Geography and cartography 113

                    Geography and cartography 113

the grid system, and that the next was the map included in Hafiz-i Abru’s treatise
of 1420. The earliest grid, however, goes back to the beginning of the thirteenth
century and is found on a map prepared by Muhammad ibn Najıb
Bakran, a native of Tus, in 1208. This map was composed on cloth and its data
derived from old astronomical tables which Bakran, by his own testimony,
says he carefully collated to eliminate errors.40 The map itself is lost but
Bakran describes its character and techniques in great detail in his Jahann
amah or “World Book.” He begins by explaining the different colors and
symbols used to indicate boundary markers, cities, rivers, seas, deserts, mountains,
and climes (aqalım). He then states that the “many red lines, some
[running] from the east to the west and some from the north to the south, these
are the lines [khutut] of longitude [tul] and latitude [¨arz],” and adds that the
“great advantage” of his map is that “by means of longitude and latitude the
location of each city can be determined.”41 Thus, 130 years before Mustawfı,
Muslims used the graticule and this of course fatally undermines the theory
that this was a uniquely Chinese technique that flowed west to Iran under the
Mongols. Or, to put it another way, the map Jamal al-Dın presented to the
throne in 1267, with its color code and grid system, had a well-established
precedent in the Muslim world.42
The issue of transfer of technique aside, exchange of geographical knowledge
between China and Iran had a lasting legacy. Kwon Kun’s map of 1402
established a most interesting tradition in Korea; henceforth there was a widespread
popularity of maps and atlases in Korean culture which from the inception
always had a “global” dimension.43 More consequentially, as Adshead
has argued, one of the most important contributions of the Middle Ages to
the creation of the modern world system was the diffusion and “integration of
geographical information,” a body of knowledge that once in existence
became a “permanent” feature of the new world order.44 And, undeniably, the
Mongolian Empire played a critical role in the promotion, creation, and circulation
of such knowledge. Sometimes this rapid extension of horizons is
linked exclusively to the famous travelers, Marco Polo and Ibn Battutah, as
well as to a legion of lesser figures who accompanied innumerable commercial,
diplomatic, and religious missions across Eurasia under Pax Mongolica.
Reichert, for example, has recently calculated that between 1242 and 1448,
over 126 individuals or embassies, all from Eastern and Western Christendom,
Geography and cartography 113