The study of the history of cartography in Europe and the Islamic world has proceeded to date on parallel lines. Yet while scholars have tended to specialise in one or the other tradition, relations of exchange and influence between Islamic and European cartography have consistently been asserted. At the same time, institutional and linguistic barriers to comparative study have impeded systematic examination of the connections between Islamic and Western mapmaking.
The Leverhulme Network ‘Cartography between Europe and the Islamic World' aims to promote comparative, cross-disciplinary scholarship on Islamic and European cartography by bringing together experts in these two fields for a two-day symposium. Participants are invited to explore moments of contact between traditions (e.g. twelfth-century Spain; the court of Roger II of Sicily; fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian cartography; Piri Reis and post-Columban cartography of the early sixteenth century) as well as differences and divergences. Reflections on the methodology of the comparative study of maps are also welcome.
Papers may wish to address some of the following topics, but need not be restricted to them:
- the contexts – material, political, spiritual, artistic – of mapmaking in Europe and the and the Islamic world
- audiences for maps; ‘cartographic literacy’
- interactions between European and Islamic mapmaking: exchange, influence, borrowing
- reception of classical texts, e.g. Ptolemy’s Geographia/Jugrafiya
- nautical mapmaking in the Mediterranean
- cartography in the Ottoman empire (up to c. 1600)
- comparative histories of cartography
Please send proposals consisting of an abstract of c. 300–500 words for 20-minute papers to Matthew Champion (m.s.champion@qmul.ac.uk) by 21 February 2014. Proposals are encouraged from doctoral students, early-career and established scholars, and travel and accommodation for speakers will be funded.
On behalf of the conference convenors: Alfred Hiatt (a.hiatt@qmul.ac.uk), Jerry Brotton (j.r.brotton@qmul.ac.uk) and Yossi Rapoport (y.rapoport@qmul.ac.uk).
