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Arabic Maps and Ships (2)
[The interesting thing here to draw the reader's attention thereto is that the ships drawn in Piri's map are copied with their shapes and places from the original maps. These ships are of two types: European of square sails, and Arabian of triangular sails. Drawing the Arabic dhows in their places in this map, being copied from the original maps, suggests not only that the producers of such older maps were Arabs], "but, they have reached with their dhows the coasts of South America even the Antarctica… The most interesting thing is that the map clearly shows mountains in the interior of South America, something - as Dan Gibson says - even the Portuguese had not discovered by 1513 AD when Piri was copying his map!".[Not only that, but this makes it certain that the Arab mariners have known the spherical of the Earth since they made such maps before Christ, and before the first European to tell so, which is the Italian Galileo (1564 - 1642). This is further confirmed with the Qor'ann's reference to the spherical of the Earth (in 632 AD, in average) - addressed initially to Arabs - by saying: {(Allah) has created the skies and the earth in rightness. (He) conglobates the night onto day, and the day onto night, and has exploited the Sun and the Moon that both run (revolve) for an appointed time…} Azzomar:5 الزُمَر].
"One of the most interesting thing in this Turkish map is that it has its center on the meridian of Alexandria in Egypt!". [Here, readers might ask: But, what the connection, then, of Arabs with Alexandria? American researcher, Dan Gibson, replies by saying]:
"Ptolemaic Egypt's [under the reign of Greek Ptolemy's: 308 - 30 BC] relation with Arab Nabataean merchants was quiet deep. Ptolemy's were main clients of Nabataeans so that Alexandria became - just before the appearance of Romans on the scene - the biggest trade city and harbour in the whole world. Moreover, Alexandria has represented too a scientific center starting from Ptolemy I (308 - 282 BC) by establishing the Great Library of Alexandria and it is most likely - as our researcher says in his webpage: www.nabataea.net/antartica.html - that Ptolemy II (Philadelphos Ptolemy) has funded exploration journeys to explore and map the far ends of the earth, and in such a case he would have used Nabataean sailors to carry it out; or perhaps that the Nabataeans sailed -themselves - to Antarctica, and produced maps".
[The proof to either of the two likelihoods is that the Turkish Piri mentions the Arabs calling the one map of the collection named: Mappae Mundi, having been produced in the time of Alexander of the Two Horns, by the name: Jaferiye جعفرية. Although I could not come up with the meaning by that Arabic word (that its original pronunciation might have been: "سَفَريّة safariya", meaning: voyage, or "جَغرفية Jaghrafiya", meaning: geographical), but Piri has established a link between the Arabs and those maps.
Besides, Nabataeans - and definitely the Palmyran, in the Syrian desert, thereafter - have mastered, many of them, the Greek language since their neighbourhood to Greek in the far north of the Arabia, and the many of their civilizations' aspects been influenced by the Hellenistic (Greek) civilization].
With this, the excerptions from the American website: www.nabataea.net, end up.
From an article titled: "Lankan Muslims' historical links with India", on 04/March/2006, on the webpage:
lankan_muslims_historical_links_with_india.html
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