Pillars Of Hercules, Sea Of Darknes

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Al-Idrisi gives the names of 13 islands in the west­ern Atlantic; a 14th, visited by the mugharrirun, is nameless. This unnamed island, together with Masfahan, Laghus, The Two Brothers and possibly Sawa, are almost certainly islands in the Canary group. Laqa might be Madeira, and Sheep Island and Raqa part of the Azores group. Where al-Su'ali, Hasran, al-Ghawr, Qalhan and al-Mustashkin lay is anybody's guess. Al-Su'ali and al-Mustashkin both sound completely legendary, but there is nothing legendary about Has­ran and Qalhan, which sound as if they might belong together. Since the only inhabited islands in the west­ern Atlantic just before the coming of the Europeans were the Canaries, Hasran may belong to that group—unless, of course, it is to be sought in the Caribbean!

Here is another tantalizing reference to early Atlan­tic voyages, this time from al-Mas'udi. The account must date from before AD 942, the date al-Mas'udi completed the book from which it is taken:

It is a generally accepted opinion that this sea - the Atlantic - is the source of all the other, seas. They tell marvelous stories of it, which we have related in our work entitled The Historical Annals, where we speak of what was seen there by men who entered it at the risk of their lives and from which some have returned safe and sound. Thus, a man from Cordoba named Khashkhash got together a number of young men from the same city and they set sail on the ocean in ships they had fitted out. After a rather long absence, they returned with rich booty. This story is famous, and well-known to all Spaniards.

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The Historical Annals, which presumably gave a much more detailed account of this and other voyages, is lost. That the story was preserved at all is probably due to the rarity of such voyages. On the other hand, this passage shows that Atlantic voyages were made, and remembered.

In what direction did Khashkhash sail? If he went north, he may well have plundered the coasts of Por­tugal, France or even England. But the story occurs in the context of a discussion of the All-Encompassing Sea, not the coasts of northern Europe, which were relatively well-known to the Arab geographers. The context implies that Khashkhash sailed west. If so, the nearest place that could offer rich booty was the Caribbean.

The voyages of the mugharrirun and Khashkhash were private undertakings, apparently motivated by curiosity and bravado. The mugharrirun were "ordi­nary people"; the companions of Khashkhash were simply "young men of Cordoba." This is probably why we know so little about them. Medieval historians focused their attention on the ruler and his court, and to a certain extent on the "urban elite." The doings of private citizens, particularly of the humbler classes, are only incidentally mentioned by Arab historians of the Middle Ages - or indeed, by their Christian coun­terparts. We know as much as we do about the efforts of Prince Henry the Navigator to find the sea-route to the Indies because these expeditions were sponsored by the Crown, and the same is true of the four voyages of Columbus. Documents, logs and maps were placed in royal archives and were available to the historians of the time, whereas knowledge of the mugharrirun and Khashkhash has come down to us only because of the chance interest of al-Idrisi and al-Mas'udi. It is probable, however, that they entered sailors' lore along the Atlantic seaboard and joined the tales of other fabulous islands to the west - the Antilles, Bra­zil, St. Brendan's Isle, the Green Isle.

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These imaginary islands were marked on 14th-century charts, along with others. The Antilles and Brazil, for so long legendary, continue today as the names of real places. Men were still seeking St. Bren­dan's Isle as late as the 18th century; Ilha Verde, the Green Isle, did not finally disappear from mariner's charts until the middle of the 19th century. Through­out the Middle Ages, stories of islands to the west kept interest in the far reaches of the Atlantic alive, and when real islands began to be discovered in the 14th century, the legends took on new life. After all, if the Islands of the Blessed really existed, why shouldn't the Antilles? In the 15th century, as the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries and the Cape Verde Islands were gradually colonized and brought under sugar cultivation, the search became more intense. Genoese bankers were willing to finance sugar production; the search for free land - unencumbered by tenants who enjoyed hereditary rights and paid fixed rents in infla­tionary times - was seen as an escape from economic depression.

And who knew what lay beyond the Canaries, or the Azores? After all, al-Idrisi, who repeatedly says that nothing lies beyond the Eternal Isles, splendidly contradicts himself by telling us in another passage, quoting no less an authority than Ptolemy himself: "There are 27,000 islands in this sea, some inhabited, others not; we have mentioned only those closest to the mainland, and which are inhabited. As for the others, there is no need to mention them here."

