integral part of medieval writing, made it possible to anchor each of the authors in the long intellectual chain of knowledge transmission. For example, the geographical dictionary written in the fifteenth century by the Andalusi-born Maghrebi al-Ḥimyarī, which considers the Islamic world in its entirety but gives pride of place to al-Andalus, reproduces many of the pages of his predecessors. Under his pen, al-Andalus extends as far as Narbonne, in a nostalgic geography designed to preserve the memory of what the Iberian peninsula was like under Islamic rule, when in reality it only extended to the Nasrid kingdom of Granada at the time he was writing. Territory becomes heritage, and the geographical discourse, now utopian, lists places to preserve the memory of a space that no longer exists; the reality of the terrain is overridden by the dictionary. The geography of al-Ḥimyarī is less that of ‘places of memory’, to use Pierre Nora’s formula, which are by definition few in number and selected for their ability to embody a memory that is disintegrating, than a memory of places, where place names help to bring into existence in discourse what has been lost in warfare. Even within the framework of this project, which consists of keeping alive the memory of what al-Andalus was at its apogee, the geography of the period after the year 1000 continues to be universal, because it is also important to describe the East, the cradle of Islam, the heart of civilisation.

Other geographers, such as al-Zuhrī (around 545/1150) and Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī (609-684/1213-1286), also distinguished themselves by writing treatises on universal geography, making al-Andalus one of the major production sites for the discipline within the Islamic world after the year 1000. It was thus in the Islamic West that universal geography was written, following on from Baghdad’s geography of the ninth and tenth centuries. It was an extension, because the geographical approach was the same: to describe provinces and countries, to list their cities and places of interest, to entertain as well as educate. To do this, the geographers of the Islamic West combined compilation and field experience, like their predecessors in the al-masālik wa-l-mamālik genre. The principle of indicating routes and itineraries, the insertion of historical anecdotes, and even the very title of some of the works: Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik are borrowed from this type of geographical literature. Although the main aim of geography written in al-Andalus was to repair the shortcomings of eastern geography concerning the west of the Islamic world, it did not want to confine itself to regional geography alone. It was essential to continue to describe the eastern lands, even by means of compilation, precisely in order to show that al-Andalus was an integral part of the vast whole that was the world of Islam. This need became increasingly pressing as the threats multiplied from the end of the eleventh century onwards. Describing the East, by anthologising works of geography and history written in the Abbasid domain before the year 1000, was to be part of a scholarly continuity, to assume fidelity to a scientific heritage and to take it further.

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But fidelity in this case does not means imitation. The compilation of data concerning the East is a practice inherent in the writing of geography. The great oriental al-masālik wa-l-mamālik treatises of the tenth century were themselves largely inspired by the earlier genres of ṣūrat al-arḍ and administrative geography, themselves tributaries of ancient geography. There is a bedrock of geographical discourse, constantly enriched with new touches; geography is a constant rewriting.

Reference to some of the great Eastern masters is thus inescapable whenever certain subjects are discussed. Al-Bakrī draws his main inspiration from al-Ṭabarī (224/839-310/923)² and al-Masʿūdī (280/893-345/956)³ in the first part of his work, when he traces the history of the world from Creation. Ibn Rusteh (d. 279/892), author of an encyclopaedic work entitled Kitāb al-Aʿlāq al-nafīsa (“The Precious Garments”) is an essential source for depicting Constantinople, Rome and the Slavic lands. Ibn Khurradādhbih (d. 200/912), author of a Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik, is finally the main inspiration, along with Ibn Ḥawqal and al-Muqaddasī, for the pages al-Bakrī devotes to the East. Al-Idrīsī cites the works to which he is indebted in the prologue to the Nuzhat al-mushtāq:

“The Book of Wonders of al-Masʿūdī and the books of Abū Nasr Saʿīd al-Jayhānī, of Abū al-Qāsim ʿUbayd Allāh b. Khurradādhbih, of Aḥmad b. ʿUmar al-ʿUdhrī, of Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad al-Ḥawqalī al-Baghdādī (Ibn Ḥawqal), of Khānākh b. Khāqān al-Kīmākī, of Mūsā b. Qāsim al-Qaradī, of Aḥmad b. Yaʿqūb known as al-Yaʿqūbī, of Isḥāq b. al-Ḥasan al-Munajjim (“the astronomer”), Qudāma al-Baṣrī, Ptolemy al-Aqlūdī (Claudius) and Orose (Urusyūs) al-Anṭākī”.⁴

