Geography in feudal Europe

Slave society, starting from the end of the $2nd century. was experiencing a deep crisis. The strengthening of Christianity and the invasion of Gothic tribes contributed to the acceleration of the decline of Roman-Greek culture and science. The Roman Empire in $395 was divided into Western And Eastern part, and in $476$ the Western Roman Empire ceases to exist. Trade ties are significantly reduced and the main incentive to explore distant countries remains Christian pilgrimages to the “holy places” - Palestine and Jerusalem. No new ideas have appeared in geography, best case scenario The old knowledge that has been preserved is no longer complete and quite distorted. In this form they passed into the Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages are a period of decline, when the spatial and scientific horizons of geography narrowed sharply, and the geographical knowledge and ideas of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians were simply forgotten. Only among Arab scientists was the previous knowledge still preserved. The horizons of geographical science began to rapidly expand at the end of the 15th century. with the beginning of the era of great geographical discoveries.

Note 1

Word "geography" in Christian Europe of the Middle Ages practically disappeared, although its study continued. Curiosity and the desire to find out what distant countries are like forced adventurers to travel. Merchants and missionaries in the $13th century. paved their way all the way to China.

Biblical dogmas and some conclusions of ancient science, cleared of everything “pagan”, provided geographical ideas in the early Middle Ages. So, for example, in "Christian Topography" Kosma Indikopov, it was said that the Earth has the form of a flat rectangle around which there is an ocean, the sun disappears behind the mountains at night, and all the big rivers originate in paradise and flow under the ocean. Discoveries during this period were repeated, i.e. “opened up” for the second, third and even fourth time.

The most prominent place in the early Middle Ages belongs to Scandinavian Vikings , which devastated England, Germany, Flanders, and France with its raids. Scandinavian traders reached Byzantium along the Russian route “from the Varangians to the Greeks.” Having rediscovered Iceland in $866, the Normans firmly settled there. In $983, Eric the Red discovered Greenland, where their permanent settlements arose.

In the first centuries of the Middle Ages, people had a relatively broad spatial horizon Byzantines . Their religious ties extended to the Balkan Peninsula, later to Kievan Rus and Asia Minor. Religious preachers reached India, penetrating Central Asia, Mongolia, and the western regions of China.

According to "Tales of Bygone Years"(Nestor's chronicle), the spatial horizons of the Slavic peoples extended to almost all of Europe.

Geography in the Scandinavian world

The excellent sailors of that time were Scandinavians . Those of Norwegian descent were called Vikings. It was they who approached the shores of Iceland in $874 and founded the first settlement. The world's first parliament, the Althing, was created here in $930.

The history of geography suggests that among the Icelanders there was Eric the Red. For his stormy and violent temper, he and his family and friends are expelled from the country. He had no choice but to set off on a long voyage across the Atlantic, especially since Eric had heard a lot about the existence of land there. It turned out that the rumors were confirmed - it was Greenland. Translated into Russian - green land, green country. It is not clear why Eric gave it such a name - there was nothing green around. He founded a colony here, which attracted some Icelanders. Later, close maritime ties were established between Greenland, Iceland, and Norway.

Note 2

Sometimes accidents lead to big and important discoveries; this happened with Eric’s son, who, returning from Greenland to Norway, was caught in a strong storm. This event happened around $1000, the ship lost its course and ended up off an unfamiliar coast. Leif Eirikson- Eric's son found himself in a dense forest, the trees of which were entwined with wild grapes. Far to the west lay an unknown land, which much later was called North America.

Geography in the Arab world

Development of world culture from the $6th century. characterized by a prominent role Arabs , which by $VIII$ century. created a huge state. It included all of Western Asia, part of Central Asia, the North-Western part of India, North Africa and most of the Iberian Peninsula. The main occupation of the Arabs was crafts and trade with China and African countries.

The decentralization of the Arab Caliphate, which began in the 8th century, led to the emergence of large scientific and cultural centers in Persia, Spain, and North Africa. Scientists of Central Asia wrote in Arabic, the works of Greek scientists Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Strabo, etc. were translated into it. At this time, geography in the Arab world was considered as “the science of postal communication.”

Travel writing is becoming the most popular type of Arabic literature., in which information of a nomenclatural and historical-political nature predominates. It must be said that the scientists who wrote in slave language did not contribute anything new or significant to the interpretation of physical-geographical phenomena. The theoretical ideas of the Arabs remained primitive; they did not bother to develop new concepts. Having collected a large amount of material in the field of physical geography, they were unable to process it into a coherent scientific system. Despite this, their role in the history of science remains significant. For example, widespread in Western Europe new system“Arabic” numbers, arithmetic, astronomy, Arabic translations of Greek authors. Among the Arab travelers one can name such names as Ibn Haukal, who traveled through the remote regions of Africa and Asia, Al-Balkhi, who summarized information about climatic phenomena in the first climate atlas of the world, Masudi, who visited Mozambique and made accurate descriptions of the monsoons.

Note 3

Some Arab scientists made correct assumptions about the formation of the forms of the earth's surface, among them the famous scientist Avicenna. One of the greatest Arab travelers was Ibn Battuta. He managed to visit Mecca, visit Ethiopia, and walk along the Red Sea. He was later appointed ambassador to China. In about thirty years, Ibn Battura covered a distance of $120,000 km.

Development of geography in medieval China

Up to the $15th century. the highest level of knowledge was in Chinese people. Suffice it to say that Chinese mathematicians used zero and created a decimal, more convenient, number system. Chinese philosophers attached primary importance to the natural world, thereby differing from the thinkers of Ancient Greece. The activity of the Chinese in the field of geographical research looks very impressive. Chinese geographical exploration was concerned with the development of methods that allowed for precise measurements and observations. Chinese engineers back in the $II$ century. BC. they measured the amount of silt deposits carried by rivers, conducted the world's first population census, and learned how to produce paper and print books. Rain gauges and snow gauges were used to measure precipitation.

Evidence of the earliest Chinese voyages is presented in a book entitled "The Travels of Emperor Mu". The book was written between the $V-III$ centuries. BC. and was discovered in the tomb of a man who during his lifetime ruled the territory that occupied part of the Wei He valley. For better preservation, the book was written on strips of white silk glued to bamboo cuttings.

In the Middle Ages, famous travel descriptions belong to Chinese pilgrims who visited India and its surrounding areas. Sufficiently accurate information about the population, climate, and flora of Samarkand was collected in $1221 by the Taoist monk Chang Chun. Each new Chinese dynasty in the Middle Ages compiled numerous official descriptions of the country, which contained a variety of information on the history, natural conditions, population, economy and attractions of the country. This fairly broad geographical knowledge did not influence the horizons of Europeans; moreover, the geographical ideas of medieval Europe in India and China also remained almost unknown.

Late Middle Ages in Europe (XII-XV centuries)

In place of feudal stagnation in the economic development of Western European countries in the $12th century. there is some recovery coming. Crafts, trade, and commodity-money relations are beginning to revive again. During this period, the Mediterranean region was the main economic and cultural center, this is understandable - trade routes to the East passed here.

Later, already in the $14th century, busy trade routes moved north - to the region of the Baltic and North Seas. At this time, paper and gunpowder appeared in Europe. Sailing and rowing ships were replaced by caravels, a compass was used, and the first nautical charts, portolans, were created.

International relations and navigation are developing, cities are growing. All this contributes to the expansion of spatial horizons, arouses the keen interest of Europeans in geographical knowledge and discoveries, an important factor of which were the Crusades between $1096-1270. under the pretext of liberating the Holy Land.

In the middle of the $13th century. a noticeable turning point occurs in the development of geographical concepts, one of the reasons for which was the Mongol expansion.

Note 4

During this period, names such as Marco Polo, who traveled through China, India, Ceylon, Arabia and East Africa. Russian Novgorodians, who discovered all the major rivers of the European North and paved the way to the Ob basin. Moving east along the northern shores of Eurasia, Russian sailors explored the southwestern coast of the Kara Sea, the Ob and Taz bays. In the $15th century. The Russians sailed to the Spitsbergen archipelago, which at that time was called Grumant.

Famous names are Prince Henry the Navigator, Jacome of Mallorca, Gil Eanisha, Bartolomeu Dias.

ON BOATS, IN THE SADDLE AND ON FOOT

A number of scientists are inclined to consider the beginning of the early Western European Middle Ages to be the 3rd century. n. e. We can agree with R. Hennig that the end of ancient geography should be dated to the end of the 2nd century. n. e. He writes: “...it was in the 2nd century that the Roman Empire reached the apogee of its power and territorial expansion... The geographical horizons of the people of this era reached a breadth that remained unsurpassed until the 15th century, if we exclude the exploration of the northern countries... When the limits of the world known to the ancients expanded to the maximum, the great genius Ptolemy 1 united into a single whole the entire body of geographical knowledge and presented it in a brilliant framework of broad generalizations... During the centuries that elapsed between the activities of Ptolemy and Columbus (i.e. from the 3rd to the 15th centuries - A.D.), in the vast majority of cases exploratory expeditions only led to the re-conquest for geographical science of those countries that were already known and often visited in antiquity” (Hennig, 1961. Vol. II. P. 21).

However, we cannot completely agree with the last statement of the scientist, since during the Middle Ages Western Europeans had the opportunity to get acquainted not only with the northern regions of Europe and areas of the North Atlantic, unknown to the ancient peoples of Greece and Rome, but also with the unknown vast expanses of Europe, with its northern outskirts, with regions of Central and East Asia, with the western shores of Africa, about which ancient geographers had almost no idea or had vague and half-legendary information. The Middle Ages, in particular Western Europe, contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons thanks to numerous land campaigns and sea voyages.

The Turin wheel map of 1080 can serve as an example of maps (drawings) made in monasteries as illustrations of biblical writings. It is kept in the library of the city of Turin. It depicts the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia, separated from each other by the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile and Tanais (Don) rivers, which are arranged in the form of a capital T of the Latin alphabet. The outer circle, in which the letter T is inscribed, corresponds to the ocean surrounding all the land. This arrangement of continents, as researchers suggest, was first proposed by the Spanish encyclopedist, Bishop of the city of Seville Isidore, author of the famous “Etymology” in the Middle Ages. The map is oriented to the east: Asia is placed in the upper half, Europe in the lower left part of the map, and Africa in the lower right. This arrangement was based on the religious idea of ​​Christians: the East, i.e. Asia, where the “holy places” of Palestine and the “Holy Sepulcher” are located, seems to crown the map. At the very top of the map, the figures of Adam and Eve symbolized the biblical paradise; in the center of the map is the city of Jerusalem. The Turin map, as well as the oval map compiled around 776 by the monk Beatus, depicts another fourth, southern continent (south of Africa), inhabited by the antipodes - an undoubted echo of ancient ideas.

If in ancient times the main factors that contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons and led to territorial geographical discoveries were military campaigns (Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC to Western and Central Asia and to India, Roman legionnaires through the Sahara and Nubia, military expeditions of Julius Caesar to Gaul and Britain in the 1st century BC), as well as trade relations between the Greco-Roman world and other peoples (the voyage of Hippalus to India and the “discovery” of winds that periodically changed their direction - monsoons, the voyages of Greek and Egyptian sailors to the shores of Indochina, which was reflected on the map of Ptolemy, or the journey of Pytheas from Massalia to the North Atlantic, etc.), then in the early Middle Ages another factor began to acquire a certain significance, namely the spread by Christian missionaries his teachings among the pagan peoples of Europe, North-East Africa, Western, South and East Asia.

Of course, this factor could not be as decisive as K. Ritter imagined it, who noted that “the history of the spread of Christianity” in medieval Europe “is at the same time the history of discoveries and successes in the field of geography” (1864, p. 117 ). To some extent, he was echoed by A. Gettner, who wrote that “... the spatial expansion of geographical knowledge approximately coincides with the spread of Christianity” (1930, p. 36). Moreover, Höttner argued that clergy were the only bearers of science in that era. However, at the same time, he noted that the main factor in the spread of Roman Christianity was that from the Mediterranean region it spread to the north, covering all of Western Europe, while North Africa turned out to be inaccessible to it due to the spread of Arab Islam in the 7th century . A. Gettner draws attention to the fact that the spread of geographical knowledge in the states of Western Europe was facilitated by numerous pilgrimages to Rome and Palestine. Several descriptions of this kind of travel have survived to this day. C. R. Beasley (1979) also believes that medieval pilgrims have a large role to play as pioneers, especially from the time of Charlemagne to the Crusades.

Apparently, the factor of the spread of Christianity cannot be underestimated, since pilgrimage to the largest religious centers of the Christian world played a big role in the history of medieval trade, since the pilgrims themselves often served as small merchants, and their routes served as the basis for the emerging network of trade routes.

Pilgrimages to Palestine, to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea with the aim of visiting the “Holy Sepulcher” and other “holy places” described in the Bible, played a very definite role in expanding the spatial horizons of Western Europeans in the southeastern direction. According to Beasley, these pilgrimages began from the time of Emperor Constantine

“Map of the Whole World” by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela (43).

(who made Constantinople the new capital of the Roman Empire in 324-330). His mother Helen, with her visit to Palestine, the construction of a Christian church in Bethlehem and the “finding” of relics in Jerusalem (the remains of the cross on which Christ was crucified), contributed to the fact that pilgrimage began to be considered the prevailing fashion.

A. Gettner showed that the Greek, or Byzantine, East in the early Middle Ages was a completely different cultural region, separated from the Western Roman Empire after the division in 395 of the once united Roman Empire into two independent states. In Byzantium they spoke a different language (Greek) than in the countries of Western Europe; they also adhered to a different religion - Orthodox, and not Catholic, characteristic of the Western Roman Empire; here, in Byzantium, there was a different geographical outlook, since lively trade was maintained with Asia Minor.

In 569-571 Byzantine ambassador Zimarchus traveled to the Turks in Altai. The description of this journey, during which the Aral Sea was discovered as an independent basin, came to us in the historical work of Menander Petiktor (who lived in the second half of the 6th century) “On the reign of Emperor Justinian.” Also in the 6th century. A voyage was made to India by Constantine of Antioch (who, after being tonsured as a monk, took the name of Cosmas Indicopleus). Being a merchant and engaged in trade, Constantine sailed in three seas: Rome (Mediterranean), Arabia (Red) and Persian (Persian Gulf). In the Erythraean Sea, as the Indian Ocean was commonly called at that time, Constantine was caught in a severe storm. Whether he reached Hindustan is unknown, but he undoubtedly visited the island of Taprobana (Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka), which is described in the XI book (chapter) of his work. In 522-525 Constantine visited Ethiopia and the Somali peninsula (where the Palm-Bearing Land was located). He may have visited the source of the Blue Nile, which rises from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian Highlands. He knew the Sinai Peninsula. Researchers believe that he took monastic vows in Sinai, where he graduated life path his companion and friend Mina. Having become a monk, Cosmas wrote “Christian Topography” (c. 547-550), which, on the one hand, provides important information about distant countries, and on the other, paints a completely fantastic picture of the world, which caused criticism from Armenian scientists of the 7th century. and Patriarch Photius of Constantinople. It is known that Kosma was familiar with the Persian Mar Aba, who had mastered Syrian and ancient Greek culture. From him he borrowed his cosmographic views of Nestorian Christians.

“Christian topography,” widespread in Byzantium and known in Armenia, remained unfamiliar to Western Europeans for a long time. In any case, the name of Cosmas Indicopleus is found only in a parchment copy of the 6th century, stored in Florence in the Laurentian Library. The authors of the early Western European Middle Ages do not mention the name of Cosmas.

