THE ARABS. 585 



Prophet, the Arabs had already reached the extremest western 

 coasts of Africa and the port of Asfi. Whether 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 

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

 parts of Scandinavia, is not to be ascribed to direct inter- 

 course with Arabian vessels in those regions, but to the 

 widely- diffused inland trade of the Arabs .f 



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 

 rather led the people, already familiar with nature, to an 

 acquaintance with the organic products of the soil, especially 

 those of the vegetable world .J The repugnance entertained by 



* Compare Joaquim Jose da Costa de Macedo, Hemoria em que se 

 pretende provar que os Ardbes nfio conhecerao as Canarias antes doa 

 Portuguezes, (Lisboa, 1844,) pp, 86-99, 205-227, with Humboldt, 

 Examen crit. de FHist. de la Geographic, t. ii. pp. 137-141. 



t Leopold von Ledebur, Ueber die in den Baltischen Landem 

 yefundenen Zeugnisse eines Handels-Verkehrs mit dem Orient zur 

 Zeit der Arabischen Weltherrschaft, 1840, s. 8 und 75. 



J The determinations of longitude which Abul-Hassan All of Mo- 

 rocco, an astronomer of the thirteenth century, has embodied in hia 

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

 from the first meridian of Arin. M. Sedillot, the younger, first directed 

 the attention of geographers to this meridian; I have also made it an 

 X^eet of careful inquiry, because Columbus, who was always guided b/ 

 Cardinal d'Ailly's Imxgo Mundi, in his phantasies regarding the differ- 

 ence of form between the eastern and western hemispheres, makes mention 

 of an Isla de Arin : " centre de el hemispheric del qual habla Tolomeo 

 y ques debaxo la linea equinoxial entre el Sino Arabico y aquel de 

 Persia." (Compare 1. 1. SSdillot, Traite des Instrumens astronomiquea 

 des Arabes, publ. par L. Am. Sedillot, t. i. 1834, pp. 312-318, t. ii. 

 1835, preface, with Humboldt's Examen crit. de VHist. de la Geogr. 

 t. hi. p. 64, and Asie centrale, t. iii. pp. 593-596, in which the data 

 occur which I derived from the Mappa Mundi of Alliacus of 

 1410, in the " A Iphonsine Tables" 1483, and in Madrignano's Itine- 

 rarium Portuyallensium, 1508. It is singular that Edrisi appears to 

 know nothing of Khobbet Arin (Cancadora, more properly Kankdei). 

 Sedillot the younger (in the Memoire KW les s 