When describing this part of the world, the (handful of) oriental geographers of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries used works written in al-Andalus. Al-Qazwīnī (d. 682/1283), not strictly speaking a geographer but the author of two works entitled Āthār al-bilād (“Monuments of the Countries”) and Kitāb ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt (“Wonders of the Created Things”), works that had great success in the medieval period, takes the text of al-ʿUdhrī word for word when he evokes the wonders (ʿajāʾib) of al-Andalus, and explicitly specifies the provenance of these passages.⁵

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The Ayyubid prince of Ḥamā, Abū al-Fidāʾ (672-732/1273-1331), one of the great names in Arab geography after the year 1000, copied entire passages from al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-mushtāq. He even quotes the name of the Palermo geographer on the very first page of his book, just after that of Ibn Ḥawqal.⁶ More surprisingly, the borrowing sometimes goes beyond what one might expect: Abū al-Fidāʾ takes up the notes that al-Idrīsī devotes to the cities of Tyre, Caesarea in Palestine and Saint-Jean d’Acre, perhaps because these are localities that were in the hands of the Franks and he considers that King Roger’s geographer will forever remain the foremost authority on the latter.⁷ When he paints a picture of al-Andalus, he cites Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī (609-684/1213-1286). The name of the famous Andalusi polygrapher is repeated at the head of each of the entries devoted to places in al-Andalus. It is sometimes preceded by the words “after Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr”.⁸ The great Andalusi traditionist Abū ʿUmar b.ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1071), author of a brief geographical opuscule that has not come down to us and is scarcely cited, serves here as an endorsement of the geographical discourse thanks to the fame he acquired in the religious sciences. It is a kind of isnād that guarantees the authenticity of information, more so than geographers themselves. Once again we see the ambiguity of the epistemological status of geography. It is clear, however, that the source is Andalusi. The main benefit that Abū al-Fidāʾ finds in Ibn Saʿīd is that he systematically provides the precise coordinates of the various cities; he specifies that the absence of this type of information is the main flaw in al-Idrīsī’s work.⁹ According to M. Reinaud, the translator of Abū al-Fidāʾ in the nineteenth century, the Eastern geographer “allowed himself to be seduced by Ibn Saʿīd’s western origin, and had full confidence in his information about the lands of Europe and Africa”.¹⁰ Some passages in Abū al-Fidāʾ, notably the portrait of the Galicians, are in fact borrowed from al-Bakrī, who, however, is never mentioned by name.

Yāqūt (574 or 575-626/1179-1229), a slave of Byzantine origin bought and then freed by a Baghdad merchant, was a great encyclopaedist, an eminent geographer and a tireless traveller. He cites a book by al-Bakrī among his works of reference, along with those by Ibn Khurradādhbih, Ibn al-Faqīh, al-Iṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal, but only in his dictionary of the dubious toponyms of the Arabian Peninsula. Thus he used an Andalusi as a source of reference when talking about an eastern land, what is more, Arabia. In his description of the Iberian Peninsula, broken down into numerous entries within this geographical dictionary, we recognise the influence of al-ʿUdhrī, al-Bakrī and al-Idrīsī.¹¹ Yāqūt also uses elements provided by al-Rāzī, though without quoting this author; he thus specifies that al-Andalus is divided into 41 administrative circles (kūra), which corresponds more or less to the situation in the Caliphate period, and a figure that only al-Rāzī gives among all Andalusi geographers. In other words, Easterners recognised that Westerners were the most capable of describing their own lands and, by the same token, admitted that they were equal partners in the development of the discipline. This twofold compilation honours and legitimises the Westerners: they are indeed the other side of the same coin.

However, the fact that these Andalusi authors created an original discourse on the West does not mean that they should be seen as advocates of a ‘national’ geography. The argument that literature written in al-Andalus is ontologically “Hispanic” does not hold water, any more than that of the sterile adoption of Eastern canons. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, for example, defended the idea that some Andalusi geographers, foremost among them al-Rāzī, were compilers, and hence continuators, of ancient and Visigothic sources. Al-Rāzī certainly used the works of Orosius and Isidore of Seville,¹² but this is not an exceptional approach. While the kinship with Latin works is unmistakable, the conclusions we draw must be cautious. Making al-Rāzī the continuator of the Latin chroniclers, by and of itself, is tantamount to inserting all Andalusi geographers into the unbroken chain of Spanish authors, from Antiquity to modern times.¹³

