Two Iranian world maps for finding the direction and distance to Mecca

Abstract

Two Islamic brass scientific instruments, each bearing a map of the world for finding the direction and distance to Mecca, have come to light since 1989. They both appear to date from Safavid Iran, possibly from the late seventeenth century. Each is a copy of a different earlier map of the same kind, and both these derive from a more elaborate prototype. They are the only known surviving Islamic world maps with localities properly marked on a competently drawn coordinate grid. Serious activity in mathematical cartography, including the preparation of detailed world maps, is known to have started in Baghdad in the ninth century, and it is likely that the highly sophisticated cartographic grids on the Safavid world maps were first developed several centuries before these two maps were made.

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