Apart from the already mentioned voyages in the eastern direction - Kosma Indikoplov to India and East Africa and the embassy of Zimarchus to Altai through Central Asia - the earliest voyage to the East from Byzantium was the overland journey of two Christian monks around 500 to the country of "Serinda" , sent by Emperor Justinian for grains of silkworms. The story about this is contained in the work of the historian Procopius from Caesarea, “The War with the Goths.” This journey was very important from an economic point of view, since until that time sericulture had not been practiced in Europe and they were forced to buy Chinese silk (through the Persians or Ethiopians) at a high price. True, it still remains unknown where exactly the country called “Serinda” by Procopius was located, since this geographical name does not appear anywhere else in the literature of that time. Some researchers localize it with China or Indochina, but others, in particular R. Hennig (1961), convincingly show that the monks sent by the emperor visited not China, but Sogdiana, that is, in the region lying between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers , with its capital in Samarkand, where, as some historical sources report, in the 6th century. They raised silkworms and produced silk. The monks secretly carried silkworms in their staves to Byzantium and thereby created the opportunity for silk production there.

In 636, the Christian missionary Olopena (Alopena) traveled to China. This is evidenced by a stone stele with text in Chinese and Syriac, installed in one of the Chinese cities around 780. This journey in time coincides with the spread of Nestorian Christianity in China, brought to this country back in the 7th century. Nestorian monks. There it flourished for about 200 years, during which churches were built in many cities. According to scientists, the establishment of a stone stele indicates fairly close ties between the East and West of the ecumene of that time.

It should be said that Christianity spread quite quickly in Western Europe. Already by 380, a significant part of the vast Roman Empire (before its division into Eastern and Western) was considered Christian. After, according to the edict of Emperor Constantine of 313, Christianity was recognized as the official religion in the empire, this religion began to spread among other, non-Roman peoples.

Thus, in 330, the Iberians, the inhabitants of Western Transcaucasia, were converted to Christianity, and soon the first Christian church was built on the southern slope of the Caucasus ridge. In 354, the monk Theophilus spread Christianity to South Arabia. In Aden, Jafar and Oman, Roman merchants maintained trading agents, many of whom were Christians. Somewhat earlier, in 340, the missionaries Frumentius and Edesius preached their religion in the kingdom of Aksum - ancient state in the territory of modern Ethiopia. Their writings (which have not reached us) served as the basis for the chapter on the introduction of Christianity in Northeast Africa, which was included in the “History of the Church” by Rufinus of Turan. This work complemented the work of the same name by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, written in the 4th century.

From the beginning of the 4th century. The spread of Christianity began in Armenia. In 301, the baptism of King Trdat (Tiridat) III and his court together with the troops stationed there took place in Bhagavan, carried out by presbyter Gregory the Illuminator.

100-150 years after this, the Christian religion spread from Gaul throughout Western Europe and penetrated the British Isles. Around 450, Patrick, a resident of Britain, became the Irish bishop, whose letters contain perhaps the first geographical description of the island of Ireland. It names some mountain ranges (for example, Antrim), lakes (Lochney, etc.), and rivers (Shannon, etc.). True, some modern researchers dispute the authenticity of Patrick's letters. Thus, there is an opinion that even before Patrick, Ireland was already a Christian country, and Patrick himself was sent there to eradicate the heresy of Pelagius 2 and his activities on the island were limited to the Wicklow region (in the east of the island). The legend of Patrick as the “apostle of all Ireland” was created by the Roman Catholic Church only in the 7th century in order to have a “patron of the country” alien to heresies (Magidovichi, 1970).

Apparently, around 670, to the north of the British Isles, Irish Christian hermits discovered the Farrer Islands, where only wild sheep lived. This was first reported in 825 by the Irish monk Dicuil, the author of the aforementioned treatise “On the Measurement of the Earth” - the first manual on geography written in the empire of Charlemagne.

In addition, the 7th century. refers to the very popular legend, overgrown with legendary details, about the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean of the monk Brandan, which was preserved in Irish epic tales. The literary work “The Voyage of St. Brandan,” which dates back to the 10th century, talks about the discoveries by this navigator of the shores of Greenland and the island of Jan Mayen in the North Atlantic. I. P. and V. M. Magidovich (1982) are inclined to consider Brandan a historical person, whose activities can be attributed to the discoveries of the named geographical objects, but R. Ramsay (1977) has a negative attitude towards the legend, despite the fact that on the famous Hereford map the world, created in 1260 by the monk Richard Heldingham, even shows the sailing routes of Brandan 3.

The most famous Western European travelers of the late 7th century. there were the Frankish or Gallic bishop Arculf and the Irish priest Willibald. The first of them visited Palestine shortly after the conquest of Asia Minor by the Muslims. Around 690, he visited Jerusalem, was in the Jordan Valley (in the waters of this river, according to biblical legend, Jesus Christ was baptized by John the Baptist), visited the city of Nazareth and other “holy places.” Then he visited Egypt, where he was impressed by the size of the city of Alexandria and the huge Pharos lighthouse (even in ancient times considered one of the “seven wonders of the world”). Arculf was amazed by the nature of Egypt. This country, in his words, “is very fertile without rain.” Arculf climbed up the Nile “to the city of elephants” (as he called ancient Elephantine - now Aswan), beyond which, at the rapids, the river “fell from the cliff in a wild crash” (Beasley, 1979, p. 39).

On the way back, when the pilgrims sailed past Sicily, he was struck by the “island of Vulcan” (in the group of Aeolian Islands), “spewing out flames day and night with a noise like thunder.” Arculf adds that, according to people who have already been here, this volcano makes especially loud noise on Fridays and Saturdays.

Willibald set off from Ireland in 721. In his description of the trip, he reports that when he sailed from Naples to Sicily, he saw a volcano, which, when erupting, if the veil of St. Agatha was brought to it, “immediately subsides” (Beasley, C 42) . Further, sailing past the islands of Samos and Cyprus, he reached the “country of the Saracens,” where the entire group of pilgrims was imprisoned on suspicion of espionage, from where, however, everyone was soon released thanks to the intercession of some Spaniard. Willibald then manages to visit Damascus, where he receives a pass to visit the “holy places” of Palestine. He walked through the “holy places” of Jerusalem, visited the sources of the rivers Jor and Dan, saw the “glorious church of Helen” in Bethlehem, but he was especially moved when he saw the columns in the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. These columns, according to legend, had the property of cleansing a person from all sins if he managed to crawl between them and the wall. On the way back, sailing among the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Willibald, like Arculf, saw a volcanic eruption that threw pumice onto the shore of the island and into the sea. According to him, in the mouth of the volcano there was the tyrant Theodoric, who was doomed to eternal torment for his “inveterate Arianism.” Willibald wanted to see it all for himself, but he could not climb the steep slopes of the mountain.

Thus, in the works of pilgrims, along with descriptions of actually seen objects, fantastic information was reported and legendary explanations were given for natural phenomena.

As Beasley (1979) emphasizes, the attitude of Catholicism of that time (8th century) towards countries known world contributed to the fact that Willibald's report was published with the sanction of Pope Gregory III along with Arculf's report and received recognition, becoming a good commentary on the old Bordeaux Itinerary, compiled 400 years earlier.

The geographical information needed by pilgrims and set out in the two main “guides” compiled by Arculf and Willibald was confirmed and supplemented by the monks Fidelius (who visited Egypt around 750) and Bernard the Wise, who passed through all the “holy places” of Palestine around 867.

True, this information was more historical and geographical than purely geographical. Thus, Fidelia is fascinated by the “granaries of Joseph” (as Christians at that time usually called the Egyptian pyramids, which amazed them with their size). According to biblical legend, Joseph the Beautiful, who served the Egyptian pharaoh, accumulated unprecedented reserves of grain during seven years of abundance, which he stored in special granaries. When the famine came, he began selling bread to Egyptians and residents of other countries. (This legend was also widespread in the Muslim world.) Fidelius describes in detail his voyage along the freshwater channel Necho (which in ancient times connected one of the Nile channels with the Red Sea), where Moses, according to the Bible, crossed the sea with the Israelites on dry land, and then very briefly reports sailing around the Sinai Peninsula to the Ezion Geber pier (in the Gulf of Aqaba).

Bernard the Wise, a monk from the French peninsula of Brittany, describing the sights of Jerusalem, did not forget to talk about the inns for pilgrims that existed at that time, built by order of the Frankish king Charlemagne.

Finally, around 850, one of the pilgrims (his name remains unknown) also wrote a treatise entitled “On the Houses of God in Jerusalem.” This work, along with the "guidebooks" of Fidelius and Bernard the Wise, was one of the last geographical monuments of this kind, which, according to Beasley (1979), preceded the "Norman era".

Notes:
1 This refers to the Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who created a map of the world known at that time and compiled a description of it in the work “Geographical Manual” (often abbreviated as simply “Geography”).
2 On Pelagius (the author of the doctrine of free will as the source of virtuous and evil actions, which was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 430), see Donini, 1979.
3 See rec. Kogan M.A. on the book. Ramsay R. “Discoveries that Never Happened” (1978).
4 See: Mayorov, 1978. Ch. 4, 5; Sokolov, 1979.
5 In ancient Russian literature, another work of Honorius was distributed in manuscripts - “Lucidarius” (from the Latin “Elacidarium” - enlightener), which set out cosmographic and geographical views. (See: Raikov, 1937.)
6 About Cassiodor, see: Golenishchev-Kutuzov I. N. Medieval Latin literature of Italy. M., 1972.
7 See: “From the Editor” in the book. Kiseleva L.I. “What medieval manuscripts tell us about” (1978).



Source: biofile.ru

The first information about geographical ideas appeared since the advent of writing. One can attest to the existence of two independent centers of geographical thought in the ancient world: Greco-Roman and Chinese. The thinkers of the ancient period described in some detail the world close to them, and also added a lot of fantastic things about distant lands. A combination of materialistic and idealistic views - characteristic scientists of antiquity. Many philosophers and historians have studied issues of geography. At that time, the SEG did not exist; even unified geography was a reference branch of knowledge. In ancient times, two directions arose: 1) description of special countries, their nature, ethnic make-up of the population, etc. (Herodotus, Strabo, etc.); 2) study of the Earth as a whole, its place relative to other planets, its shape and size (Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, etc.). The first direction was called regional geography, the second - general geography.

In European culture, the father of geography and history is the Greek Herodotus, who traveled a lot and in his descriptions spoke about distant lands and previously unknown peoples. Herodotus can also be considered the father of ethnography, because. he vividly described the traditions of other peoples. It also gave rise to geographical determinism.

The second outstanding Greek, Aristotle, developed the concept of the different properties of the Earth for human life and dependence on geographic latitude. He presented settlement conditions as a function of geographic latitude and gave instructions on the best placement of cities. Aristotle's ideas were the basis for the development of science in Europe in the early Middle Ages.

Between 330 - 300 BC. Pytheas traveled to the northwestern part of Europe. He described the lifestyle and activities of the inhabitants of the British Isles and discovered Iceland. He noted the change in the nature of agriculture from the south to the north. Pytheas made the first scientific journey, i.e. travel for the purpose of scientific research. Upon returning home, no one believed him about what he saw, but in vain, because... He was the first to draw attention to the phenomena that today constitute the interests of agricultural geography.

At the beginning of our era, a reference book for sailors (peripla) and travelers (periges) already existed in Greece. The periplus described sea shores and ports in detail. The Periplus covered the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and the eastern coast of Africa. The authors of perigeses were often logographers, i.e. writers who traveled the Earth and described what they saw. Logographers compiled specific geographical descriptions, in which special attention was paid to the life of the local population.

The spread of Greek culture was facilitated by the campaigns of Alexander the Great (IV century BC). They were attended by scientists who collected information about various lands.

Unlike the Greek thinkers, the Romans contributed less new things to the field of geography. But even among them we can note original researchers. For government officials and military representatives of the Roman Empire, the ancient Greek geographer and historian Strabo created his “Geography”. He considered it his task to provide the necessary information about the world, so this work was the first of its kind “a reference book for the management apparatus.” Strabo believed that every geographer should have mathematical knowledge. Strabo's "Geography" was found only 600 years after it was written, and those for whom this book was intended never saw it.

The ancient Romans were warlike and enterprising. Quite often they expanded their geographical horizons through military campaigns.

At this time, there was another center of geographical thought in eastern Asia - China. In general, the European and Chinese worlds were reliably isolated from each other, but over time they gradually learned about themselves and their neighbors.

Chinese philosophers differed from the Greeks mainly in that they gave primary importance to the natural world. Geographical works by Chinese scientists can be divided into 8 groups: 1) works devoted to the study of people; 2) description of regions of China; 3) description of other countries; 4) about travel; 5) books about the rivers of China; 6) description of the coasts of China; 7) local history works; 8) geographical encyclopedias.

The ancient Romans, unlike the ancient Greeks, were great pragmatists. They mainly collected various information about countries, and the Greeks were more inclined to generalize materials. The ancient Chinese combined these traits together. SEG is ancient science, because The life and production activities of mankind are inseparable from the natural and social environment, so society sought to actively study them. Practical requirements in the ancient period forced the study of natural conditions, population, natural wealth, settlements and communication routes, the economy of their own and neighboring countries.

Development geographical ideas in the Middle Ages

During the early Middle Ages, productive forces were underdeveloped - science was under the influence of religion. In Christian Europe, the perception of the world decreased to the size of the lands developed by man. Most of the materialistic ideas of ancient scientists were considered heretical. At that time, religion accompanied the development of new knowledge: chronicles, descriptions, and books appeared in monasteries. This period is characterized by isolation, separation and mass ignorance of people. The Crusades raised large masses of people from their places of residence who left their homes. Returning home, they brought rich trophies and information about other countries. During this period, Arabs, Normans and Chinese made a great contribution to the development of geography. In the Middle Ages, Chinese geographical science achieved great success. There was no deep gap between antiquity and the Middle Ages, as was believed among most scientists. In Western Europe, some geographical ideas of the ancient world were known. But at that time, scientists were not yet familiar with the works of Aristotle, Strabo, and Ptolemy. Philosophers of this time used mainly retellings of the works of commentators on Aristotle's texts. Instead of the ancient natural history perception of nature, there was a mystical perception of it.

During the early Middle Ages, starting from the 7th century, Arab scientists played a major role. With the expansion of Arab expansion to the West, they became acquainted with the works of ancient scientists. The geographical horizons of the Arabs were broad; they traded with many Mediterranean, Eastern and African countries. The Arab world was a "bridge" between Western and Eastern cultures. At the end of the 14th century. Arabs made a great contribution to the development of cartography.

Some modern scholars consider Albertus Magnus to be the first European commentator on Aristotle's works. He gave characteristics of various localities. It was a time of collecting new factual material, a time of empirical research using analytical method, but with a scholastic contribution. This is probably why the monks were engaged in this work, and they revived some ideas of ancient geography.

Development economic geography some Western scientists associate it with the name of Marco Polo, who wrote a book about life in China.

IN XII-XIII centuries In Europe, some economic growth began to manifest itself, which was reflected in the development of crafts, trade, and commodity-money relations. After the 15th century Geographical exploration stopped in both China and the Muslim world. But in Europe they began to expand. The main driving force behind this was the spread of Christianity and the need for precious metals and hot spices. The Age of Great Geographical Discovery gave a powerful impetus general development society and also social sciences.

During the late Middle Ages (XIV-XV centuries), SEG as a science began to take shape. At the beginning of this period, the development of geographical science revealed a desire for “ historical geography”, when researchers looked for the location of objects that ancient thinkers spoke about in their writings.

Some scientists believe that the first economic-geographical work in history is the work of the Italian geographer Guicciardini “Description of the Netherlands,” which was published in 1567. He gave a general description of the Netherlands, including an analysis geographical location, assessment of the role of the sea in the life of the country, the state of manufactures and trade. Much attention was paid to the description of cities, and especially Antwerp. The work was illustrated with maps and city plans.

