Messages in the Maps

The earliest Islamic maps of the Mediterranean were drawn in the late 10th century ce by geographer and cartographer Ibn Hawqal in his Kitab surat al-ard (Book of a picture of the earth).
"Using a gentle two-finger pinch, Emilie Savage-Smith turns a page of an 800-year-old manuscript on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. She leans forward and pauses, carefully reviewing each illustration. 'This entire treatise is one of the universe,' says Savage-Smith, professor of the history of Islamic science at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, describing the Book of Curiosities, a 13th-century compendium of Islamic maps. 'It starts from the very outside where the stars are, and works its way down to the Earth. And then, when you get to the Earth, you get the diagrams of the winds, etcetera. This is the only treatise I can think of where the two are combined.' ..."
AramcoWorld

The Book of Curiosities includes this large, detailed map of Sicily. Like other maps of its era, it is schematic rather than mimetic, and it shows ports, cities and more. Maps were produced mostly on the basis of oral accounts.