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This is the background against which Columbus's voyages were made. He had taken part in the expedi­tions sent along the African coast by Prince Henry the Navigator. He knew the Atlantic islands well; his wife was the daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrelo, one of the early settlers on Madeira. Her sister was married to Pedro Correa, of the same island, who found a piece of worked wood cast up on the beach that he believed had drifted east from unknown western lands. Co­lumbus's son Hernando, writing in 1537, shows very well the grip these islands had on his father's mind, after first describing his father's reading in ancient and medieval sources and Paolo Toscanelli's letter on the possibility of reaching Asia by sailing west:

The third and last thing that led the Admiral to discover the Indies was the hope he entertained, before reaching them, of finding some island or land of great utility, from which he could continue his main search. He was confirmed in this hope by reading the books of many wise men and philosophers who said, as a thing not admitting doubt, that the greater part of our globe is dry land, because the area covered by land is greater than that covered by water. This being so, he argued that between the coast of Spain and the borders of India then known, there would be many large islands, as experience has shown. He believed this the more readily because of certain fables and stories which he heard told by various people and mariners who traded in theislands and the seas west of the Azores and Madeira. These were stories which fitted in with his own opinions, and he remembered them. He never tired of telling them, to satisfy the curiosity of those who enjoy such curiosities.

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Historian and Arabist Paul Lunde, author of the whole issue of Aramco World , is a frequent Contributor to the magazines with some 50 articles to his credit over the past two decades, including special multi-article sections on Arabic-language printing and the history of the Silk Roads. His immediate research for this issue was carried out in Seville, Rome, London and Cambridge, and he wrote from his base in Seville’s Barrio do Santa Cruz, a stone’s throw from the city’s cathedral—once a mosque—and from Alcázares Resales, the Moorish palace complex that remains today one of the residences of Spain’s Christian kings.

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Al-Farghani and the “Short Degree”
Written by Paul Lunde

A marginal note in Columbus's own copy of Peter d'Ailly's Imago Mundi , now in the Columbina Library in Seville, reads: "Note: Sailing south from Lisbon to Guinea, I carefully noted the distance, as pilots and sailors do. Then I took the sun's elevation many times, using a quadrant and other instruments. I found myself in agreement with Alfraganus, that is to say, the length of a degree is 56⅔ miles. Thus this measurement must be accepted. As a result, we are able to state that the earth's cir­cumference at the equator is 20,400 miles...."

We know from another marginal note that an astronomer named Joseph, in the service of the king of Portugal, had calculated the latitude of Los Idolos Island, off the Guinea coast, as one degree five minutes north. The accepted lati­tude for Lisbon at the time was 40 degrees 15 minutes north. Columbus considered Lisbon and Los Idolos Island to be on the same meridian, and estimated the distance between the two places by dead-reckoning, probably comparing his own estimate with estimates made by the Portuguese navigators. By a simple calculation, he obtained the figure of 56 miles to the degree - close enough to Alfraganus's figure of 56⅔. To obtain the circumference of the earth at the equator, he simply multiplied 56⅔ by 360.

Columbus measured distance at sea by the Italian nautical mile, and thus, when he writes that the circumference of the earth is 20,400 miles, he is referring to Italian nautical miles. One Italian nautical mile is equivalent to 1480 meters (4856 feet), and, converted into modern units, Columbus's meas­ure of the circumference of the earth was thus 30,185 kilo­meters (18,756 miles), or about 25 percent less than the true value of 40,010 kilometers, or 24,861 miles.

His reading of Marco Polo and the Toscanelli letter and map had convinced Columbus that Asia extended much farther to the east than Ptolemy had thought and that, conse­quently, Cipangu lay about as far to the west of Spain as - in fact - the West Indies lie.

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Columbus's argument for the feasibility of reaching the Spice Islands by sailing west hinged on this figure of 56⅔ miles to the equatorial degree. Since he was seeking royal support for his venture, he needed an authority of more weight than either Marco Polo or Toscanelli to underpin this crucial number; while they might both be dismissed as rather dotty fantasists, it was not so easy to dismiss Alfraganus, who carried all the authority of the Arab astronomical and mathematical tradition behind him. Columbus's claim to have verified Alfraganus's calculations must be seen in this light.