The theoretical foundation of geography as a science was first made in 1650 by the geographer B. Varenius in the Netherlands. In the book “General Geography” he emphasized the tendency of differentiation of geography and showed the connection between the geography of specific places and general geography. According to Varenius, works that characterize special places must be classified as special geography. And works that describe general, universal laws that apply to all places - general geography. Varenius considered special geography the most important for practical activities, especially in the field of trade and economic relations between countries. General geography provides these foundations, and they need to be rooted in practice. Thus, Varenius defined the subject of geography, the main methods of studying this science, and showed that special and general geography are two interconnected and interacting parts of the whole. Varenius considered it necessary to characterize the inhabitants, their appearance, crafts, trade, culture, language, methods of leadership or government, religion, cities, significant places and famous people.

At the end of the Middle Ages, geographical knowledge from Western Europe reached the territory of Belarus. In 1551, Bielski published the first work in Polish on world geography, which was later translated into Belarusian and Russian, which testified to the spread of knowledge in Eastern Europe about the great geographical discoveries of different countries of the world.

The Middle Ages (V-XV centuries) in Europe are characterized by a general decline in the development of science. The feudal isolation and religious worldview of the Middle Ages did not contribute to the development of interest in the study of nature. The teachings of ancient scientists were eradicated by the Christian Church as “pagan”. However, the spatial geographical horizons of Europeans in the Middle Ages began to rapidly expand, which led to significant territorial discoveries in different parts of the globe.

Normans(“northern people”) first sailed from southern Scandinavia to the Baltic and Black seas (“the path from the Varangians to the Greeks”), then to the Mediterranean Sea. Around 867, they colonized Iceland, and in 982, led by Leiv Erikson, they discovered the eastern coast of North America, penetrating south to 45-40 ° N latitude.

Arabs, moving to the west, in 711 they penetrated the Iberian Peninsula, in the south - into the Indian Ocean, up to Madagascar (IX century), in the east - into China, and from the south they went around Asia.

Only from the middle of the 13th century. the spatial horizons of Europeans began to expand noticeably (travel Plano Carpini,Guillaume Rubruck, Marco Polo and others).

Marco Polo(1254-1324), Italian merchant and traveler. In 1271-1295 traveled through Central Asia to China, where he lived for about 17 years. While in the service of the Mongol Khan, he visited different parts of China and the regions bordering it. The first Europeans described China, the countries of Western and Central Asia in “The Book of Marco Polo”. It is characteristic that contemporaries treated its contents with distrust, only in the second half of the 14th and 15th centuries. they began to appreciate it, and until the 16th century. it served as one of the main sources for drawing up a map of Asia.

The journey of the Russian merchant should also be included in a series of similar journeys. Afanasia Nikitina. For trading purposes, he set out in 1466 from Tver along the Volga to Derbent, crossed the Caspian Sea and reached India through Persia. On his way back, three years later, he returned through Persia and the Black Sea. The notes made by Afanasy Nikitin during the trip are known as “Walking across the Three Seas.” They contain information about the population, economy, religion, customs and nature of India.

§ 3. Great geographical discoveries

The revival of geography begins in the 15th century, when Italian humanists began to translate the works of ancient geographers. Feudal relations were replaced by more progressive ones - capitalist ones. In Western Europe this change occurred earlier, in Russia - later. The changes reflected increased production, which required new sources of raw materials and markets. They imposed new conditions on science and contributed to the general rise of the intellectual life of human society. Geography also acquired new features. Travel enriched science with facts. They were followed by generalizations. This sequence, although not absolutely noted, is characteristic of both Western European and Russian science.

The era of great discoveries of Western sailors. At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, outstanding geographical events took place over three decades: the voyages of the Genoese H. Columba to the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, the mouth of the Orinoco River and the coast of Central America (1492-1504); Portuguese Vasco da Gama around South Africa to Hindustan - the city of Callicut (1497-1498), F. Magellan and his companions (Juan Sebastian Elcano, Antonio Pigafetta, etc.) around South America in the Pacific Ocean and around South Africa (1519-1521) - the first circumnavigation.

The three main search paths - Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Magellan - ultimately had one goal: to reach by sea the richest space in the world - South Asia with India and Indonesia and other areas of this vast space. In three different ways: directly to the west, around South America and around South Africa - the sailors bypassed the state of the Ottoman Turks, which blocked the Europeans' land routes to South Asia. It is characteristic that variants of the indicated world routes for circumnavigation of the world were subsequently repeatedly used by Russian navigators.

The era of great Russian discoveries. The heyday of Russian geographical discoveries occurred in the 16th-17th centuries. However, the Russians collected geographical information themselves and through their Western neighbors much earlier. Geographical data (since 852) is contained in the first Russian chronicle - “The Tale of Bygone Years” Nestor. Russian city-states, developing, were looking for new natural sources of wealth and markets for goods. Novgorod, in particular, grew richer. In the 12th century Novgorodians reached the White Sea. Voyages began to the west to Scandinavia, to the north - to Grumant (Spitsbergen) and especially to the northeast - to Taz, where the Russians founded the trading city of Mangazeya (1601-1652). Somewhat earlier, movement to the east began overland, through Siberia ( Ermak, 1581-1584).

The rapid movement deep into Siberia and towards the Pacific Ocean is a heroic feat of Russian explorers. It took them a little more than half a century to cross the space from the Ob to the Bering Strait. In 1632 the Yakut fort was founded. In 1639 Ivan Moskvitin reaches the Pacific Ocean near Okhotsk. Vasily Poyarkov in 1643-1646 walked from Lena to Yana and Indigirka, the first of the Russian Cossack explorers to sail along the Amur Estuary and the Sakhalin Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. In 1647-48. Erofey Khabarov The Amur passes to the Sungari. And finally, in 1648 Semyon Dezhn e V goes around the Chukchi Peninsula from the sea, discovers the cape that now bears its name, and proves that Asia is separated from North America by a strait.

Gradually, elements of generalization acquire great importance in Russian geography. In 1675, a Russian ambassador, an educated Greek, was sent to China Spafari(1675-1678) with the instruction “to depict all the lands, cities and the path on the drawing.” Drawings, i.e. maps were documents of state importance in Russia.

Russian early cartography is known for the following four works.

Large drawing of the Russian state. Compiled in one copy in 1552. The sources for it were “scribal books”. The Great Drawing has not reached us, although it was renewed in 1627. The geographer of Peter’s time V.N. wrote about its reality. Tatishchev.

Big Drawing Book- text for the drawing. One of the later copies of the book was published by N. Novikov in 1773.

Drawing of the Siberian land compiled in 1667. It has reached us in copies. The drawing accompanies the “Manuscript against the drawing”.

Drawing book of Siberia compiled in 1701 by order of Peter I in Tobolsk by S.U. Remizov and his sons. This the first Russian geographical atlas of 23 maps with drawings of individual areas and settlements.

Thus, in In Russia, the method of generalizations first became cartographic.

In the first half of the 18th century. Extensive geographical descriptions continued, but with an increasing importance of geographical generalizations. It is enough to list the main geographical events to understand the role of this period in the development of domestic geography. Firstly, an extensive long-term study of the Russian coast of the Arctic Ocean by detachments of the Great Northern Expedition of 1733-1743. and expeditions Vitus Bering And Alexey Chirikov, who, during the First and Second Kamchatka Expeditions, discovered the sea route from Kamchatka to North America (1741) and described part of the northwestern coast of this continent and some of the Aleutian Islands. Secondly, in 1724 the Russian Academy of Sciences was established with the Geographical Department as part of it (since 1739). This institution was headed by the successors of Peter I, the first Russian geographers V.N. Tatishchev(1686-1750) and M.V. Lomonosov(1711-1765). They became organizers of detailed geographical studies of the territory of Russia and themselves made a significant contribution to the development of theoretical geography and trained a galaxy of remarkable geographers and researchers. In 1742 M.V. Lomonosov wrote the first Russian essay with theoretical geographical content - “On the Layers of the Earth”. In 1755, two Russians were published classic regional studies monographs: “Description of the land of Kamchatka” S.P. Krashennikova and “Orenburg topography” P.I. Rychkova. The Lomonosov period began in Russian geography - a time of reflection and generalizations.

1 Geography in Feudal Europe.

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world.

3 Geography in the Arab world.

4 Development of geography in medieval China.

1 Geography in Feudal Europe. From the end of the 2nd century. slave society was experiencing a deep crisis. The invasion of the Gothic tribes (3rd century) and the strengthening of Christianity, which became the state religion in 330, accelerated the decline of Roman-Greek culture and science. In 395, the Roman Empire was divided into Western and Eastern parts. From this time on, Western Europe gradually began to forget the Greek language and literature. In 410 the Visigoths occupied Rome, and in 476 the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist (26,110,126,220,260,279,363,377).

Trade ties began to decline significantly during this period. The only significant incentive to explore distant countries was Christian pilgrimages to the “holy places”: Palestine and Jerusalem. According to many historians of geographical science, this transition period did not introduce anything new into the development of geographical ideas (126,279). At best, old knowledge has been preserved, and even then in an incomplete and distorted form. In this form they passed into the Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages saw a long period of decline, when the spatial and scientific horizons of geography narrowed sharply. The extensive geographical knowledge and geographical ideas of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians were largely forgotten. Previous knowledge was preserved only among Arab scientists. True, the accumulation of knowledge about the world continued in Christian monasteries, but in general the intellectual climate of that time was not favorable to their new understanding. At the end of the 15th century. The era of the Great Geographical Discoveries began, and the horizons of geographical science began to rapidly expand again. The flow of new information that poured into Europe had an extremely great influence on all aspects of life and gave rise to a certain course of events that continues to this day (110, p. 25).

Despite the fact that in Christian Europe of the Middle Ages the word “geography” practically disappeared from the common vocabulary, the study of geography still continued. Gradually, curiosity and inquisitiveness, the desire to find out what distant countries and continents were like, prompted adventurers to go on trips that promised new discoveries. The Crusades, carried out under the banner of the struggle for the liberation of the “holy land” from Muslim rule, drew into their orbit masses of people who had left their homes. Returning, they talked about foreign peoples and unusual nature that they had seen. In the 13th century the routes laid by missionaries and merchants became so extensive that they reached China (21).

The geographical ideas of the early Middle Ages consisted of biblical dogmas and some conclusions of ancient science, cleared of everything “pagan” (including the doctrine of the sphericity of the Earth). According to “Christian Topography” by Cosmas Indikopov (6th century), the Earth has the shape of a flat rectangle washed by the ocean; The sun disappears behind the mountain at night; all great rivers originate in paradise and flow under the ocean (361).

Modern geographers unanimously characterize the first centuries of the Christian Middle Ages in Western Europe as a period of stagnation and decline in geography (110,126,216,279). Most of the geographical discoveries of this period were repeated. Countries known to the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were often “discovered” a second, third, or even fourth time.

In the history of geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages, a prominent place belongs to the Scandinavian Vikings (Normans), who in the 8th-9th centuries. with their raids they devastated England, Germany, Flanders and France.

Scandinavian traders traveled along the Russian route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” to Byzantium. Around 866, the Normans rediscovered Iceland and established a strong foothold there, and around 983, Eric the Red discovered Greenland, where they also established permanent settlements (21).

In the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the Byzantines had a relatively broad spatial horizon. The religious ties of the Eastern Roman Empire extended to Balkan Peninsula, later - to Kievan Rus and Asia Minor. Religious preachers reached India. They brought their writing to Central Asia and Mongolia, and from there they penetrated into the western regions of China, where they founded their numerous settlements.

The spatial horizons of the Slavic peoples, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, or the chronicle of Nestor (second half of the 11th - beginning of the 12th centuries), extended to almost all of Europe - to approximately 600N latitude. and to the shores of the Baltic and North Seas, as well as to the Caucasus, India, the Middle East and the northern coast of Africa. The Chronicle provides the most complete and reliable information about the Russian Plain, primarily about the Valdai Upland, from where the main Slavic rivers flow (110,126,279).

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors and brave travelers. The greatest achievement of the Scandinavians of Norwegian origin, or the so-called Vikings, was that they managed to cross the North Atlantic and visit America. In 874, the Vikings approached the shores of Iceland and founded a settlement, which then began to quickly develop and prosper. In 930, the world's first parliament, the Althing, was created here.

Among the inhabitants of the Icelandic colony there was someone Eric the Red , distinguished by a frantic and stormy disposition. In 982, he and his family and friends were expelled from Iceland. Having heard about the existence of a land that lay somewhere far to the west, Eric set sail across the stormy waters of the North Atlantic and after some time found himself off the southern coast of Greenland. Perhaps the name Greenland, which he gave to this new land, was one of the first examples of arbitrary name creation in world geography - after all, there was nothing green around. However, the colony Erik founded attracted some Icelandic residents. Close maritime connections developed between Greenland, Iceland and Norway (110,126,279).

Around 1000, the son of Eric the Red, Leif Eirikson , returning from Greenland to Norway, was caught in a violent storm; the ship strayed from the correct course. When the sky cleared, he discovered that he was on an unfamiliar coastline, stretching north and south as far as he could see. Coming ashore, he found himself in a virgin forest, the tree trunks of which were entwined with wild grapes. Returning to Greenland, he described this new land, lying far to the west of his home country (21,110).

In 1003 someone Karlsefni organized an expedition to take another look at this new land. About 160 people - men and women - sailed with him, and a large supply of food and livestock was taken. There is no doubt that they managed to reach the coast of North America. The large bay they described with a strong current emanating from it is probably the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. Somewhere here people landed on the shore and stayed for the winter. The first child of Europeans on American soil was born right there. The following summer they all sailed south, reaching the peninsula of South Scotland. They may have visited even further south, near the Chesapeake Bay. They liked this new land, but the Indians were too warlike towards the Vikings. The raids of the local tribes caused such damage that the Vikings, who had worked so hard to settle here, were eventually forced to return to Greenland. All the stories related to this event are captured in the “Saga of Eric the Red,” which was passed down from mouth to mouth. Historians of geographical science are still trying to figure out where exactly the people who sailed from Karlsefni landed. It is very possible that before the 11th century, voyages to the shores of North America were made, but European geographers heard only vague rumors about such voyages (7,21,26,110,126,279,363,377).

3 Geography in the Arab world. From the 6th century Arabs are beginning to play a prominent role in the development of world culture. By the beginning of the 8th century. they created a huge state that covered all of Western Asia, part of Central Asia, northwestern India, North Africa and most of the Iberian Peninsula. Among the Arabs, crafts and trade prevailed over subsistence farming. Arab merchants traded with China and African countries. In the 12th century the Arabs learned about the existence of Madagascar, and according to some other sources, in 1420 Arab sailors reached the southern tip of Africa (21,110,126).

Many peoples have contributed to Arab culture and science. Beginning in the 8th century. the decentralization of the Arab Caliphate gradually led to the emergence of a number of large cultural scientific centers in Persia, Spain and North Africa. Scientists from Central Asia also wrote in Arabic. The Arabs learned a lot from the Indians (including the written counting system) and the Chinese (knowledge of magnetic needles, gunpowder, making paper from cotton). Under Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809), a board of translators was created in Baghdad, which translated Indian, Persian, Syrian and Greek scientific works into Arabic.

Of particular importance for the development of Arab science were the translations of the works of Greek scientists - Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Strabo, Ptolemy, etc. Largely under the influence of the ideas of Aristotle, many thinkers of the Muslim world rejected the existence of supernatural forces and called for the experimental study of nature. Among them, first of all, it is necessary to note the outstanding Tajik philosopher and encyclopedist scientist Ibn Sinu (Avicenna) 980-1037) and Muggamet Ibn Roshd, or Avverroes (1126-1198).

To expand the spatial horizons of the Arabs, the development of trade was of paramount importance. Already in the 8th century. Geography in the Arab world was considered as “the science of postal communication” and “the science of routes and regions” (126). Travel writing is becoming the most popular type of Arabic literature. From travelers of the 8th century. The most famous is the merchant Suleiman of Basra, who sailed to China and visited Ceylon, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and the island of Socotra.

