Global InformationCartography of Palestine information
The cartography of the region of Palestine prior to modern surveying techniques is focused on a geographic region in Western Asia usually considered to include modern Israel (often excluding the Negev), the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and parts of northwestern Jordan.
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The cartography of the region of Palestine, also known as cartography of the Holy Land and cartography of the Land of Israel,[1] is the creation, editing, processing and printing of maps of the region of Palestine from ancient times until the rise of modern surveying techniques. For several centuries during the Middle Ages it was the most prominent subject in all of cartography,[2] and it has been described as an "obsessive subject of map art".[3]
The history of the mapping of Palestine is dominated by two cartographic traditions: the biblical school and the classical school.[4] The earliest surviving maps of the biblical tradition derive from the attempts of the early Church Fathers to identify and illustrate the primary locations mentioned in the Bible, and to provide maps for Christian pilgrimage.[4] The earliest surviving maps of the classical tradition derive from the scientific and historical works of the Greco-Roman world;[4] the European rediscovery of Ptolemy's works in the 1400s ended the domination of the biblical tradition.[5] Many Graeco-Roman geographers described the Palestine region in their writings; however, there are no surviving pre-modern originals or copies of these maps – illustrations today of maps according to geographers such as Hecataeus, Herodotus or Eratosthenes are modern reconstructions. The earliest surviving classical maps of the region are Byzantine versions of Ptolemy's 4th Asia map.[6][7] Cartographic history of Palestine thus begins with Ptolemy, whose work was based on that of the local geographer Marinus of Tyre.[5]
The first lists of maps of the region were made in the late 19th century, by Titus Tobler in his 1867 Geographical Bibliography of Palestine and subsequently by Reinhold Röhricht in his 1890 Geographical Library of Palestine.[8][9] In a series of articles in the Journal of the German Association for the Study of Palestine between 1891 and 1895, Röhricht presented the first detailed analysis of maps of the region in the middle- and the late Middle Ages.[8][10] They were followed in 1939-40 by Hans Fischer's History of the Cartography of Palestine.[11] This article lists maps that progressed the cartography of region before the rise of modern surveying techniques, showing how mapmaking and surveying improved and helped outsiders to better understand the geography of the area. Imaginary maps and copies of existing maps are excluded.
- ^ Rubin 2018, p. 287-288: "Holy Land cartography reached its zenith with the publication of Heinrich Kiepert's maps and the highly accurate survey of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF)."
- ^ Laor 1986, p. XI quote: "Cartography in the Middle Ages was generally of poor quality, with the exception of the cartography of the Holy Land, which reached a peak both in quality and quantity. For several centuries, the Holy Land was the most important and prominent subject of mapmaking.
- ^ Wood 2010, p. 232: "In fact, the mapping of Palestine is a paradigm of the history of mapmaking; but since it’s also the object of counter-mapping and counter-counter-mapping, and an obsessive subject of map art, it makes a uniquely trenchant example around which to review the arguments of this book."
- ^ a b c Nebenzahl 1986, p. 8.
- ^ a b Nebenzahl 1986, p. 8: "Cartography as we know it today begins with this spectacular map of the world at the time of Claudius Ptolemy. It sets the stage for the history of mapping the Holy Land... his work was to become the model for scientific cartography during the great revivals of mapmaking: the tenth-century Golden Age of Islam and the European Renaissance. The rediscovery of Ptolemy in the fifteenth century was particularly important for maps of the Holy Land; it ended the almost complete domination of mapmaking by Church dogma throughout the Middle Ages... Around AD 150 he produced his Geographia, the earliest known atlas of the world.".
- ^ Wilson, Nigel Guy (2006). "Cartography". Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. Psychology Press. p. 145. ISBN 978-0-415-97334-2.
As geographical knowledge improved, various writers recorded what they believed to be the spatial relationships of territories and peoples to each other, and it is from this information that many modern historical atlases present items such as the world according to Hecataeus or Herodotus or Eratosthenes: actual ancient versions of these maps do not survive (indeed, modern versions seem to originate in the 1883 volumes of Bunbury), although there do exist Byzantine versions of Ptolemy's maps.
- ^ Leo Bagrow, “The Origin of Ptolemy's Geographia.” Geografiska Annaler, vol. 27, 1945, pp. 318–387. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/520071; p.331, “Hecataeus of Milet… Herodotus… Dicaearchus of Messina… Crates of Mallos… Hipparchus… Posidonius of Apamea… Marinus of Thyre… All these maps before Ptolemy have, naturally, not come down to us.”
- ^ a b Goren 2001, p. 98.
- ^ Tobler 1867, pp. 232–246: "Karten" and Röhricht 1890, pp. 598–662
- ^ Röhricht 1891, pp. 8–11, 87–92, 137–141; Röhricht 1892, pp. 34–39 and 185–188; and Röhricht 1895, pp. 173–182
- ^ Fischer 1939 and Fischer 1940