"Alfraganus" is the Latin version of the Arabic name al-Farghani, and refers to Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani. He was one of the scholars associated with the Caliph al-Ma'mun's great efforts to produce Arabic versions of Greek scientific texts in early ninth-century Bagh­dad. He may well have himself taken part in the scientific expedition which, sometime between 820 and 833, set out to measure the actual length of one degree of a meridian.

This was probably the first attempt since the time of Eratos­thenes to measure the length of a degree. Although there are no surviving eyewitness accounts of the experiment, we know from later sources how it was done: Two locations were identified whose latitudes, determined astronomically, dif­fered by one degree. A north-south baseline connecting them was carefully laid out by sighting along pegs, and the length of that baseline was measured. In the experiment in which al-Farghani took part, two pairs of locations were actually chosen, one pair in northern Iraq, on the plain of Sinjar, and the other near Kufah - both areas as flat and feature­less as possible. The results were then compared, and the length of a degree established as56⅔ miles.

Al-Farghani subsequently wrote a very influential little book on astronomy, a number of copies of whose Arabic text survive. The title can be translated Compendium of the Science of the Stars and Celestial Motions. This was twice translated into Latin in Spain during the Middle Ages, once by Gerard of Cremona and once by John of Seville, working under the auspices of Alfonso the Wise. A Hebrew translation also survives. The Compendium, in its Latin version, was widely circulated in Europe and remained a standard author­ity almost to the time of Galileo; it was first printed in 1493, the same year Columbus returned from his first voyage.

[Bathos]

Columbus's argument for the feasibility of reaching the Spice Islands by sailing west hinged on this figure of 56⅔ miles to the equatorial degree. Since he was seeking royal support for his venture, he needed an authority of more weight than either Marco Polo or Toscanelli to underpin this crucial number; while they might both be dismissed as rather dotty fantasists, it was not so easy to dismiss Alfraganus, who carried all the authority of the Arab astronomical and mathematical tradition behind him. Columbus's claim to have verified Alfraganus's calculations must be seen in this light.

"Alfraganus" is the Latin version of the Arabic name al-Farghani, and refers to Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani. He was one of the scholars associated with the Caliph al-Ma'mun's great efforts to produce Arabic versions of Greek scientific texts in early ninth-century Bagh­dad. He may well have himself taken part in the scientific expedition which, sometime between 820 and 833, set out to measure the actual length of one degree of a meridian.

This was probably the first attempt since the time of Eratos­thenes to measure the length of a degree. Although there are no surviving eyewitness accounts of the experiment, we know from later sources how it was done: Two locations were identified whose latitudes, determined astronomically, dif­fered by one degree. A north-south baseline connecting them was carefully laid out by sighting along pegs, and the length of that baseline was measured. In the experiment in which al-Farghani took part, two pairs of locations were actually chosen, one pair in northern Iraq, on the plain of Sinjar, and the other near Kufah - both areas as flat and feature­less as possible. The results were then compared, and the length of a degree established as56⅔ miles.

Al-Farghani subsequently wrote a very influential little book on astronomy, a number of copies of whose Arabic text survive. The title can be translated Compendium of the Science of the Stars and Celestial Motions. This was twice translated into Latin in Spain during the Middle Ages, once by Gerard of Cremona and once by John of Seville, working under the auspices of Alfonso the Wise. A Hebrew translation also survives. The Compendium, in its Latin version, was widely circulated in Europe and remained a standard author­ity almost to the time of Galileo; it was first printed in 1493, the same year Columbus returned from his first voyage.

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It is worth quoting al-Farghani's exact words, for they were of supreme importance to Columbus: "In that way we find that the value of a degree on the celestial sphere, taken on the circumference of the earth, is 56⅔ miles, each mile being equal to 4000 black cubits, as was ascertained during the time of al-Ma'mun - May God's grace be upon him! And on this point a large number of the learned are in agreement."

Yet the correct value for the length of a degree on the meri­dian is not 56⅔ but roughly 69 statute miles, of 60 nautical miles (by definition), or 111 kilometers and a fraction. How could competent astronomers, skilled in mathematics, have made an error of such magnitude?