In the works of Arab authors, information of a nomenclatural and historical-political nature predominates; unjustifiably little attention is paid to nature. In the interpretation of physical and geographical phenomena, scientists writing in Arabic did not contribute anything significantly new and original. The main significance of Arabic literature of geographical content lies in the new facts, but not in the theories it adhered to. The theoretical ideas of the Arabs remained underdeveloped. In most cases, the Arabs simply followed the Greeks without bothering to develop new concepts.

Indeed, the Arabs collected a lot of material in the field of physical geography, but were unable to process it into a coherent scientific system (126). In addition, they constantly mixed the creations of their imagination into reality. Nevertheless, the role of the Arabs in the history of science is very significant. Thanks to the Arabs, a new system of “Arabic” numbers, their arithmetic, astronomy, as well as Arabic translations of Greek authors, including Aristotle, Plato and Ptolemy, began to spread in Western Europe after the Crusades.

The works of the Arabs on geography, written in the 8th-14th centuries, were based on a variety of literary sources. In addition, Arab scholars used not only translations from Greek, but also information received from their own travelers. As a result, the knowledge of the Arabs was much more correct and accurate than the knowledge of Christian authors.

One of the earliest Arab travelers was Ibn Haukal. He devoted the last thirty years of his life (943-973) to traveling to the most remote and remote areas of Africa and Asia. During his visit to the eastern coast of Africa at a point that was approximately twenty degrees south of the equator, he drew his attention to the fact that here, in these latitudes, which the Greeks considered uninhabited, a large number of people lived. However, the theory that this zone was uninhabitable, held by the ancient Greeks, was revived again and again, even in so-called modern times.

Arab scientists made several important observations on climate. In 921 Al-Balkhi summarized information about climatic phenomena collected by Arab travelers in the first climate atlas of the world - “Kitab al-Ashkal”.

Masudi (died 956) penetrated as far south as modern Mozambique and made very accurate descriptions of the monsoons. Already in the 10th century. he correctly described the process of evaporation of moisture from the water surface and its condensation in the form of clouds.

In 985 Makdisi proposed a new division of the Earth into 14 climatic regions. He discovered that climate varies not only with latitude, but also in westerly and eastern directions. He also came up with the idea that most of the southern hemisphere is occupied by the ocean, and the main land masses are concentrated in the northern hemisphere (110).

Some Arab geographers expressed correct thoughts about the formation of the forms of the earth's surface. In 1030 Al-Biruni wrote a huge book on the geography of India. In it, he spoke, in particular, about rounded stones that he discovered in alluvial deposits south of the Himalayas. He explained their origin by the fact that these stones acquired a rounded shape due to the fact that rapid mountain rivers rolled them along their bed. He also drew attention to the fact that alluvial sediments deposited near the foot of the mountains have a coarser mechanical composition, and that as they move away from the mountains they are composed of increasingly fine particles. He also talked about how, according to the Hindus, tides are caused by the Moon. His book also contains an interesting statement that when moving towards the South Pole, night disappears. This statement proves that even before the onset of the 11th century, some Arab sailors penetrated far to the south (110,126).

Avicenna, or Ibn Sina , who had the opportunity to directly observe how mountain streams carve out valleys in the mountains of Central Asia, also contributed to deepening knowledge about the development of the forms of the earth's surface. He came up with the idea that the highest peaks are composed of hard rocks that are especially resistant to erosion. As they rise, the mountains, he pointed out, immediately begin to undergo this grinding process, which proceeds very slowly, but relentlessly. Avicenna also noted the presence in the rocks that make up the highlands of fossil remains of organisms, which he considered as examples of nature’s attempts to create living plants or animals that ended in failure (126).

Ibn Battuta - one of the greatest Arab travelers of all times. He was born in Tangier in 1304 into a family in which the profession of judge was hereditary. In 1325, at the age of twenty-one, he went as a pilgrim to Mecca, where he hoped to complete his study of the laws. However, on the way through northern Africa and Egypt, he realized that he was much more attracted to the study of peoples and countries than to study legal intricacies. Having reached Mecca, he decided to devote his life to travel and in his endless wanderings through the lands inhabited by the Arabs, he was most concerned about not going the same way twice. He managed to visit those places of the Arabian Peninsula where no one had ever been before. He sailed the Red Sea, visited Ethiopia and then, moving further and further south along the coast of East Africa, reached Kilwa, which lies almost under 100 latitude. There he learned about the existence of an Arab trading post in Sofala (Mozambique), located south of the current port city of Beira, that is, almost 20 degrees south of the equator. Ibn Battuta confirmed what Ibn Haukal had insisted, namely that the hot zone of East Africa was not swelteringly hot and that it was inhabited by local tribes who did not oppose the creation of trading posts by the Arabs.

Returning to Mecca, he soon hit the road again, visiting Baghdad, traveling through Persia and the lands adjacent to the Black Sea. Following through the Russian steppes, he eventually reached Bukhara and Samarkand, and from there through the mountains of Afghanistan he entered India. For several years, Ibn Battuta was in the service of the Delhi Sultan, which gave him the opportunity to travel around the country without hindrance. The Sultan appointed him as his ambassador to China. However, many years passed before Ibn Battuta arrived there. During this time, he managed to visit the Maldives, Ceylon and Sumatra, and only after that he ended up in China. In 1350 he returned to Fes, the capital of Morocco. However, his travels did not end there. After a trip to Spain, he returned to Africa and, moving through the Sahara, reached the Niger River, where he was able to collect important information about the black Islamized tribes living in the area. In 1353 he settled in Fez, where, by order of the Sultan, he dictated a long narrative about his travels. Over the course of about thirty years, Ibn Battura covered a distance of about 120 thousand km, which was an absolute record for the 14th century. Unfortunately, his book, written in Arabic, did not have any significant influence on the thinking of European scientists (110).

4 Development of geography in medieval China. Starting around the 2nd century. BC. and until the 15th century, the Chinese people had the highest level of knowledge among other peoples of the Earth. Chinese mathematicians began to use zero and created a decimal number system, which was much more convenient than the sexagesimal one that was used in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Decimal calculation was borrowed from the Hindus by the Arabs around 800, but it is believed that it came to India from China (110).

Chinese philosophers differed from ancient Greek thinkers mainly in that they attached paramount importance to the natural world. According to their teaching, individuals should not be separated from nature, since they are an organic part of it. The Chinese denied the divine power that prescribes laws and creates the Universe for man according to a specific plan. In China, for example, they did not believe that after death life continues in the paradise gardens of Eden or in the circles of hell. The Chinese believed that the dead are absorbed into the all-pervading universe, of which all individuals are an inseparable part (126,158).

Confucianism taught a way of life in which friction between members of society was reduced to a minimum. However, this teaching remained relatively indifferent to the development of scientific knowledge about the surrounding nature.

The activity of the Chinese in the field of geographical research looks very impressive, although it is more characterized by contemplative achievements than by the development of scientific theory (110).

In China, geographical research was primarily associated with the creation of methods that made it possible to make precise measurements and observations with their subsequent use in various useful inventions. Since the 13th century. BC, the Chinese conducted systematic observations of weather conditions.

Already in the 2nd century. BC. Chinese engineers made precise measurements of the amount of silt deposits carried by rivers. In 2 AD The world's first population census was conducted in China. China's technical inventions include paper production, book printing, rain gauges and snow gauges to measure precipitation, and a compass for sailors.

Geographical descriptions of Chinese authors can be divided into the following eight groups: 1) works devoted to the study of people (human geography); 2) descriptions of the interior regions of China; 3) descriptions of foreign countries; 4) travel stories; 5) books about the rivers of China; 6) descriptions of the coasts of China, especially those that are important for shipping; 7) local history works, including descriptions of areas subordinate to and governed by fortified cities, famous mountain ranges, or certain cities and palaces; 8) geographical encyclopedias (110, p.96). Much attention was also paid to the origin of place names (110).

The earliest evidence of Chinese travel is a book probably written between the 5th and 3rd centuries. BC. It was discovered in the tomb of a man who ruled around 245 BC. territory that occupied part of the Wei He Valley. The books found in this burial were written on strips of white silk glued to bamboo cuttings. For better preservation, the book was rewritten at the end of the 3rd century. BC. In world geography, both versions of this book are known as "The Travels of Emperor Mu".

Emperor Mu reigned from 1001-945. BC. Emperor Mu, these works say, wanted to travel around the whole world and leave traces of his carriage in every country. The story of his wanderings is full of amazing adventures and embellished with artistic fiction. However, the descriptions of the wanderings contain details that could hardly be a figment of imagination. The emperor visited forested mountains, saw snow, and hunted a lot. On his way back, he crossed a vast desert, so waterless that he even had to drink horse blood. There is no doubt that in very ancient times, Chinese travelers traveled considerable distances from the Wei He Valley, the center of the development of their culture.

Well-known descriptions of travel from the Middle Ages belong to Chinese pilgrims who visited India, as well as the adjacent areas (Fa Xian, Xuan Zang, I. Jing, etc.). By the 8th century. treatise refers Jia Danya "Description of Nine Countries" which is a guide to the countries of Southeast Asia. In 1221, a Taoist monk Chang Chun (XII-XIII centuries) traveled to Samarkand to the court of Genghis Khan and collected fairly accurate information about the population, climate, and vegetation of Central Asia.

In medieval China, there were numerous official descriptions of the country, which were compiled for each new dynasty. These works contained a variety of information on history, natural conditions, population, economy and various attractions. The geographical knowledge of the peoples of South and East Asia had virtually no influence on the geographical horizons of Europeans. On the other hand, the geographical ideas of medieval Europe remained almost unknown in India and China, except for some information obtained through Arab sources (110,126,158,279,283,300).

Late Middle Ages in Europe (XII-XIV centuries). In the 12th century Feudal stagnation in the economic development of the countries of Western Europe gave way to some recovery: crafts, trade, commodity-money relations developed, and new cities emerged. The main economic and cultural centers in Europe in the 12th century. there were Mediterranean cities through which trade routes to the East passed, as well as Flanders, where various crafts flourished and commodity-money relations developed. In the XIV century. The region of the Baltic and North Seas, where the Hanseatic League of trading cities was formed, also became a sphere of lively trade relations. In the XIV century. Paper and gunpowder appear in Europe.

In the 13th century sailing and rowing ships are gradually being replaced by caravels, the compass comes into use, the first nautical charts - portolans - are created, methods for determining the latitude of a place are being improved (by observing the height of the Sun above the horizon and using solar declination tables). All this made it possible to move from coastal sailing to sailing on the high seas.

In the 13th century Italian merchants began to sail through the Strait of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Rhine. It is known that at that time trade routes to the East were in the hands of the Italian city-republics of Venice and Genoa. Florence was the largest industrial and banking center. That is why the cities of Northern Italy in the middle of the 14th century. were the center of the Renaissance, centers of the revival of ancient culture, philosophy, science and art. The ideology of the urban bourgeoisie that was emerging at that time found its expression in the philosophy of humanism (110.126).

Humanism (from the Latin humanus - human, humane) is the recognition of the value of man as an individual, his right to free development and manifestation of his abilities, the affirmation of the good of man as a criterion for assessing social relations. In a narrower sense, humanism is the secular freethinking of the Renaissance, opposed to scholasticism and the spiritual dominance of the church, and associated with the study of the rediscovered works of classical antiquity (291).

The greatest humanist of the Italian Renaissance and world history in general was Francis of Azis (1182-1226) – an outstanding preacher, author of religious and poetic works, the humanistic potential of which is comparable to the teachings of Jesus Christ. In 1207-1209 he founded the Franciscan order.

The most advanced philosophers of the Middle Ages came from among the Franciscans - Roger Bacon (1212-1294) and William of Ockham (about 1300 - about 1350), who opposed scholastic teaching and called for the experimental study of nature. It was they who laid the foundation for the disintegration of official scholasticism.

In those years, there was an intensive revival of interest in ancient culture, the study of ancient languages, and translations of ancient authors. The first most prominent representatives of the Italian Renaissance were Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313–1375), although, undoubtedly, it was Dante (1265-1321) was the herald of the Italian Renaissance.

Science of the Catholic countries of Europe in the XIII-XIV centuries. was in the firm hands of the church. However, already in the 12th century. the first universities were created in Bologna and Paris; in the 14th century there were more than 40 of them. All of them were in the hands of the church, and theology occupied the main place in teaching. Church councils of 1209 and 1215 decided to ban the teaching of Aristotle's physics and mathematics. In the 13th century the most prominent representative of the Dominicans Thomas Aquinas (1225-1276) formulated the official teachings of Catholicism, using some reactionary aspects of the teachings of Aristotle, Ibn Sina and others, giving them their own religious and mystical character.

Undoubtedly, Thomas Aquinas was an outstanding philosopher and theologian, a systematizer of scholasticism on the methodological basis of Christian Aristotelianism (the doctrine of act and potency, form and matter, substance and accident, etc.). He formulated five proofs of the existence of God, described as the first cause, the ultimate goal of existence, etc. Recognizing the relative independence of natural being and human reason (the concept of natural law, etc.), Thomas Aquinas argued that nature ends in grace, reason in faith, philosophical knowledge and natural theology, based on the analogy of existence, in supernatural revelation. The main works of Thomas Aquinas are the Summa Theologica and the Summa against the Gentiles. Aquinas's teaching underlies such philosophical and religious concepts as Thomism and neo-Thomism.

The development of international relations and navigation, the rapid growth of cities contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons and aroused the keen interest of Europeans in geographical knowledge and discoveries. In world history, the entire XII century. and the first half of the 13th century. represent the period of Western Europe's emergence from centuries-old hibernation and the awakening of vibrant intellectual life in it.

At this time, the main factor in expanding the geographical understanding of European peoples was the crusades undertaken between 1096 and 1270. under the pretext of liberating the Holy Land. Communication between Europeans and Syrians, Persians and Arabs significantly enriched their Christian culture.

In those years, representatives also traveled a lot Eastern Slavs. Daniil from Kyiv , for example, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and Benjamin of Tudela traveled to different countries of the East.

A noticeable turning point in the development of geographical concepts occurred approximately in the middle of the 13th century, one of the reasons for which was the Mongol expansion, which reached its extreme western limit by 1242. From 1245, the Pope and many Christian crowns began to send their embassies and missions to the Mongol khans for diplomatic and intelligence purposes and in the hope of converting the Mongol rulers to Christianity. Following the diplomats and missionaries, merchants rushed to the east. The greater accessibility of countries under Mongol rule compared to Muslim countries, as well as the presence of a well-established system of communications and routes of communication, opened the way for Europeans to Central and East Asia.

In the 13th century, namely from 1271 to 1295, Marco Polo traveled around China, visited India, Ceylon, South Vietnam, Burma, the Malay Archipelago, Arabia and East Africa. After the journey of Marco Polo, merchant caravans from many countries of Western Europe were often equipped for China and India (146).

Russian Novgorodians successfully continued their exploration of the northern outskirts of Europe. After they in the XII-XIII centuries. All the major rivers of the European North were discovered, they paved the way to the Ob basin through the Sukhona, Pechora and the Northern Urals. The first campaign to the Lower Ob (to the Ob Bay), about which there are indications in the chronicles, was undertaken in 1364-1365. At the same time, Russian sailors were moving east along the northern shores of Eurasia. By the end of the 15th century. they explored the southwestern coast of the Kara Sea, the Ob and Taz bays. At the beginning of the 15th century. The Russians sailed to Grumant (Spitsbergen archipelago). However, it is possible that these voyages began much earlier (2,13,14,21,28,31,85,119,126,191,192,279).

Unlike Asia, Africa remained for Europeans of the 13th-15th centuries. an almost unexplored continent, with the exception of its northern outskirts.

The development of navigation is associated with the emergence of a new type of map - portolans, or complex maps, which had direct practical significance. They appeared in Italy and Catalonia around 1275-1280. Early portolans were images of the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, often made with very great precision. Bays, small islands, shoals, etc. were especially carefully marked on these drawings. Later, portolans appeared on the western coasts of Europe. All portolans were oriented to the north, at a number of points compass directions were marked on them, and for the first time a linear scale was given. Portolans were in use until the 17th century, when they began to be replaced by nautical charts in the Mercator projection.

