You pays your money, you takes your choice….
Right now I'm reading a Big Fat History Book dealing with tenth century Europe.* In recent years I've spent a lot of time circling the boundaries of medieval Europe: the Carolingian Renaissance, Irish monks, Viking raiders, Pope Sylvester II, Muslim Spain, Muslim Sicily, the Islamic world in general. My current reading is making it clear how little I know about Europe qua Europe in this period. I am highlighting names of historical figures I don't know ** and critical events I haven't heard of. The margins are filled with "????" and "!!!!!" and notes to myself. You don’t hear me say it often, but this is definitely Not My Field.
Nonetheless, while I was struggling to keep track of unfamiliar names and chronologies, I ran across a historical dynamic that I had seen before in a very different context.
I've always assumed that European royal families had practiced primogeniture*** since the dawn of time. Wrong. Frankish kings**** divided their kingdoms up between their sons. It seems like a fair-minded practice, but it is inherently flawed. If everyone played nice, this policy would result in smaller and smaller kingdoms over time. Not surprisingly, people didn't play nice. Charlemagne's grandsons went to war over the division of the Carolingian empire before their father was even dead--a period known to German historians as the Brüderkrieg, the brothers' war. Their sons did the same, tearing apart Charlemagne's empire in the process.
Most Islamic dynasties didn't practice primogeniture either. The earliest Islamic community chose the earliest Islamic rulers, the Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs, based on their piety, ability, and closeness to the prophet. Later Islamic dynasties inherited this vague ideal of choosing the "best" ruler, though they tended to keep things in the family. Without a clear path to success and with numerous sons produced by polygamous marriages, the road to the throne often included savage political scrambling, fratricide (or at least fratri-blinding and imprisoning), and civil war. Like Charlemagne's sons, some Islamic princes tried to seize the throne directly from their father instead of waiting for their own version of Brüderkrieg. Powerful, capable men fought their way to the throne. So did vicious psychopaths.
Obviously the absence of a clear succession policy has a deleterious effect on empires. On the other hand, primogeniture is basically a lottery without reference to ability. Makes a presidential election look pretty good by comparison, doesn't it?
* Not trying to be coy here. I'm reviewing it for Shelf Awareness for Readers and they have first dibs on my thoughts about the book, as opposed to my thoughts about my own ignorance.
** You can bet your buttons that I'm going to go looking for Marozia of Rome: "the only independent female ruler in her own right for four centuries in the European West." She is accorded three mingy (and very negative) sentences in Chambers Biographical Dictionary, appears only in passing in Britannica Online, and isn't mentioned at all in my general medieval histories. Stayed tuned.
*** My Own True Love tells me I should define this. Primogeniture refers to the right of the first-born son to succeed or inherit. It's a policy designed to keep the empire/kingdom/estate/family farm intact, but it doesn't take ability into account. Younger sons and daughters who might be more capable don't get an equal chance.
**** i.e. Charlemagne's predecessors and descendents
Image credit: jaboy / 123RF Stock Photo
On The Map
Speaking of maps, as I believe we were, I recently spent several happy days with a book that straddles the intersection between cartography and history.
Simon Garfield, author of the bestselling Just My Type, once again takes a subject that seems the province of a small group of enthusiasts and opens it for a larger audience. In On The Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks , Garfield tells the history of cartography, beginning with the Great Library at Alexandria and ending with Google Earth. Along the way, he links the development of maps to the larger history of human progress--from the theory that the first maps, drawn in the dust of Africa's Rift Valley, may have kickstarted the development of the human brain to modern efforts to map the brain itself.
Written in the breezy style of Just My Type, On The Map is structured as a series of engaging stories told in more or less chronological order. Each chapter uses a specific map, person, or idea to explore a bigger issue. Interspersed with the main chapters are smaller, more eccentric stories that Garfield calls Pocket Maps: detours that consider the origins of "here be dragons", the different ways man and women read maps and the difficulties of refolding a paper map. Whether dealing with familiar topics, such as the Lewis and Clark expedition, or introducing the reader to stories that are less well known, like the legendary (and imaginary) Mountains of Kong, Garfield consistently delivers "aha!" moments.
On The Map will appeal to mapheads, history buffs, the terminally curious, and anyone who enjoys a well-told story
This review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers
An Islamic Map for a Christian King
Most maps made in twelfth century Europe were based on tradition and myth rather than scientific information. The only practical maps were mariners’ charts that showed coastlines, ports of call, shallows and places to take on provisions and water. Roger II, the Christian king of Sicily, wanted a map of the known world that was a factual as a mariner’s chart. In 1138, he hired well-known Muslim scholar al-Sharif al-Idrisi to collect and evaluate all available geographic knowledge and organize it into an accurate picture of the world.
For 15 years, al-Idrisi and a group of scholars studied and compared the work of previous geographers. They interviewed the crews of ships who docked at Sicily’s busy ports. They sent scientific expeditions, including draftsmen and cartographers, to collect information about relatively unknown places.
Finally, al-Idrisi was ready to make his map. He began by making a working copy on a drawing board, using compasses to accurately site individual places. The final copy was engraved on a great silver disk that was almost eighty inches in diameter and weighed over 300 pounds. Al-Idrisi explained that the disk was just a symbol for the shape of the world: “the earth is round like a sphere, and the waters adhere to it and are maintained on it through natural equilibrium which suffers no variation”
Al-Idrisi's map was accompanied by a descriptive geography that contained all the information his college of geographers had collected. Its formal name was Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-Afaq, or The Delight of One Who Wishes to Traverse the Regions of the World. It was more commonly known as Roger’s Book.
In 1160, the Sicilian barons revolted against Roger’s son, William. They looted the palace and burned the library, including Roger’s Book. Not surprisingly, the silver map disappeared. Al-Idrisi fled to North Africa with the Arabic text of Roger’s Book. His work survived in the Islamic world, but it was not available in Europe again until the Arabic text was printed in Rome in 1592.