The basic unit of measurement in the Arab world was the dhira', or cubit. Originally, this was the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, but a sophisticated cul­ture could not tolerate the variation implicit in this ancient unit of measurement, so the length of a cubit was standar­dized. The earliest standard cubit is known as the "legal cubit", so called because it is the one used in the holy law of Islam, the shar'iya . It is equivalent to 49.8 centimeters (19.6 inches). For surveying purposes, al-Ma'mun introduced another cubit, equivalent to 48.25 centimeters (19 inches). Finally, there is the "black cubit," the standard for which was indicated on the Nilometer on the island of Rawda, in the Nile River. This was equivalent to 54.04 centimeters (21.28 inches). Which cubit did al-Farghani use? 

The obvious answer is that he used the "black cubit" of 54.04 centimeters, since he actually uses that term. But we know from other sources that the black cubit had not yet been introduced during the reign of al-Ma'mun, when the length of a degree was measured on the plain of Sinjar. So in spite of the terminology al-Farghani uses, his "black cubit" must in fact refer to either the "surveying cubit" of 48.25 centimeters, or to the legal cubit of.49.8 centimeters. The latter is the more likely, since we know that it was the most commonly used unit during al-Farghani's lifetime.

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There are 4000 cubits in an Arab mile. If al-Farghani used the legal cubit as his unit of measurement, then an Arab mile was 1995 meters (6545 feet) long. A degree on the meridian would measure 113 kilometers (70.25 miles) - two kilometers greater than the true value, but well within acceptable limits of error. If he used al-Ma'mun's surveying cubit, then a degree contained 109 kilometers (67.73 miles) - two kilo­meters less than the true value, but an equally respectable result under the circumstances.

In other words, al-Farghani's so-called "short degree" of 56⅔ miles was not short at all, but was very close to the true length of a degree of the meridian. The error was not al-Farghani's, but Columbus's. Unaware that an Arab mile was considerably longer than an Italian nautical mile, Columbus seized upon the figure of 56⅔ miles for the length of the degree and used it to justify the theory which - in all probabil­ity - he already held.

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The Eternal Isles
Written by Paul Lunde

The rediscovery during the Middle Ages of the Canary Islands - the "Islands of the Blessed" of the clas­sical geographers, the "Eternal Isles" of the Arabs-not only represented, to Arabs and Europeans alike, the confirmation of the truth of a classical text, but also served as a spur to search for other islands said to lie to the west.

The Arabs were the first to sight the Canaries, driven there by chance; they may have landed on one of the islands as early as the 10th century. The Vivaldi brothers, out of Genoa, may have landed in the Canaries during their voyage south in 1291. A French ship, caught in a gale, was driven onto one of the Canaries in 1334, although a Portuguese expedition of about the same date failed to find them. Their existence was well-enough known by this time for a man named Juan de la Cerda, a grandson of the Spanish monarch Alfonso the Wise, to have himself crowned King of the Canaries, although he was never able to raise the financial backing to make his pre­tentious title a reality.

There were other voyages to the Canaries which have left no traces in the European sources. One of these, which must have taken place about 1350, is de­scribed by Ibn Khaldun, the most original of late Islamic thinkers, in al-Muqaddimah, the introductory volume to his comprehensive history. This passage is also impor­tant because it contains one of the few descriptions in a literary source of the portulan charts, as well as a clear explanation of the difficulties of Atlantic navigation.

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"We have heard," says Ibn Khaldun, "that Frankish ships reached the Eternal Isles in the middle of this century. They attacked and plundered the natives, capturing some whom they sold on the coast of Morocco. These captives entered the service of the Sultan, and after learning Arabic were able to tell about life on their island. They said that they tilled the earth with horn tools, for they had no iron in their country. They ate barley bread and raised goats. They fought with stones, which they flung over their shoulders. They bowed down before the rising sun and had no scriptural religion. Muslim missionaries had not reached them."

All these details are confirmed by later European sources, including the peculiar method of hurling stones, which the Guanche did with extreme accuracy. It is unfortunate that Ibn Khaldun says nothing about their original language, for this is a subject that has been much discussed. Ibn Khaldun con­tinues with an important passage on the practice of late medieval sailors; everything he says applies equally well to the Mediterranean sailors of antiquity:

"The place where these islands lie cannot be found by intention, but only by chance, because ships sail on the sea where the winds take them, and navigation is dependent upon knowing the direction the wind blows, and where it blows from. A direct course is laid between two places that lie in the path of a particular wind. When the wind shifts to another quarter and the direction it is blowing is known, the
sails are adjusted and the ship sails according to the practices of sailors accustomed to sea voyages.