Along with portolans, which were unusually accurate for their time, in the late Middle Ages there were also "monastery cards" which retained their primitive character for a long time. Later they increased in format and became more detailed and accurate.

Despite the significant expansion of spatial horizons, the XIII and XIV centuries. gave very little new in the field of scientific geographical ideas and concepts. Even the descriptive-regional studies direction did not show much progress. The term “geography” itself was apparently not used at all at that time, although literary sources contain extensive information related to the field of geography. This information, of course, became even more numerous in the 13th-15th centuries. The main place among the geographical descriptions of that time is occupied by the stories of the crusaders about the wonders of the East, as well as writings about travel and the travelers themselves. Of course, this information is not equivalent both in volume and in objectivity.

The greatest value among all geographical works of that period is the “Book” of Marco Polo (146). Contemporaries were very skeptical and distrustful of its contents. Only in the second half of the 14th century. and more late time Marco Polo's book began to be valued as a source of diverse information about the countries of East, Southeast and South Asia. This work was used, for example, by Christopher Columbus during his travels to the shores of America. Until the 16th century. Marco Polo's book served as an important source of various information for compiling maps of Asia (146).

Particularly popular in the 14th century. they used descriptions of fictitious travels, full of legends and stories of miracles.

In general, it can be said that the Middle Ages were marked by an almost complete degeneration of general physical geography. The Middle Ages gave practically no new ideas in the field of geography and only preserved for posterity some ideas of ancient authors, thereby preparing the first theoretical prerequisites for the transition to the Great Geographical Discoveries (110,126,279).

Marco Polo and his "Book". The most famous travelers of the Middle Ages were the Venetian merchants the Polo brothers and the son of one of them, Marco. In 1271, when Marco Polo was seventeen years old, he, along with his father and uncle, went on a long journey to China. The Polo brothers had already visited China up to this point, spending nine years on the way there and back - from 1260 to 1269. The Great Khan of the Mongols and Emperor of China invited them to visit his country again. The return trip to China lasted four years; for another seventeen years three Venetian merchants remained in this country.

Marco served with the khan, who sent him on official missions to various regions of China, which allowed him to acquire deep knowledge about the culture and nature of this country. The activities of Marco Polo were so useful for the khan that the khan agreed with great displeasure to Polo's departure.

In 1292, the Khan provided all Polos with a flotilla of thirteen ships. Some of them were so large that their crew numbered more than a hundred people. In total, together with the Polo merchants, about 600 passengers were accommodated on all these ships. The flotilla left a port in southern China, approximately from the place where the modern city of Quanzhou is located. Three months later, the ships reached the islands of Java and Sumatra, where they stayed for five months, after which the voyage continued.

The travelers visited the island of Ceylon and South India, and then, following its western coast, entered the Persian Gulf, anchoring in the ancient port of Hormuz. By the end of the voyage, out of 600 passengers, only 18 remained alive, and most of the ships were lost. But all three Polos returned unharmed to Venice in 1295 after an absence of twenty-five years.

During a naval battle in 1298 in the war between Genoa and Venice, Marco Polo was captured and until 1299 he was kept in a Genoese prison. While in prison, he dictated stories about his travels to one of the prisoners. His descriptions of life in China and the perilous adventures along the way there and back were so vivid and vivid that they were often perceived as the product of a fervent imagination. In addition to stories about the places where he directly visited, Marco Polo also mentioned Chipango, or Japan, and the island of Madagascar, which, according to him, was located at the southern limit of the inhabited earth. Since Madagascar was located much south of the equator, it became obvious that the sizzling, sultry zone was not such at all and belonged to the inhabited lands.

It should be noted, however, that Marco Polo was not a professional geographer and did not even know about the existence of such a field of knowledge as geography. Nor was he aware of the heated discussions between those who believed in the uninhabitability of the hot zone and those who disputed this idea. He also heard nothing of the disputes between those who believed the underestimated size of the earth's circumference to be correct, following Posidonius, Marinus of Tire and Ptolemy, and those who preferred the calculations of Eratosthenes. Marco Polo did not know anything about the assumptions of the ancient Greeks that the eastern tip of the Oikumene is located near the mouth of the Ganges, just as he did not hear about Ptolemy’s statement that the Indian Ocean is “closed” in the south by land. It is doubtful that Marco Polo ever attempted to determine the latitude, let alone the longitude, of the places he visited. However, it tells you how many days you need to spend and in which direction you should move to reach a particular point. He says nothing about his attitude to the geographical ideas of previous times. At the same time, his book is one of those that tells about great geographical discoveries. But in medieval Europe it was perceived as one of the numerous and ordinary books of that time, filled with the most incredible, but very interesting stories. It is common knowledge that Columbus had a personal copy of Marco Polo's book with his own notes (110,146).

Prince Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese sea voyages . Prince Henry , nicknamed the Navigator, was the organizer of major Portuguese expeditions. In 1415, a Portuguese army under the command of Prince Henry attacked and stormed a Muslim stronghold on the southern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar at Ceuta. Thus, for the first time, a European power came into possession of territory lying outside Europe. With the occupation of this part of Africa, the period of European colonization of overseas territories began.

In 1418, Prince Henry founded the world's first geographical research institute in Sagrish. In Sagrish, Prince Henry built a palace, a church, an astronomical observatory, a building for storing maps and manuscripts, as well as houses for the staff of this institute. He invited here scientists of different faiths (Christians, Jews, Muslims) from all over the Mediterranean. Among them were geographers, cartographers, mathematicians, astronomers and translators who were able to read manuscripts written in different languages.

Someone Jacome from Mallorca was appointed chief geographer. He was given the task of improving navigation methods and then teaching them to the Portuguese captains, as well as teaching them the decimal system. It was also necessary to find out, on the basis of documents and maps, the possibility of sailing to the Spicy Islands, first going south along the African coast. In this regard, a number of very important and complex issues arose. Are these lands near the equator inhabited? Does the skin of people who end up there turn black, or is this a myth? What is the size of the Earth? Is the size of the Earth as large as Marinus of Tire believed? Or is it as the Arab geographers imagined it when they carried out their measurements in the vicinity of Baghdad?

Prince Henry was developing a new type of ship. The new Portuguese caravels had two or three masts and lateen sails. They were quite slow-moving, but were distinguished by their stability and ability to sail long distances.

Prince Henry's captains gained experience and confidence in their abilities by sailing to the Canary and Azores islands. At the same time, Prince Henry sent his more experienced captains on long voyages along the African coast.

The first reconnaissance voyage of the Portuguese was undertaken in 1418. But soon the ships turned back, as their teams were afraid to approach the unknown equator. Despite repeated attempts, it took 16 years for the Portuguese ships to pass 2607'N in their southward advance. At this latitude, just south of the Canary Islands, a low sandy cape called Bojador juts into the ocean on the African coast. A strong ocean current runs along it, directed to the south. At the foot of the cape it forms whirlpools, marked by foaming wave crests. Whenever the ships approached this place, the teams demanded that they stop sailing. Of course, there was boiling water here, as ancient Greek scientists wrote about!!! This is where people should become black!!! Moreover, an Arab map of this coastline immediately south of Bojador showed the hand of the devil rising from the water. However, the portolan of 1351 near Bojador did not show anything unusual, and it itself was only a small cape. In addition, in Sagrish there was an account of the travels of the Phoenicians under the leadership of Hanno , who in time immemorial sailed far south of Bojador.

In 1433 Prince Henry's captain Gil Yeanish tried to round Cape Bojador, but his crew mutinied and he was forced to return to Sagrish.

In 1434, Captain Gil Eanish resorted to a maneuver suggested by Prince Henry. From the Canary Islands he boldly turned into the open ocean so far that the land disappeared from view. And south of the latitude of Bojador, he directed his ship to the east and, approaching the shore, he became convinced that the water there did not boil and no one turned into a black man. The Bojador barrier was taken. The next year, Portuguese ships penetrated far south from Cape Bojador.

Around 1441, Prince Henry's ships sailed so far south that they had already reached the transition zone between desert and humid climates, and even countries beyond its borders. South of Cap Blanc, in what is now Mauritania, the Portuguese captured first a man and a woman, and then ten more people. They also found some gold. In Portugal this created a sensation; hundreds of volunteers immediately appeared who wanted to sail south.

Between 1444 and 1448 Almost forty Portuguese ships visited the African coast. As a result of these voyages, 900 Africans were captured to be sold into slavery. The discoveries as such were forgotten in the pursuit of profits from the slave trade.

Prince Henry, however, managed to return the captains he had nurtured to the righteous path of research and discovery. But this happened after ten years. Now the prince understood that a much more valuable reward awaited him if he managed to sail around Africa and reach India.

The coast of Guinea was explored by the Portuguese in 1455-1456. Prince Henry's sailors also visited the Cape Verde Islands. Prince Henry the Navigator died in 1460, but the work he started continued. More and more expeditions left the coast of Portugal to the south. In 1473, a Portuguese ship crossed the equator without catching fire. A few years later, the Portuguese landed on the shore and erected their stone monuments (padrans) there - evidence of their claims to the African coast. Placed near the mouth of the Congo River, these monuments, according to eyewitnesses, were still preserved in the last century.

Among the glorious captains of Prince Henry was Bartolomeu Dias. Dias, sailing along the African coast south of the equator, found himself in a zone of headwind and current directed to the north. To avoid the storm, he turned sharply to the west, leaving the coast of the continent, and only when the weather improved did he sail east again. However, having traveled, according to his calculations, more time in this direction than was necessary to reach the shores, he turned north in the hope of discovering land. So, he sailed to the shores of South Africa near Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth). On his way back he passed Cape Agulhas and the Cape of Good Hope. This brave voyage took place in 1486-1487. (110)

Geography of the Middle Ages (from V to XVII centuries).

The Middle Ages include the period from V to XVI century. It is also generally accepted that this period was characterized by a general decline in relation to the previous brilliant period of Antiquity.

In general, during the Middle Ages, the development of geographical knowledge continued within the framework of regional studies. The main carriers of geographical knowledge were merchants, officials, military men and missionaries. Thus, the Middle Ages were not barren, especially with regard to spatial discoveries (Markov, 1978).

In the Middle Ages, two main “worlds” can be distinguished in terms of the development of geographical ideas - Arabic and European.

IN Arab world The traditions of ancient science were largely adopted, but in geography the regional studies direction was most preserved. This is due to the vastness of the Arab Caliphate, which stretched from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula.

Arab regional geography was of a reference nature and had more of a practical meaning than a speculative one. The earliest summary of this kind is the “Book of Ways and States” (IX century), written by the official Ibn Hardadbek.

Among travelers, the most successful was the traveling Moroccan merchant Abu Abdullah Ibn Battuta, who visited Egypt, Western Arabia, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. He was also in Crimea, on the lower Volga, in Central Asia and India. On his last journey in 1352-1353. he crossed Western and Central Sahara.

Among the outstanding Arab scientists dealing with geographical issues, Biruni can be noted. This great Khorezm scientist-encyclopedist was the largest geographer in the 11th century. In his research, Biruni wrote about erosion processes and the sorting of alluvium. He provided information about the ideas of the Hindus, about the connection of the tides with the Moon.

Despite these individual achievements, Arab geography did not surpass ancient geography in terms of theoretical concepts. The main merit of Arab scientists was to expand their spatial horizons.

IN medieval Europe, as in the Arab world, the main contribution to the development of geographical knowledge was made by travelers. It should be noted that, unlike the Arabs, the theoretical achievements of ancient geographers were sometimes rejected. For example, one of the famous medieval geographical works is “Christian Geography” by Cosmas Indikoplov (VI century). This book provides regional information on Europe, India, and Sri Lanka. At the same time, it resolutely rejects the sphericity of the Earth, which is recognized as a delusion.

The expansion of the geographical horizons of Europeans began after the 19th century, which was associated with the beginning of the Crusades (XI-XII centuries). Subsequently, significant geographical discoveries were obtained as a result of the ambassadorial missions of the Catholic Church to the Mongol khanates.

Among the outstanding European travelers of the Middle Ages, one can note Marco Polo, who visited and studied China in the 4th century, as well as the Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin, who described in the 15th century. India.

At the end of the Middle Ages, geographical travel began to be carried out purposefully. Particularly noticeable in this regard is the activity of the Portuguese prince Henry, nicknamed the Navigator (1394-1460). The captains of Henry the Navigator explored the West Coast of Africa step by step, discovering, in particular, the Cape of Good Hope (Golubchik, 1998).

In general, it can be noted that in the Middle Ages, geography was not much different from ancient times, and, as in antiquity, it was uniform. It covered the entire sum of the then knowledge about the nature of the earth's surface, as well as about the occupations and life of the peoples who inhabited it. According to academician I.P. Gerasimov, it provided people’s economic activities with the necessary scientific information about the natural conditions and resources of the developed territories and supplied internal and external political actions with the most complete information about near and distant countries (Maksakovsky, 1998).

Separately, in medieval times in Europe, the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries stands out - they close this stage in the development of geography and represent a bright and unique action, as a result of which the main elements of the modern geographical picture of the world were formed.

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education

Russian state Pedagogical University them. A. I. Herzen

Department of Physical Geography and Environmental Management

Abstract on the topic:

Geography in the Middle Ages

Geographical ideas of the early Middle Ages

Geography in antiquity reached a high level of development. Ancient geographers adhered to the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth and had a fairly correct idea of ​​​​its size. In their works, the doctrine of climate and the five climatic zones of the globe was developed, and the question of the predominance of land or sea was sharply debated (the dispute between the oceanic and land theories). The pinnacle of ancient achievements was the cosmogonic and geographical theory of Ptolemy (2nd century AD), despite its shortcomings and inaccuracies, it was unsurpassed until the 16th century.

The Middle Ages wiped out ancient knowledge from the face of the earth. The dominance of the church in all areas of culture also meant a complete decline in geographical ideas: geography and cosmogony were completely subordinated to church needs. Even Ptolemy, left as the supreme authority in this field, was emasculated and adapted to the needs of religion. The Bible became the supreme authority in the field of cosmogony and geoscience; all geographical ideas were based on its data and aimed at explaining them.

“Theories” spread widely about the earth floating in the ocean on whales or turtles, about a precisely defined “edge of the earth,” about the firmament supported by pillars, etc. Geography was subject to biblical canons: Jerusalem was located in the center of the earth, in the east, beyond the lands of Gog and Magog, there was a paradise from which Adam and Eve were expelled; all these lands were washed by the ocean that arose as a result of the global flood.

One of the most popular at that time was the “geographical theory” of the Alexandrian merchant and then monk Cosmas Indicopleus (Indicopleistos, that is, who sailed to India), who lived in the first half of the 6th century. He “proved” that the earth has the shape of the “tabernacle of Moses,” that is, the tent of the biblical prophet Moses, a rectangle with a length to width ratio of 2: 1 and a semicircular vault. An ocean with four gulf-sea (Roman, i.e. Mediterranean, Red, Persian and Caspian) separates the inhabited land from the eastern land, where paradise is located and where the Nile, Ganges, Tigris and Euphrates originate. In the northern part of the land there is a high mountain around which the celestial spheres revolve; in the summer, when the sun is high, it does not hide behind the peak for long, and therefore summer nights are short compared to winter, when it goes behind the foot of the mountain.

Views of this kind were naturally supported by the church as “true”, consistent with the spirit of Holy Scripture. It is not surprising that as a result of this, absolutely fantastic information about various regions and the peoples inhabiting them was spread in Western European society - people with dog heads and generally headless people, having four eyes, living by the smell of apples, etc. A perverted legend, or even just fiction , having no soil, became the basis of the geographical ideas of that era.