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However, compilation from ancient sources was not enough to differentiate him from the geographers of the East, who drew freely on Greek, Byzantine, Persian and other texts. It is just this openness to outside influences and this ability to integrate foreign data that characterise Arab geography. What is original, however, is that Andalusi geography drew most of its information from Latin geography. The Arab and Eastern geography of the ninth and tenth centuries, that of the ṣūrat al-arḍ, the cartography of the earth, and then of the al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, had been inspired mainly by Greek geography. Ptolemy or Marinus of Tyre thus contributed to the construction of a certain vision of the world. Latin works, on the other hand, such as Strabo’s,¹⁴ were completely ignored. Andalusi geographers also had to describe the West. They therefore drew on the information available to them. Most of this information was to be found in the works of Orose and Isidore of Seville. Once again, it is not the borrowing that is remarkable – it is, in fact, an integral part of the development of geographical knowledge – but the content of that borrowing.

If there is one major characteristic of geography written after the year 1000, mainly in al-Andalus, it is that it revives the description of the whole oekoumene. It combines the approach of the ṣūrat al-arḍ (the cartography of the inhabited world) that prevailed in the ninth century and the method of al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, albeit with one major difference: the descriptions of Islamic countries alone, characteristic of the tenth century, give way to a larger picture, which reviving the description of the entire inhabited world. Caliphal geography, which had only been interested in the Islamic world, and mainly in its eastern part, which relegated other regions to the status of mere margins, underwent a significant change. The scale of geographical investigations changed, with authors taking a closer interest not only in the Maghreb, but also in the rapidly expanding Latin and Christian world of the Mediterranean (Crusades, feudal conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Norman conquests of Sicily and Italy).¹⁵ The Baghdadian geography of the tenth century could play the game of splendid isolation, while the Andalusi or Western geography of the eleventh and twelfth centuries is the witness, involuntarily but from the front row, of a shift in the balance of power in the Mediterranean world. The West, both Islamic and Latin, now occupies a prominent place in these vast frescoes, and this is something entirely new. Think, for example, of al-Bakrī’s exceptional picture of the Maghreb or the completely new portrait painted by al-Idrīsī and Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī of spaces far removed from the eastern heartland of Islam. By continuing the vast undertaking of an inventory of the known world initiated by Eastern geography as early as the eleventh century, this ‘Andalusi’ geography of the post-Millennium period certainly contributed to increasing the intellectual influence of al-Andalus, in the same way as other scholarly productions, but it also ensured that the same bubble of Arabic knowledge continued to enclose the whole of the inhabited earth, to use François Hartog’s formula with regard to Greek knowledge in Antiquity.¹⁶ Only Arabic-language geography in the Middle Ages had the intellectual project of envisioning the world, and it did so throughout the medieval period thanks to Andalusi authors.

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Notes:

