Muhammed “al-Sharif” al-Idrisi (c. 1100-1165) was a major Muslim scholar, geographer and mapmaker of the medieval Islamic period. He was born in the town of Ceuta, in Morocco, and was descended from a line of nobleman who traced their lineage to the Prophet Mohammed. Al-Idrisi took an interest in foreign lands and travel early in […]
Travel writing may often entertain and sometimes astonish, but not often does it take the reader past a constellation of anecdotal experiences into the true essence of a place beyond all preconception. Jason Elliot’s Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran takes aim at the blunting assumptions and false perceptions of this little understood country, […]