One of these legends, however, played a significant role in the political and social life of the early and developed Middle Ages; this is a legend about the Christian state of the priest John, supposedly located somewhere in the east. Now it is difficult to determine what is at the basis of this legend - either vague ideas about the Christians of Ethiopia, Transcaucasia, the Nestorians of China, or a simple invention caused by the hope of outside help in the fight against a formidable enemy. Various embassies and journeys were undertaken in search of this state, a natural ally of European Christian countries in their struggle against the Arabs and Turks.

Against the background of the primitive views of the Christian West, the geographical ideas of the Arabs stand out sharply. Arab travelers and sailors already in the early Middle Ages collected a huge amount of data about many, including distant, countries. “The horizons of the Arabs,” according to the Soviet Arabist I. Yu. Krachkovsky, “embraced essentially all of Europe with the exception of the Far North, the southern half of Asia, North Africa... and the shores of East Africa... The Arabs gave a complete description of all countries from Spain to Turkestan and the mouth of the Indus with a detailed listing of settlements, with characteristics cultural spaces and deserts, indicating the distribution of cultivated plants and the location of minerals.”

The Arabs also played a big role in preserving the ancient geographical heritage, already in the 9th century. translating the geographical works of Ptolemy into Arabic. True, having accumulated a huge wealth of information about the world around them, the Arabs did not create large generalizing works that would theoretically comprehend all this baggage; their general concepts about the structure of the earth's surface did not exceed Ptolemy. However, it was precisely because of this that Arab geographical science had a great influence on the science of the Christian West.

Travel in the early Middle Ages was random and episodic. They were not faced with geographical tasks: the expansion of geographical ideas was only an incidental consequence of the main goals of these expeditions. And they were most often religious motives (pilgrimages and missionaries), trade or diplomatic purposes, and sometimes military conquests (often robbery). Naturally, the geographical information obtained in this way was fantastic and inaccurate, and did not last long in people’s memory.

However, before moving on to the story of the geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages, it is necessary to understand the very concept of geographical discovery. The essence of this concept causes great differences among historians of geography. Some of them propose to consider the first historically proven visit by representatives of peoples who know writing to lands unknown to them as a geographical discovery; others are the first description or mapping of these lands; still others separate the discoveries of inhabited lands and uninhabited objects, etc.

Various “levels” of territorial discoveries are also considered. At the first of them, local, the discovery of a given territory by the people inhabiting it occurs. This information remains, as a rule, the property of one people and often disappears with it. The next level is regional: information about various areas, regions, often located far from the places of settlement of the exploring peoples; they are often random in nature and do not have much influence on the geographical ideas of subsequent eras. And, finally, discoveries of a world, global level, becoming the property of all humanity.

The discoveries of Western European travelers of the early Middle Ages relate, as a rule, to the regional level. Many of them were forgotten or did not even become widely known to the world of that time; world science learned about them only in the 19th-20th centuries; the memory of others has survived through the centuries, but mainly in the form of legends and fantastic stories, so far removed from their basis that it is now impossible to establish their true essence. But this does not detract from the importance of sometimes insanely daring enterprises that evoke in us both a feeling of admiration and distrust. These feelings are further strengthened by the thought that only a small part of the travels was reflected in written monuments.

The most common in the early Middle Ages were travel for “pious” purposes - pilgrimages and missionaries. As for pilgrimages, most of them were limited to Rome; only individuals dared to go to Jerusalem. Missionary work, especially Irish, had a much greater scope. Irish hermit monks in the VI-VIII centuries. opened the road to the Hebrides, Shetland, Farrer Islands and even to Iceland and partially populated them (however, this colonization, in particular of Iceland, was short-lived). Sometimes missionaries undertook journeys that were exceptional in their courage: these include the alleged journey of the Nestorian missionary Syrian Olopen (7th century) to China and the more reliable journey of the English bishop Sigelm (9th century) to South India.

Largest quantity geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages fell to the share of the Normans. The Swedes, Norwegians and Danes pushed far beyond the boundaries of the medieval ecumene, visiting Iceland and Greenland, on the shores of the White and Caspian Seas, in northern Africa and northeast America. Their discoveries are a striking example of “regional” discoveries: by the second half of the 15th century. not only did the Norman settlements in Greenland and Newfoundland degrade and die out, but the very news of the discoveries of these lands disappeared from the memory of medieval society, without having any impact on the formation of the geographical ideas of subsequent eras.

The embassies of that era had an immeasurably greater resonance in society. The most important of them include: the Estonian embassy to the court of Theodoric of Ostrogoth (VI century), two embassies of Charlemagne to Harun al-Rashid (IX century), Arab diplomatic missions to Eastern Europe (Scandinavia, Volga Bulgaria, etc.) and other diplomatic enterprises sometimes have insufficiently defined destinations (for example, in the “state of priest John”). The actual diplomatic value of all these embassies was small, but they played a big role in arousing the interest of Western European society in new countries.

From the above it is clear that the scope of travel in the early Middle Ages was small: over the course of half a millennium, only a few of them resulted in serious discoveries. And the point here is not only that we know some of these enterprises; those remaining unknown were unlikely to be widely known to their contemporaries. The reason for the low scope of travel is that trade, the main incentive for this type of activity, was of a casual nature.

ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN GEOGRAPHICAL WORKS

Geographical ideas of the ancient Scandinavians

Great interest in Scandinavia in the geography of the world in the XII-XIV centuries. quite natural. The wealth of practical experience and knowledge on the topography of Europe was accumulated back in the Viking Age as a result of numerous campaigns of the Scandinavians to the west around Europe, to the islands of the North Atlantic up to the coast of North America and to the east, including Asia Minor, the Caspian countries, and the Middle Volga region. This knowledge, not being consolidated in written form until the 12th century, was nevertheless preserved in society and was reflected in the literature that existed at that time, primarily in sagas. The penetration of Western European scientific works gave impetus to the creation of their own geographical literature, which was supposed to consolidate practical experience and summarize a variety of information about the lands known to the Scandinavians.

At the same time, Latin chorography significantly expanded the range of geographical knowledge of the Scandinavians. By the 12th century. it has already spanned six centuries of existence and has absorbed two very different traditions, the unification of which took place in the 6th-11th centuries. The most important complexes from which medieval geographers drew information and were guided were late Roman geographical works (through which the Middle Ages became acquainted with ancient geography) and biblical cosmology and geography (72).

Ancient geography conveyed to the Middle Ages both its greatest achievements (ideas about the spherical shape of the Earth, latitudinal zonality, etc.), as well as a complex of information about the countries and peoples of the inhabited world, especially about those of them, contact with which was lost in the Middle Ages (Middle Ages). , Southeast Asia, Africa, except the Mediterranean coast).

The direct source of ancient geographical knowledge was the works of Julius Solin “Collection of things worthy of mention,” written at the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 4th century. n. e. and containing excerpts from the works of Marcus Terence Varro (116-27 BC), Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), Pomponius Mela (1st century AD), Macrobius "Comments" to the sleep of Scipio" (the turn of the 4th-5th centuries), Marcian, Capella "On the marriage of Philology and Mercury" (5th century), and finally, the most extensive encyclopedia of the Spanish bishop Isidore of Seville (c. 570-636) (73), which was the most important source of geographical knowledge of the Middle Ages.

The second fundamental source of medieval geography was biblical cosmogony and cosmology and biblical geography. The formation of geographical ideas was most influenced by the books “Genesis” and “Book of Job” from the Old Testament literature, and from the New Testament literature - the epistles of Paul. The interpretation of the first chapters of the book of Genesis, which tells about the creation of the Universe and the Earth, gave rise to an extensive literature, the beginning of which was laid by a Byzantine author of the 4th century. Basil of Caesarea (74). The role of the biblical tradition was especially great in the formation of the most general “theoretical” ideas about the world, which determined both the selection and interpretation of specific geographical facts.

However, despite the authoritarianism of the biblical picture of the world, attempts to create a geographical model of the Earth only on the basis of the Bible without taking into account practical data did not spread in Western Europe. “Christian Topography” by Cosmas Indicoplov (beginning of the 6th century), representing an attempt to bring together and formulate biblical cosmological and geographical ideas into a complete system, aroused criticism from contemporaries and did not find apologists in Western Europe (75). Therefore, the adaptation and coordination of ancient positive knowledge with the Christian concept of the universe, the formation of a more or less consistent picture of the Earth became the main task of Christian geographers of the early Middle Ages.

This task was no longer faced by Scandinavian geographers of the 12th-14th centuries. The ancient heritage was processed and included in the Christian geographical system much earlier and could not be perceived as something alien or foreign in it. The main task was to combine his own varied and extensive practical experience with geographical information and the general picture of the Earth in Christian geography (76). The result was the creation of a peculiar fusion of Christian (but in many moments going back to antiquity) ideas about the world, its divisions, landscape, peoples and specific, real information about Scandinavia itself and the lands surrounding it. At the same time, the topography of the ecumene played an important role in both Christian and pagan systems of ideas. Therefore, in the treatises published below, a complex interweaving of heterogeneous elements is revealed (77).

The spatial horizon of Old Scandinavian geographical treatises basically covers the ecumene of the ancient world (78) in the form and extent as it was reflected in medieval chorography. The maximum expansion of the boundaries of known lands (before the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries) dates back to two periods: IV century. BC e. - the time of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, when Europeans became directly acquainted with the countries of the East, Central Asia and real information appeared about remote areas of East Asia up to China, and the first centuries of our era - the heyday of the Roman Empire (79). This information continued to be preserved throughout the Middle Ages, but, not enriched by personal experience and direct contacts with the remote territories of Asia and Africa, it hardens and solidifies as a stable and unchangeable set of cliches.

Based on the works of Orosius (beginning of the 5th century), Isidore of Seville (late 6th - first third of the 7th century), and Beda the Venerable (late 7th - first third of the 8th century), Old Scandinavian geographical treatises reproduce the entire complex of traditional Western European chorography. They describe the territory from India in the east to Spain and Ireland in the west, extending south all the way to Ethiopia and the Sahara. The book origin of these descriptions is manifested both in the absence of any new data compared to their predecessors, and in the use of only established place names dating back to ancient times. The lack of personal knowledge about Asia and Africa is also reflected in constant inaccuracies in the transfer of names, errors in the placement of countries, assignment (sometimes in one work) of the same country to different parts of the world, etc.

However, the spatial horizon in Old Scandinavian geographical works is wider than in Western European chorography. It also includes those territories that were practically unknown to Western European geographers, but well known to the Scandinavians: the Scandinavian countries and Finland, Eastern Europe, islands Atlantic Ocean, North America. Knowledge about them accumulated gradually, starting from the 8th century, i.e., from the first Viking campaigns, which was reflected in the oldest written sources of Scandinavia - runic monuments (80). Personal acquaintance with these regions is obvious both from the large number of details of a topographical, ethnographic, historical nature (81), and from the creation of their own toponymy for them.

Ideas about the shape, size and structure of the world are one of the most essential sections of geographical knowledge in any era. Created during the period of dominance of Christian ideology, geographical works could not but rely on the cosmological and geographical ideas fundamental to Christianity. In Old Scandinavian astronomical literature and computer science, based on practical observations, the Earth is often called jar ?ar bollr - " globe" (82). In geographical literature and sagas, the shape of the Earth is not specifically mentioned. In medieval geography, the idea of ​​a spherical shape of the Earth, inherited from antiquity, was not forgotten or rejected (83). Although the most famous Christian authors in Scandinavia, Orosius, Isidore and some others passed over the question of the shape of the Earth in silence; in other works, manuscripts of which were also available in medieval libraries in Scandinavia (for example, “De sphaera” by Sacrobosco), the sphericity of the Earth was not only asserted, but also proved by experimental data. And with these ideas, the Old Scandinavian ones. the scribes could not help but be familiar. The same assumption could have been put forward by the Scandinavians themselves on the basis of their own astronomical and navigational observations, for example by Odin the Astrologer (84).

According to geographical treatises, the ecumene is surrounded by a “world sea” ( úmsjór" or, according to the book, the Ocean"). The idea of ​​​​a river-ocean washing the inhabited world is characteristic of all ancient literature, began with Homer, and goes into the Middle Ages (85); at the same time, in Old Scandinavian pagan cosmology the idea of ​​​​an “outer sea” is also presented ".

The inhabited world (heimr) is divided into three parts: Asia, Africa and Europe, the first of which occupies the eastern half (much less often - a third) of the world, the second - the south of the western half, the third - the north of the western half. Parts of the world are separated by the Mediterranean Sea, which is considered as a gulf of the World Ocean, and the Tanais (Don) and Geon (Nile) rivers. It is obvious that the views on the division of the Earth and the boundaries of parts in Old Scandinavian geography are not original, but were borrowed from Western European authors, who, in turn, fully rely on the ancient tradition coming from Hecataeus (86).

In the extreme east, in accordance with biblical geography, paradise is located, a detailed description of which was borrowed from Isidore (Etym., XIV, HI, 2-3) (87). Thus, ideas about the origin and organization of physical-geographical space are fully consistent with the Christian concept of the world, developed in the works of major theologians of the 3rd-5th centuries. ad.

The problems of ethnogenesis in geographical treatises are essentially consistent with the biblical ethnogenetic legend: after the Flood, the world was populated by the descendants of Noah: Shem (Asia), Ham (Africa) and Japheth (Europe); from them come all the nations living in the world. However, the list of peoples given in the Bible (Genesis, IX, 18 - XI, 32) (88) and determined by the spatial horizons of its creators, did not correspond at all to the historical situation of the 12th-14th centuries, nor to the horizons of Old Scandinavian geographers. A significant number of European peoples, and primarily the Scandinavians themselves, found themselves not involved in the single family of Christian peoples. Therefore, the lists of peoples descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, already somewhat replenished by Jerome and Isidore, are subject to further expansion and modernization in Scandinavia. Leaving the lists of peoples of Asia and Africa practically untouched, the compilers of both general descriptions of the Earth and the special treatise “On the settlement of the earth by the sons of Noah” include in the list of peoples of Europe primarily the inhabitants of Scandinavia, the Eastern Baltic states, Ancient Rus', based on the information at their disposal about the ethnic composition of these regions.

Among the general problems of physical geography considered by ancient geographers (climate, the origin of physical-geographical phenomena, soils, etc.), the Middle Ages continued to develop the theory of latitudinal zoning (89). Following the Western European tradition, Old Scandinavian geographers distinguished three climatic zones: hot, temperate and cold, of which only the temperate is considered suitable for life.

Based on their own observations, they clarify the northern boundaries of the habitable zone, moving them much further to the north: they consider Bjarmaland and Greenland connected to it (according to the then ideas) to be the northernmost inhabited area. European geographers, unfamiliar with Scandinavia, usually go as far as southern Sweden and Norway in their descriptions, and sometimes mention Iceland, but the northern part of Fennoscandia and Eastern Europe is practically unknown to them.

Spatial orientation as a problem is more philosophical than geographical, but the principles of orientation of the physical space surrounding a person play a very important role in characterizing the geographical views of the ancient Scandinavians. It has long been noted that the direction of movement indicated in the sagas (and cardinal directions in geographical treatises) can both correspond to the real one and deviate from it, and no system in these deviations could be identified. However, a study of the ancestral sagas (90) showed that there were two orientation systems: one related to the description of voyages on the high seas and based on fairly accurate observations of the starry sky, the second - to characterize movement on land (in this study - inside Iceland) and when coastal navigation, based on the administrative division of Iceland into quarters. In the first system, the directions are real and denoted by the terms nor ?r, su?r, vestr, austr ( north, south, west, east) are the same. In the second, the center of orientation is the administrative center of each of the quarters, and the direction of movement is determined relative to it, and not to the cardinal points, i.e. when moving from the Western to the Northern quarter, the direction was designated as northern, although the real one was northeastern or eastern.

