European Peoples in the Views of Arab Geographers of the 9th — 10th Centuries

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the tradition of depicting the territory and peoples of Europe in the works of Arab geographers and cartographers of the 9th—10th centuries. Examination of the research strategies of Arab authors made it possible to reconstruct the basic characteristics of the image of Europe in the Arab geographical tradition. The ideas of Arab authors about Europe were formed in line with the general needs and tasks of Islamic geography related to the ordering and systematization of information about the peoples of the world inherited by Islamic science from ancient geography, as well as collected by Islamic scientists themselves. In this regard, the main attention of Arab authors was aimed at determining the place of European peoples in the ethnopolitical and religious picture of the world.