Picturing the Islamicate World: The Story of al-Istakhri’s Book of Routes and Realms

In Picturing the Islamicate World, Nadja Danilenko explores the message of the first preserved maps from the Islamicate world. Safeguarded in al-Istakhri’s Book of Routes and Realms (10th century C.E.), the world map and twenty regional maps complement the text to a reference book of the territories under Muslim rule. Rather than shaping the Islamicate world according to political or religious concerns, al-Istakhri chose a timeless design intended to outlast upheavals. Considering the treatise was transmitted for almost a millennium, al-Istakhri’s strategy seems to have paid off.
By investigating the Persian and Ottoman translations and all extant manuscripts, Nadja Danilenko unravels the manuscript tradition of al-Istakhri’s work, revealing who took an interest in it and why.