Al-Idrisi completes the Book of Roger

1154

At Palermo, a Moroccan geographer working for Roger II of Sicily finished a massive world map engraved on a silver disk and a companion Arabic treatise describing every place a traveler had ever reported. His map placed south at the top and would set European cartography a century ahead. The Tabula Rogeriana remained the most accurate world map for three hundred years, consulted by navigators and scholars well into the Renaissance.