1. J. C. Ducène, L’Europe et les géographes arabes du Moyen Âge (Paris, CNRS éditions, 2018), 198 et seq. ↩︎
2. When he mentions al-Ṭabarī, al-Bakrī does so in different ways: either by calling him Abū Jaʿfar, or Muḥammad b. Jarīr, or by referring to him by the first letter of his name (Ṭ-), or very rarely by Ṭabarī. On the other hand, he does not give the titles of the works he compiles. In fact, he mainly uses the first volume of his History, entitled Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1960, 10 vols.), devoted to the history of the world from Creation to the Prophet of Islam. ↩︎
3. The quotations borrowed from al-Masʿūdī are even more numerous than those made to al-Ṭabarī. They come from the summary of the author’s extensive chronicle (the Kitāb Akhbār al-zamān), the Golden Meadows (Kitāb Murūj al-Dhahab). They appear both in the first part of al-Bakrī’s work, and also in the second, the strictly geographical part. The Andalusi geographer most often quotes al-Masʿūdī literally. He refers to him either by name or by Abū al-Ḥasan, but more often than not he gives no indication. ↩︎
4. Al-Idrīsī, Kitāb Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq, Opus geographicum, sive, Liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant, ed. Enrico Cerulli (Leiden: Brill, 1970-78), 22. For the translation, see al-Idrīsī, La première géographie de l’Occident, translated by Annliese Nef and Henri Bresc (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1999), 60. ↩︎
5. Al-Qazwīnī, Āthār al-bilād wa-akhbār al-ʿibād (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1380/1960), 502, 505, 512, 549, and 553; idem, Kitāb ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt, ed. Wüstenfeld (Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1848), 173. Fátima Roldán and Rafael Valencia, “El género al-masālik wa-l-mamālik: Su realización en los textos de al-ʿUḏrī y al-Qazwīnī sobre el Occidente de al-Andalus,” Philologia Hispalensis 3 (1988): 7–25. ↩︎
6. Abū al-Fidāʾ, Géographie d’Aboulféda, trans. M. Reinaud (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1848), 113 et sq. ↩︎
7. Abū al-Fidāʾ, Taqwîm al-buldân, géographie d’Abulféda, ed. M. Reinaud and de Slane (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1840): 243, 239 and 270. ↩︎
8. Abū al-Fidāʾ, Taqwîm, 235. ↩︎
9. Ibidem, 1. ↩︎
10. Abū al-Fidāʾ, Géographie d’Aboulféda, CXLIII. ↩︎
11. Gamal ʿAbd al-Karīm, La España musulmana en la obra de Yāqūt (s. XII-XIII). Repertorio enciclopédico de ciudades, castillos y lugares de al-Andalus, extraído del Muʿjam al-buldān (Diccionario de los países). Cuadernos de Historia del Islam, Serie Monográfica-Islámica Occidentalia 6 (Granada: Publicaciones del Seminario de Historia del Islam de la Universidad de Granada, 1974). ↩︎
12. On the question of the compilation of Latin sources, E. Tixier du Mesnil, “Regards croisés sur Hispan/Ishbân, héros éponyme énigmatique de l’Espagne d’après les sources médiévales arabes et latine,” Studia Islamica 102 (2006): 199–216. ↩︎
13. C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Investigaciones sobre historiografía Hispana medieval (siglos VIII al XII) (Buenos Aires: Instituto de Historia de España, 1967), 304. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz stated that al-Rāzī was particularly interested in the distant past of his “Spanish homeland,” making him “one of the great historians of the Peninsula.” ↩︎
14. Although written in Greek, they are representative of Latin geography, i.e. geography written at the time of Roman domination. ↩︎
15. J. C. Ducène, L’Europe, 145 et seq. ↩︎
16. F. Hartog, Mémoire d’Ulysse, récits sur la frontière en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 217. ↩︎

Further reading:

Primary sources:

• Abū al-Fidāʾ. Géographie d’Aboulféda. Translated by M. Reinaud. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1848.
• ———. Taqwîm al-buldân, géographie d’Abulféda. Edited by M. Reinaud and Baron de Slane. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1840.
• al-Bakrī. Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik. Edited by A. P. van Leeuwen and A. Ferré. Tunis: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitāb and Bayt al-Ḥikma, 1992.
• al-Ḥimyarī. Kitāb al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār. Edited by I. ʿAbbās. Beirut: Maktabat Lubnān, 1984.
• Ibn Khurradādhbih [Ibn Khorradādhbeh]. Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik. Edited by De Goeje. Leiden: Brill, 1889. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 6.
• Ibn Rustah [Ibn Rosteh]. Kitāb al-Aʿlāk an-nafīsa. Edited by M. J. de Goeje. Leiden: Brill, 1892. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 7.
• ——— [Ibn Rusteh]. Les atours précieux. Translated by Gaston Wiet. Cairo: Publications de la Société de géographie d’Egypte, 1955.
• al-Idrīsī. Kitāb Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq, Opus geographicum, sive, Liber ad eorum delectationem qui terras peragrare studeant. Edited by Enrico Cerulli. Leiden: Brill, 1970-78.
• ———. La première géographie de l’Occident. Translated by Annliese Nef and Henri Bresc. Paris, GF Flammarion, 1999.
• Lévi-Provençal, É. “La Description de l’Espagne de al-Rāzī.” Al-Andalus 18 (1953): 51–108.
• ———. La Péninsule Ibérique au Moyen-Age d’après le Kitāb ar-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī ḫabar al-aḳṭār d’Ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Ḥimyarī. Leiden: Brill, 1938.
• Miquel, A. La meilleure répartition pour la connaissance des provinces (Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm). Damascus: Publications de l’Institut Français de Damas, 1963.
• al-Qazwīnī, Zakarīyā b. Muḥammad. Kitāb ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt = Zakarija Ben Mohammad Ben Mahmud el-Cazwini. Kosmographie. Vol. 1. Edited by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld. Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1848.
• ———. Āthār al-bilād wa-akhbār al-ʿibād. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1380/1960.
• Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī. Muʿjam al-buldān. Edited by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1866-1873.
• ———. Muʿjam al-buldān. Edited by Farīd ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Jundī. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1990.