Apparently, similar principles of space orientation are reflected in geographical treatises, where, as a rule, the center of orientation is the southern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the direction is determined by the initial phase of movement: that is, all lands, no matter how they are actually located in relation to Scandinavia are considered to lie to the east if the path to them goes through the Eastern Baltic States and Rus' (for example, Byzantium, Palestine), or to the north if the path runs through the northern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Thus, the system of spatial orientation in geographical treatises is highly arbitrary and does not always correspond to the real one.

geographical middle ages traveler discovery

Medieval discoveries

Discoveries of the peoples of Central, East and South Asia. Geographical results of Genghis Khan's campaigns

The upper reaches of the Onon and Ingoda were the ancestral nomads of Temujin, the leader of one of the Mongol tribes. His military talent and the disunity of opponents from other clans allowed him to defeat his main rivals in the struggle for supreme power in 21 years (1183-1204). At the kurultai (congress) of the Mongol aristocracy in 1206, 50-year-old Temujin was proclaimed great khan with the title “Genghis Khan”. In the same year, he began a series of victorious campaigns of conquest, continued by his sons and other Genghisids after his death (1227) until the end of the 13th century. The striking force of the Mongol army was made up of exclusively maneuverable, numerous and well-armed cavalry. In 1207-1211 Zhochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, took possession of the lands of the “forest peoples”: the interfluve of the Angara and the upper Lena, where the Buryats lived, the country of Barguzhinskaya - the valleys of the river. Khilok and Barguzin. The Mongols reached the Vitim Plateau and captured the area between the Shilki and Ergunekun (Arguni) rivers. Zhochi's cavalry passed through the Arguni valley and its tributary Hailar and conquered lands in the Amur bend, formed by the northern half of the ridge. Greater Khingan between 120 and 126° E. d. west of Lake Baikal. “Zhochi took over the Mongolian” territory in the upper reaches of the Yenisei and Ob. Generals of Genghis Khan in 1219-1221. captured the endless expanses of the Kulunda, Barabinsk and Ishim steppes with numerous lakes (the largest is Chany) and appeared on the outskirts of Vasyugan, a flat taiga-swamp region in the south of the West Siberian Plain. They got acquainted with the middle and lower reaches of the Irtysh and its tributary Ishim, and further to the west, crossing the Tobol, they reached the Middle Urals.

Not earlier than 1240, an anonymous Mongolian author created the historical chronicle “The Secret Legend.” In addition to the biography of Genghis Khan and information about the reign of his youngest son Ogedei, it contains the first geographical description of the “Burkan-Kalun Mountain”, from which nine rivers flow, including Kerulen, Onon (Amur basin) and several tributaries of the Selenga. Obviously, we are talking about the Khentei Highlands, a large hydrographic hub of Central Asia (length 250 km, peak 2800 m).

Another source that allows us to judge the geographical knowledge of the Mongols is the “Collection of Chronicles” by F. Rashidaddin, an Iranian scientist and statesman of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. According to Rashiddin, they had some idea of ​​the entire flat-topped Khangai highland (about 700 km), from which many tributaries of the Selenga originate, including the Orkhon in the southeast and the Adar (Ider) in the northwest.

The Mongols were the first to become acquainted with most of the river. Cam (Yenisei); they knew that in its upper reaches it receives eight rivers, and then flows “into the Ankara-muren river”: even in our time, the Yenisei was considered a tributary of the Angara; they established that “this river [Angara-Yenisei] flows into... an area adjacent to which is the [Kara] Sea. Silver is found everywhere [in that region." Soon after 1232, a detachment of 1 thousand people was sent there on a ship under the command of three emirs. “They delivered a lot of silver to the [river] bank, but could not load it onto the ship... more than 300 people did not return, the rest died from the putrid air and damp fumes. All three emirs [however] returned safely and lived long [after the campaign].”

It is, of course, difficult to determine with certainty how far north this first expedition along the Yenisei climbed, but most likely they descended the river beyond 68° N. w., i.e. traced more than 1,500 km of its middle and lower reaches, and reached the region of the Norilsk Mountains, the western part of the Putorana plateau, rich various metals. In other words, they marked the beginning of the discovery of the Central Siberian Plateau.

Explorers of China VI-XII centuries

The basin of the middle reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze, as well as the Xijiang system in the 6th century. explored by traveler and scientist Li Daoyuan. He paid attention not only to hydrography - he also described in great detail the vegetation, climate and topography of the areas visited. The result of his research was extensive comments on the Shuijing, a work on the hydrography of the main river systems of China, compiled by an anonymous author in the 3rd century.

Until the 7th century. The Chinese had no idea not only about the Tibetan Plateau and the tribes inhabiting this harsh region, but even about the true origins of “their” river. Yellow River. In 635, Hu Tsunqi, commander of a punitive expedition directed against the rebel Tibetans, probably from Lanzhou, near 104° E. etc., walked along the mountain roads to the west to Lake Dzharin-Nur and “contemplated the sources of the Yellow River.” Its discovery was confirmed almost two centuries later by Liu Yuan-ting, who was appointed Chinese ambassador to Tibet. Departing from Xining, 102° E. d., in 822, on his way to Lhasa he crossed the Yellow River near Dzharin-Nur. Both, apparently, did not imagine that the Yellow River, bending around the ridge. Amne-Machin makes an almost 500-kilometer “detour”.

In the 8th century Chinese surveyors of the Tang Empire carried out surveys of the coast and basins of the main rivers of the country. Its results are reflected on a map compiled by cartographer Jia Dan in the second half of the 8th century, carved on a stone stele in 1137 and surviving to this day. It is oriented to the north; the relief is shown as chaotic “slides”; no scale; coastline filmed over more than 5 thousand km from 40 to 20° N. sh., is very sketchy: Bohai Bay has highly distorted outlines, the Shandong Peninsula is presented in the form of a short protrusion, about. Hainan is a latitudinal oval, Bakbo Bay is absent. The survey gives an idea of ​​the general configuration of the main river systems: r. The Yellow River has two characteristic tribes - the northern (Ordos) and southern (Taihanshan) and two relatively large tributaries, including the Weihe. To the north of the upper reaches of the Yellow River, surveyors photographed Lake Kukunor, and in the lower reaches - four rivers that, like the Yellow River, flow into Bohai Bay. River system The Yangtze (excluding the upper course) is quite realistic: the elbow to the east of the confluence of the short meridional tributary (Yalongjiang?) is photographed, the bends before the exit from the Sanxia Gorge and the confluence of the Hanynui are noted, three large left tributaries are depicted - Minjiang, Jialingjiang and Hanshui, and from the right - Xiangjiang with Lake Dongting and Ganjiang, south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze Lake Taihu is put on the map. The currents of the river were filmed relatively close to reality. Huaihe and Xijiang with numerous tributaries.

Probably at the end of the 11th century. A new survey of the coast and the same river systems was carried out. As a result, around 1100, another map appeared with a square grid (scale - 100 li on the side of the square, i.e. about 80 km in 1 cm), but without “slides”; the contours of the banks have been significantly improved; True, the shape of Bohaiwan Bay is still incorrect - there is no Liaodong Bay and the outlines of the Shandong Peninsula are distorted, but the Minhongkou Bays have already been identified, at 35° N. sh., Hangzhouwan and Bakbo (its contours are rough - the Leizhou Peninsula is very small) and the figure of o. Hainan. The configuration of the main river basins is very close to reality. Length of the filmed part of the river. The Yellow River, counting from its mouth, was 2,600 km long; five left and five right tributaries, including the Datonghe and Weihe, were almost correctly mapped. The Yangtze River has been mapped for about 2,700 km, the contours of the main river and its three tributaries noted above have been noticeably corrected, and three more of its left tributaries have been mapped relatively correctly; Of the five right, in addition to Xiangjiang, surveys were taken of Qianjiang, Yuanjiang, as well as Ganjiang with Lake Poyang. Improved images of the Huaihe and Xijiang Rivers. According to a number of historians, the work of Chinese surveyors reflected on the map is an outstanding achievement of the late Middle Ages: the outlines of the banks and flows of the main rivers on it are better than on any European or eastern map before the period of modern systematic surveys.

From the 7th century The Chinese began to populate the coastal areas of the island. Hainan, which lasted until the 12th century. The colonists, having pushed the indigenous inhabitants, the ancestors of the Li and Miao peoples, into its central mountainous part, became familiar with the entire island. The island of Lutsuo (Taiwan), which is mentioned in Chinese chronicles of the 1st-3rd centuries, became the object of expansion in 610, when a 10,000-strong Chinese army landed on the island. Probably, from this time on, the flow of colonists from the mainland increased. In the second decade of the 9th century. the settler Shi Jiangu, who tried (unsuccessfully) to unite the Gaoshan tribes, i.e. mountaineers, carried out the first study of the island and compiled its detailed description.

Trade routes and discoveries of the Arabs in the Middle Ages

Arab trade routes

From the 7th century n. e. The Arabs living on the Arabian Peninsula began to spread their power and their new, militant Mohammedan, or Muslim, religion - Islam (submission in Arabic) - over a vast territory. In the east they conquered the entire Iranian Highlands and Turkestan, to the north of Arabia - Mesopotamia, the Armenian Highlands and part of the Caucasus, in the northwest - Syria and Palestine, in the west - all of North Africa. In 711, the Arabs crossed the strait, which from that time began to be called by a distorted Arabic name - Gibraltar, and within seven years (711-718) they conquered almost the entire Iberian Peninsula. Thus, in the 8th century. n. e. The Arabs controlled the western, southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, all the shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and the northern coast of the Arabian Sea. They settled on the most important land routes connecting Eastern Europe - through Central Asia or the Caucasus and the Iranian Plateau - with India, and on the western section of the Great silk road. Thanks to this, the Arabs became intermediaries in European trade with all of South and Southeast Asia and with China. Even in ancient times and at the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Arabs played a large role in the trade of countries adjacent to the Indian Ocean. They now occupied key positions on the great trade routes in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean and became complete masters in its western part.

Light, flat-bottomed medieval Arab ships were built from coconut tree trunks. “Their ships are bad, and many of them perish, because they are not nailed together with iron nails, but are sewn together with ropes from the bark of Indian [coconut] nuts... These ropes are strong and do not deteriorate from salt water. Ships have one mast, one sail and one oar” (Marco Polo). Arab sailors walked along the coast, and only very experienced ones dared to cross the ocean.

The main Asian goods supplied by the Arabs to Europe through the Persian Gulf to Baghdad or across the Red Sea to the Isthmus of Suez were expensive fabrics, ivory, precious stones and pearls, black slaves, gold, but especially spices. The fact is that in medieval Europe the mass slaughter of livestock took place in late autumn, when pasture began to disappear. Whole barrels of meat were salted for future use, and spices were widely used so that the meat did not lose its taste or spoil. And they were literally worth their weight in gold on the European market. Tropical spices grew at that time only in the south and southeast of Asia. In trade, the first place was occupied by pepper, distributed throughout almost all of tropical Asia. But the main place of his culture was the Malabar coast, from where ginger and cardamom also came. Indonesia supplied cloves and nutmeg, Sri Lanka supplied cinnamon. And this Indian trade with Europe was monopolized by the Arabs.

Ibn Rust about the Volga Bulgarians and Rus

In the first decade of the 10th century. The Persian Abu Ali Ibn Ruste (or Rusta) compiled a large work in Arabic called “Dear Values”. Only the part devoted to astronomy and geography has reached us: it, by the way, contains information about the peoples of Eastern Europe. He begins with the Turkic-speaking Volga-Kama Bulgarians, among whom no later than the 9th century. Islam began to spread. Ibn Ruste was not in their country, but collected information, undoubtedly, from traveling Muslim merchants. “Bulgaria borders on the country of the Burtases. The Bulgarians live on the banks of a river that flows into the Khazar Sea [Caspian] and is called Itil [Volga], flowing between the country of the Khazars and the Slavs. Their country is covered with swamps and dense forests, among which they live. The Khazars trade with the Bulgarians, and the Rus also bring their goods to them. All [the peoples] who live on both banks of the aforementioned river bring their goods to them [the Bulgarians]... sable, ermine, squirrel and other furs. The Bulgarians are an agricultural people... Most of them profess Islam... Between the Burtases and these Bulgarians the distance is three days' journey... The Bulgarians have horses, chain mail and full weapons. Their main wealth is marten fur... They replace specie coins with marten furs.”

Next, Ibn Rusta reports about the Slavs and Rus. This confused account was probably borrowed from Muslim al-Jarmi, whose works have not reached us. Ibn Ruste read or heard about the city of Kuyab (Kyiv), located “on the border of the country of the Slavs... The path to their country goes through the steppes, through roadless lands, through streams and dense forests. The country of the Slavs is flat and wooded; they live in the forests... The Russians live on an island, among lakes. This island... occupies the space of three days' journey. It is covered with forests and swamps... They raid the Slavs: they approach them on boats, disembark, take them prisoner, take them to Khazaria and Bulgaria and sell them there. They have no arable land, and they eat what they bring from the land of the Slavs... their only trade is trade... in furs. They dress unkemptly, their men wear gold bracelets. The slaves are treated well. They have many cities and live in open spaces. They are tall, prominent and brave people, but they do not show this courage on horseback - they carry out all their raids and campaigns on ships.”

Russian discovery of Eastern and Northern Europe and the first campaigns in Western Siberia (IX-XV centuries)

Campaigns in Ugra and North-Western Siberia in the 11th-14th centuries

In the “Tale of Bygone Years” in the year 1096 there is a story from Novgorodian Gyuryata Rogovitsa: “I sent [about 1092] my youth [combatant] to Pechora, to the people who give tribute to Novgorod; and my boy came to them, and from there he went to [the land of] Ugra. Ugra is a people, but its language is incomprehensible; neighbors with Samoyed in the northern countries. Yugra said to my youth: “There are mountains, they go into the bow [bay] of the sea; their height reaches to the sky... and in [one] mountain there is a small window cut through, and from there they speak, but they cannot understand their language, but they point to iron and wave their hands, asking for iron; and if anyone gives them a knife or an axe, they give furs in return. The path to those mountains is impassable because of abysses, snow and forests, and therefore we do not always reach them; he goes further north.” From this story, the Russian historian D. M. Karamzin concluded that the Novgorodians crossed the Urals already in the 11th century. However, they could have collected such information west of the Stone. As can be seen from Gyuryata’s words, his messenger did not even see high mountains. And yet, today historians believe that the “youth” visited the Urals, but how did he get there (with the help of Komi guides)? Most likely, he climbed up the river. Pechora to its tributary Shchugor and crossed the Northern Urals on the most convenient road for crossing, which was later used by many Novgorod squads. On Pechora, the envoy apparently met with the “forest people” (“pe-chera”) - taiga hunters and fishermen. Beyond the Urals, in the basin of the Northern Sosva (Ob system), in a country rich in fur-bearing animals, lived the Ugra - and to this day, or rather, the Yegra, the Komi call the Voguls (Mansi). It was they who told the “youth” through interpreters - the same Komi people - about the Sirtya people (“Chud” of Russian chronicles), “cutting the earth.”

In the second half of the 12th century. chroniclers note two campaigns of the Ushkuiniks for tribute in Ugra. In 1193, the Novgorod governor Yadrey made a campaign there. He collected tribute in silver, sables and “ina uzorochye” (ivory items) and brought information about the Samoyads, the northern neighbors of Ugra, who lived in the forests (“pe-chera”) and in the tundra (“laitanchera”). In the middle of the 13th century. Novgorodians named Perm, Pechora and Ugra among their northern volosts. According to records of the XII-XIII centuries. It is still impossible to find out which Ugra we are talking about, Podkamennaya or Zakamennaya, in other words, it cannot be argued that the warriors crossed the Urals. But the Rostov record of the 14th century. is already completely clear: “That same winter, Novgorodians arrived from Ugra. The children of the boyars and the young people of the governor Alexander Abakumovich fought on the Ob River and to the sea, and the other half is higher along the Ob...” This record leaves no doubt that they penetrated east beyond the Urals, but it does not indicate which road. Probably, the detachment operating in the lower reaches of the Ob, “to the sea,” climbed the Usa, the right tributary of the lower Pechora, and then crossed the Polar Urals to the Sob, a tributary of the Ob. And the detachment that fought “higher along the Ob” could also go there by the southern route, along the river. Shchugor on the upper reaches of the Northern Sosva, and crossed the Northern Urals, and the territory along the lower Ob to the mouth of the Irtysh became a Novgorod volost.