"The lands on the two shores of the Mediterranean are marked on a chart; their true positions on the coast are marked in order. The directions of the different winds are also noted. This chart is called the kanbas [compass]. Sailors depend upon these charts on their voyages.

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"But no charts exist for the All-Encompassing Sea [the Atlantic]; that is why ships do not sail it, for if they were to lose sight of the coast, they would be hard put to return to it, for if they were to lose sight of the coast, they would be hard put to return to it. The surface of this sea is also covered with mist, which prevents ships from making their way.... Therefore it is difficult to lay a course for the Eternal Isles and find out more about them."

This is an excellent description of the coast-hugging tech­nique of the Mediterranean sailor. The use of kanbas to indi­cate a mariner's chart, rather than the pair of dividers used to measure distance, or the magnetic compass, is interest­ing, and may throw light on the obscure origins of this word.

Shortly after Ibn Khaldun wrote this passage, and largely as a result of the discovery of the Canary Islands, Portuguese and Spanish sailors discovered how to use the current and wind patterns of the Atlantic to reach destinations across open seas. The technique was called the volta da mar, or the "sea turn," and went against reason, for it meant sailing well to the northwest of the Canaries in order to pick up the easterlies and return home. This was the discovery that made Atlan­tic navigation, far out of sight of land, possible. The Ottoman naval officer Piri Reis, a practical sailor himself, was quick to realize the significance of the discovery, and in his Kitab-i Bahriye gives good descriptions of the wind systems of the north and south Atlantic.

The rediscovery of the Canary islands not only unlocked the secret of Atlantic navigation, thus opening the way to the New World, but set the pattern for conquest, settlement and economic exploitation of the Caribbean Islands. The Guanches, the indigenous inhabitants of the Canaries, were the first "primitive" people encountered by Europeans in modern times! Armed with the most rudimentary weapons, they heroically resisted their conquerors for more than a century and a half. In the end they succumbed, annihilated by superior weapons and unfamiliar diseases. Many were enslaved the rest were assimilated into the new dominant population. The same sad story was to be repeated in the New World.

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Columbus knew the Canaries well and was familiar with the Guanches. When he first encountered the inhabitants of the New World, it was to the Guanches that he compared them, noting the many physical similarities. And here he may unconsciously touched upon a mystery to which the Canary Islands may once have held the key.

One of the few relics of the Guanches' material culture is a characteristic clay or wood seal, with a wide variety of designs, which was used to stamp colored patterns on the skin. These seals, called pintaderas in Spanish, are by no means unique to the Canaries. They are found in North and West Africa, the Balkans - where the earliest examples, dating from the fifth millennium BC, have been found - and even Japan. But they have also been found in archeological sites in the Caribbean and Central America, and many of these American examples have patterns very similar to those from the Canaries. The earliest examples from the Canaries have been dated to the second millennium BC; there is some evidence that they were still in use there at the time of the Spanish con­quest. Their presence means the Canaries were inhabited from a remote period - before the time of the Mauretanian king Juba II, who colonized the islands in about 25 BC –and they may even, because of their similarity to American seals indicate very ancient trans-Atlantic contacts.

The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder reported that the Canary Islands were named for the species of large dog found there in classical times - canis being the Latin word for dog - but this smacks of folk etymology. Unfortunately, so do all the other origins that have been proposed for the name, most recently that the name derives from qannariya, the Andalusian Arabic word for the vegetable called cardoon, which is said to have grown therein profusion. It is more likely that the name is related to that of the people who may then have inhab­ited the opposite coast and now inhabit northeastern Nigeria, and who were known to al-Idrisi as the qamanuriya; they are now called the Kanuri. Those names are close to "Canaria" in sound, and it is more likely that an island should be named after a people than after dogs or vegetables. In addition, the qamanuriya spoke Berber, al-Idrisi says; so did the Guanche. Perhaps the Kanuri were the original discoverers and colonizers of the Eternal Isles, the first stepping stone tow the New World.

This article appeared on pages 6-17 of the May/June 1992 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

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