Reference works:

• ʿAbd al-Karīm, Gamal. La España musulmana en la obra de Yāqūt (s. XII-XIII). Repertorio enciclopédico de ciudades, castillos y lugares de al-Andalus, extraído del Muʿjam al-buldān (Diccionario de los países). Cuadernos de Historia del Islam, Serie Monográfica-Islámica Occidentalia 6. Granada: Publicaciones del Seminario de Historia del Islam de la Universidad de Granada, 1974.
• Antrim, Zayde. Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• De la Granja, F. La Marca superior en la obra de al-ʿUdrí. Zaragoza: Escuela de Estudios Medievales-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1966.
• Franco-Sánchez, F. “‘Al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik’: Precisiones acerca del título de estas obras de la literatura geográfica árabe medieval y conclusiones acerca de su origen y estructura.” Philologia Hispalensis 31, 2 (2018) : 37–66.
• Ducène, J. C. L’Europe et les géographes arabes du Moyen Âge. Paris, CNRS éditions, 2018.
• Hartog,François. Mémoire d’Ulysse. Récits sur la frontière en Grèce ancienne. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
• Kratchkovsky, I. “Les géographes arabes des XIe et XIIe siècles en Occident.” Annales de l’Institut d’études orientales de l’Université d’Alger 18-19 (1960-1961), 1–72.
• Martinez-Gros, Gabriel. L’idéologie omeyyade. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1992.
• Micheau, F. “Les institutions scientifiques dans le Proche-Orient médiéval.” In Histoire des sciences arabes, ed. R. Rashed, 3:233–54. Paris: Seuil, 1997.
• Miquel, A. “La géographie arabe après l’an mil.” In Popoli e paesi nella cultura altomedievale: XXIX settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 23-29 aprile 1981. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1983, 153–74.
• ———. La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11^e siècle. Leiden: Brill, 1967-1988.
• Molina, Luis. «Orosio y los geógrafos hispanomusulmanes.»  Al-Qantara V, 1-2 (1984), 63-92. 
• Molina López, E. La cora de Tudmīr según al-ʿUḏrī. Cuadernos de Historia del Islam. Serie Monográfica-Islámica Occidentalia 4. Granada: Publicaciones del Seminario de Historia del Islam de la Universidad de Granada, 1972.
• Muʾnis, Ḥ. “Al-Jughrāfiyya wa-l-jughrāfiyyūn fī al-Andalus.” Revista del Instituto de Estudios Islámicos 7-8 (1959-1960): 199–359 (Arabic Section).
• Pons Boigues, F. Ensayo biobibliográfico sobre los historiadores y geógrafos arábigo-españoles. Madrid, 1898.
• Roldán, Fátima and Rafael Valencia. “El género al-masālik wa-l-mamālik: Su realización en los textos de al-ʿUḏrī y al-Qazwīnī sobre el Occidente de al-Andalus.” Philologia Hispalensis 3 (1988): 7–25.
• Sánchez-Albornoz, C. Investigaciones sobre historiografía hispana medieval (siglos VIII al XII). Buenos Aires: Instituto de Historia de España, 1967.
• Sánchez Martínez, M. “La Cora de Ilbîra (Granada y Almería) en los siglos X y XI, según al-ʿUḏrī (1003-1085). Traducción y notas.” Cuadernos de Historia del Islam 7 (1975-1976): 5–82.
• ———. “Rāzī, fuente de al-ʿUḏrī para la España preislámica.” Cuadernos de Historia del Islam 3 (1971): 7–49.
• Staszak, J. F. La géographie d’avant la géographie. Le climat chez Aristote et Hippocrate. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1995.
• Tixier du Mesnil, E. Géographes d’al-Andalus. De l’inventaire d’un territoire à la construction d’une mémoire. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2014.
• ———. “Regards croisés sur Hispan/Ishbân, héros éponyme énigmatique de l’Espagne d’après les sources médiévales arabes et latine.” Studia Islamica 102 (2006): 199–216.
• Valencia, R., “La cora de Sevilla en el Tarṣīʿ al-ajbār de Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar al-ʿUḏrī.” Andalucía islámica. Textos y Estudios 4-5 (1986): 107–43.