214 COSMOS 



of I'actri, even from the discoveries of the Portuguese aud Span- 

 iards. Within fifty years after the death of the Prophet, tha 

 Arabs had ah*eady reached the extremest western coasts of 

 Africa and the port of Asfi. Whethei the islands of the 

 Guansches were visited by Arabian vessels subsequently, as I 

 was long disposed to conjecture, to the expedition of the so- 

 called Almagrurin adventurers to the Mare tenebrosum, is a 

 question that has again been lately regarded as doubtful. --^ 

 The presence of a great quantity of Arabian coins, found bur- 

 ied in the lands of the Baltic, and in the extreme northern 

 ^arts of Scandinavia, is not to be ascribed to direct inter- 

 course with Arabian vessels in those regions, but to the wide- 

 ly-diffused inland trade of the Arabs. t 



Geography was no longer limited to a representation of the 

 relations of space, and the determinations of latitude and lon- 

 gitude, which had been multiplied by Abul-Hassan, or to a 

 description of river districts and mountain chains ; but it rath 

 er led the people, already familiar with nature, to an acquaint- 

 ance with the organic products of the soil, especially those of 

 the vegetable world.l The repugnance entertained by all tht 



Ouseley published in London in 1800, is that of Abu-Ishak el-Istacbri, 

 qnd, as Frahn has shown (Ibu Fozlan, p. ix., xxii., and 256-263), i.' 

 half .1 centuiy older than Ebn-Haukal. The maps which accompany 

 the " Book of Climates^'' of the year 920, and of which there is a fine 

 manuscript copy in the library of Gotha, have afforded me much aid in 

 my obsc'vstious on the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Aral {Asie Centrales 

 t. ii.', p. li>2-2 96). We have lately been put in possession of an edition 

 of Istachri, and a German translation {Liber Climatum, ad similitudinem 

 Codicis Gothani delineandum, cur. J. H. Moeller, Goth., 1839 ; Das 

 Bitch der Lander, translated from the Arabic by A. D. INIordtmann 

 Hamb., 184.5). 



* Compare Joaqui:n Jose da Costa de Macedo, Memoria em que se 

 pretende provar que os Arahcs nao conhecerao as Canarias antes dot 

 Portuguezes (Lisboa, 1844, p. 86-99, 205-227, with Humboldt, Examen 

 Crit. de V Hist, de la GeogravKie, t. ii., p. 137-141. 



t Leopold von Ledebur, Ueber die in den Ballischen Ldndern ge/un 

 denen Zengnisse dues Handels-Verlrehrs mii dent Orient zur Zeit deA 

 Arabischen Weltkerrschaft, 1840, s. 8 und 75. 



{ Tlie determinations of longitude which Abul-Hassan Ali of Moroc- 

 co, an astronomer of the thirteenth centurj, has embodied in his work 

 on the astronomical instruments of the Arabs, are all calculated from 

 the first meridian of Arin. M. Sedillot the younger firot directed tha 

 attention of geographers to this meridian. I have also made it an ob- 

 ject of careful inquiry, because Columbus, who was always guided b) 

 Cardinal d'Ailly's Imago Mttndi, in his fantasies regarding the difference 

 of form between the eastern and western hemispheres, makes mention 

 of an Isla de Arin: "centro de el hemispheric del quel hablc Tolor^ea 

 y ques debaxo la linea equinoxial entre el Sitio Arabioo 3' aeuel d«* 

 Persia." (Compare J. J. Sedillot, Traifi Jes Tnsf rumens Astyon^miQUct 