Discovery of the Kara Sea and the route to Mangazeya

Probably in the XII-XIII centuries. Russian Pomor industrialists, in search of “precious junk” (furs) and new walrus rookeries, entered the Kara Sea through the Yugorsky Shar or Kara Gate. They “sailed” east across the sea through “evil places” to the Yamal Peninsula, and on its western low-lying coast they discovered rich deposits of walruses; climbed the river Muddy, flowing into Baydaratskaya Bay; through a short dry portage (watershed) they dragged their boats to the upper reaches of the river. Green, flowing into the Ob Bay. “And the dry portage from lake to lake in the upper reaches of both rivers is half a mile or more, and the place is flat, the ground is sandy.” Descending the Zelenaya, the Pomors entered the mouths of the Ob and Taz. Typically, the sea route from the Northern Dvina to Taz took four to five weeks, and from the mouth of the Pechora - no more than three. On Taz, industrialists organized several trading points (fortresses) and conducted “silent bargaining” there with the local residents - the Khanty and Nenets. The lower reaches of Taz were the core of Mangazeya, which all Russian fur traders then dreamed of.

Except for the northern one sea ​​route across the great sea-okiyap. Other roads, longer and more difficult, led to Mangazeya from the Pechora - along the tributaries of the Pechora and through the watersheds of the Stone Belt to the tributaries of the Ob. The first, northern road went, as already indicated, up the Usa to Kamen, and then along the Sobsky portage to the Sobi, the northern tributary of the Ob. The second led from Pechora through Kamen to Northern Sosva and Ob. The third, southern one led from the Kama basin and its tributary Chusovaya to the Irtysh basin through Tura, Tavda and Tobol. But it was also the longest: instead of three weeks of sailing, it took about three months, if it was not “spotted” by the Siberian Tatars who lived along the lower Tobol and Irtysh. The Tatars were disunited and weak in the 15th century, and some of their princes even paid tribute to the Grand Duke of Moscow.

As a result of numerous voyages and trips to the northern fur-bearing regions of Western Siberia, Pomor industrialists collected the first information about the Samoyeds - Samoyed peoples who lived beyond the Yugra land, east of the Ob Bay. This news is reflected in the legend “About Unknown Men in the Eastern Country,” now dating from the end of the 15th century. Although it seems fantastic only upon superficial acquaintance, it contains a fairly accurate, based on real facts, characterization of the anthropological type of Samoyeds (mainly Nenets) and their everyday life. The legend contains a mention of the lands “at the top of the Obi River,” whose population lives in dugouts and mines ore, which should probably be associated with Altai and its “Chud” mines.

List of sources used

#"justify">Ancient Scandinavians. Sons of the northern gods. Davidson Hilda

Discoveries of ancient and medieval peoples. Magidovich V.I.

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The first information about geographical ideas appeared since the advent of writing. One can attest to the existence of two independent centers of geographical thought in the ancient world: Greco-Roman and Chinese. The thinkers of the ancient period described in some detail the world close to them, and also added a lot of fantastic things about distant lands. The combination of materialistic and idealistic views is a characteristic feature of ancient scientists. Many philosophers and historians have studied issues of geography. At that time, the SEG did not exist; even unified geography was a reference branch of knowledge. In ancient times, two directions arose: 1) description of special countries, their nature, ethnic make-up of the population, etc. (Herodotus, Strabo, etc.); 2) study of the Earth as a whole, its place relative to other planets, its shape and size (Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, etc.). The first direction was called regional geography, the second - general geography.

In European culture, the father of geography and history is the Greek Herodotus, who traveled a lot and in his descriptions spoke about distant lands and previously unknown peoples. Herodotus can also be considered the father of ethnography, because. he vividly described the traditions of other peoples. It also gave rise to geographical determinism.

The second outstanding Greek, Aristotle, developed the concept of the different properties of the Earth for human life and dependence on geographic latitude. He presented settlement conditions as a function of geographic latitude and gave instructions on the best placement of cities. Aristotle's ideas were the basis for the development of science in Europe in the early Middle Ages.

Between 330 - 300 BC. Pytheas traveled to the northwestern part of Europe. He described the lifestyle and activities of the inhabitants of the British Isles and discovered Iceland. He noted the change in the nature of agriculture from the south to the north. Pytheas made the first scientific journey, i.e. travel for the purpose of scientific research. Upon returning home, no one believed him about what he saw, but in vain, because... He was the first to draw attention to the phenomena that today constitute the interests of agricultural geography.

At the beginning of our era, a reference book for sailors (peripla) and travelers (periges) already existed in Greece. The periplus described sea shores and ports in detail. The Periplus covered the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and the eastern coast of Africa. The authors of perigeses were often logographers, i.e. writers who traveled the Earth and described what they saw. Logographers compiled specific geographical descriptions, in which special attention was paid to the life of the local population.

The spread of Greek culture was facilitated by the campaigns of Alexander the Great (IV century BC). They were attended by scientists who collected information about various lands.

Unlike the Greek thinkers, the Romans contributed less new things to the field of geography. But even among them we can note original researchers. For government officials and military representatives of the Roman Empire, the ancient Greek geographer and historian Strabo created his “Geography”. He considered it his task to provide the necessary information about the world, so this work was the first of its kind “a reference book for the management apparatus.” Strabo believed that every geographer should have mathematical knowledge. Strabo's "Geography" was found only 600 years after it was written, and those for whom this book was intended never saw it.

The ancient Romans were warlike and enterprising. Quite often they expanded their geographical horizons through military campaigns.

At this time, there was another center of geographical thought in eastern Asia - China. In general, the European and Chinese worlds were reliably isolated from each other, but over time they gradually learned about themselves and their neighbors.

Chinese philosophers differed from the Greeks mainly in that they gave primary importance to the natural world. Geographical works by Chinese scientists can be divided into 8 groups: 1) works devoted to the study of people; 2) description of regions of China; 3) description of other countries; 4) about travel; 5) books about the rivers of China; 6) description of the coasts of China; 7) local history works; 8) geographical encyclopedias.

The ancient Romans, unlike the ancient Greeks, were great pragmatists. They mainly collected various information about countries, and the Greeks were more inclined to generalize materials. The ancient Chinese combined these traits together. SEG is an ancient science, because The life and production activities of mankind are inseparable from the natural and social environment, so society sought to actively study them. Practical requirements in the ancient period forced us to study natural conditions, population, natural wealth, settlements and communications routes, and the economy of our own and neighboring countries.

Development geographical ideas in the Middle Ages

During the early Middle Ages, productive forces were underdeveloped - science was under the influence of religion. In Christian Europe, the perception of the world decreased to the size of the lands developed by man. Most of the materialistic ideas of ancient scientists were considered heretical. At that time, religion accompanied the development of new knowledge: chronicles, descriptions, and books appeared in monasteries. This period is characterized by isolation, separation and mass ignorance of people. The Crusades raised large masses of people from their places of residence who left their homes. Returning home, they brought rich trophies and information about other countries. During this period, Arabs, Normans and Chinese made a great contribution to the development of geography. In the Middle Ages, Chinese geographical science achieved great success. There was no deep gap between antiquity and the Middle Ages, as was believed among most scientists. In Western Europe, some geographical ideas of the ancient world were known. But at that time, scientists were not yet familiar with the works of Aristotle, Strabo, and Ptolemy. Philosophers of this time used mainly retellings of the works of commentators on Aristotle's texts. Instead of the ancient natural history perception of nature, there was a mystical perception of it.

During the early Middle Ages, starting from the 7th century, Arab scientists played a major role. With the expansion of Arab expansion to the West, they became acquainted with the works of ancient scientists. The geographical horizons of the Arabs were broad; they traded with many Mediterranean, Eastern and African countries. The Arab world was a "bridge" between Western and Eastern cultures. At the end of the 14th century. Arabs made a great contribution to the development of cartography.

Some modern scholars consider Albertus Magnus to be the first European commentator on Aristotle's works. He gave characteristics of various localities. It was a time of collecting new factual material, a time of empirical research using the analytical method, but with a scholastic contribution. This is probably why the monks were engaged in this work, and they revived some ideas of ancient geography.

Some Western scientists associate the development of economic geography with the name of Marco Polo, who wrote a book about life in China.

IN XII-XIII centuries In Europe, some economic growth began to manifest itself, which was reflected in the development of crafts, trade, and commodity-money relations. After the 15th century Geographical exploration stopped in both China and the Muslim world. But in Europe they began to expand. The main driving force behind this was the spread of Christianity and the need for precious metals and hot spices. The Age of Great Geographical Discoveries gave a powerful impetus to the general development of society and also social sciences.

During the late Middle Ages (XIV-XV centuries), SEG as a science began to take shape. At the beginning of this period, in the development of geographical science, a desire for “historical geography” was revealed, when researchers looked for the location of objects that ancient thinkers spoke about in their writings.

Some scientists believe that the first economic-geographical work in history is the work of the Italian geographer Guicciardini “Description of the Netherlands,” which was published in 1567. He gave a general description of the Netherlands, including an analysis of the geographical location, an assessment of the role of the sea in the life of the country, state of manufactures and trade. Much attention was paid to the description of cities, and especially Antwerp. The work was illustrated with maps and city plans.

The theoretical foundation of geography as a science was first made in 1650 by the geographer B. Varenius in the Netherlands. In the book “General Geography” he emphasized the tendency of differentiation of geography and showed the connection between the geography of specific places and general geography. According to Varenius, works that characterize special places must be classified as special geography. And works that describe general, universal laws that apply to all places - general geography. Varenius considered special geography the most important for practical activities, especially in the field of trade and economic relations between countries. General geography provides these foundations, and they need to be rooted in practice. Thus, Varenius defined the subject of geography, the main methods of studying this science, and showed that special and general geography are two interconnected and interacting parts of the whole. Varenius considered it necessary to characterize the inhabitants, their appearance, crafts, trade, culture, language, methods of leadership or government, religion, cities, significant places and famous people.

At the end of the Middle Ages, geographical knowledge from Western Europe reached the territory of Belarus. In 1551, Bielski published the first work in Polish on world geography, which was later translated into Belarusian and Russian, which testified to the spread of knowledge in Eastern Europe about the great geographical discoveries of different countries of the world.

The development of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages (III - late XV centuries) is characterized by the development of almost exclusively regional studies. Other areas related to mathematics and fundamental natural sciences did not receive any development and were even largely forgotten.
Only in the Arab world were some ideas of antiquity preserved, without, however, receiving further development. The main carriers of geographical knowledge were merchants, officials, military men and missionaries, for whom regional knowledge formed the basis of their practical activities or public service.
Regional studies (mainly in the form of special geographical works) received the greatest development in the Arab world. This was due to the vastness of the Arab Caliphate, which, starting in the 8th century, gradually expanded from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula. One of the important factors in the development of regional studies was the intermediary nature of Arab trade between East and West in their traditional understanding.
Arab regional studies were of a reference nature; they provided information about peoples, wealth, crossings, settlements and trade items. An example is the earliest summary of this kind, dating back to the middle of the 9th century, - “The Book of Paths and States” by Ibn Hardadbek, an official under the Baghdad caliph. This is the most complete multi-volume " Geographical dictionary"of the first quarter of the 13th century, written by a Muslim from the Byzantine Greeks, Yakut (1179-1229)14.
One of the greatest experts on Arabic geographical literature, Academician I. Yu. Krachkovsky characterizes this as follows: scientific significance traveler's notes: "His interest in places is entirely subordinated to interests in people, and, of course, he did not think about any research in the field of geography, but perhaps that is why his book turned out to be the only one of its kind description of Muslim and generally Eastern society in XIV century. This is a rich treasury not only for the historical geography of its time, but also for the entire culture of that era"15.
The ecological direction of geography among the Arabs had the character of a vulgar determinism, praising the climate of the Arabian Peninsula, one of the seven “climates”, which, in contrast to the latitudinal climates of the Greeks, meant large regions of the world.
Some great Arab scientists rose to the level of genetic and cosmogonic reasoning, but they also could not rise to the level of ancient Greek scientists. Thus, the Baghdad Arab Masudi, in the 10th century. who visited the Mozambique Channel, made the first description of the monsoons, and also wrote about the evaporation of moisture from the surface of the water and subsequent condensation in the form of clouds. The great Khorezm scientist-encyclopedist Biruni was also the largest geographer of the 11th century. During his long travels he explored the Iranian plateau and much of Central Asia. Accompanying the conqueror of Khorezm, the Afghan Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznavi, on his devastating campaign against Punjab, Biruni collected extensive materials about Indian culture there and used them, together with personal observations, as the basis a lot of work about India. In this work, Biruni, in particular, writes about erosion processes, the sorting of alluvium, and finds seashells high in the mountains. He provides information about Hindu ideas about the connection of the tides with the Moon.
The outstanding scientist, philosopher, physician and musician Ibn Sina (Latinized Avicenna) (c. 980-1037) wrote about denudation processes. He described the results of his direct observations of the development of valleys by large rivers in Central Asia and, on this basis, put forward the idea of ​​​​the continuous destruction of mountainous countries. He pointed out that the mountains are beginning to wear down as they rise and that this the process is underway continuously. But, despite these (and other) individual achievements, Arab geography in the sense of theoretical concepts did not advance further than ancient geographers. Its merit lies mainly in expanding spatial horizons and preserving the ideas of antiquity for posterity.
The low level of theoretical ideas is also indicated by the maps of the Arabs, who until the 15th century. were built without a degree grid. On these maps, regular geometric shapes were used to depict geographical objects - circles, straight lines, rectangles, ovals, which changed the nature beyond recognition. “For fear of idolatry, the Koran forbade the depiction of people and animals. This prohibition was reflected on geographical maps, which were drawn as diagrams using a compass and ruler.”
The exception is the maps of al-Idrisi (1100-1165). In 1154 his "Geographical Amusements" appeared. This book, unlike the purely descriptive regional reference books of other Arab authors, contained a verification of Ptolemy's ideas and corrections of his errors based on the latest information. In addition, the book contained two maps of the world, circular and rectangular, on 70 sheets. It was these maps that departed from the Arab canons in that geographical objects were depicted on them in natural outlines. True, these maps were also built without a degree grid, i.e. in the sense of mathematical justification they were inferior to the Ptolemaic ones, but in the nomenclature they were significantly superior to them.
Let us now turn to the early Middle Ages in Europe, which was generally characterized by the decline of science. Among the geographical works of this time, the “Christian Geography” of Cosmas Indicoplov (VI century) is usually mentioned, which provides regional information on Europe, India, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia. The book became quite widely known due to the fact that it resolutely rejected the sphericity of the Earth as a delusion.
The dominance of subsistence farming in medieval Europe sharply reduced the importance of geographical knowledge. Only thanks to the crusades of 1096, 1147-1149 and 1180-1192. Europeans began to need geographical information, and also became acquainted with Arab culture.
Subsequently, significant geographical information was obtained as a result of the ambassadorial missions of the Catholic Church to the Mongol khanates, the greatest flowering of which occurred in the 13th century. Among these embassies, the first of these ambassadors was the Italian, the Franciscan monk Plano Carpini (1245-1247) and the Fleming Guillaume Rubruk (1252-1256), who reached the capital of the great Khan Karakorum in different ways, collected significant ethnographic, historical , political and regional studies material. Of particular interest is Rubruk's report on his ambassadorial mission. He was the first to correctly outline the outlines of the Caspian Sea, as some experts believe, and he was also the first to establish the main features of the relief of Central Asia, and the fact that China is washed by the ocean from the east. P. Carpini and G. Rubruk "gave Western Europe the first truly reliable description of Central Asia and the Mongolian peoples and thereby opened up a whole new area for research... This alone gives their works great value, and, in addition, they were pioneers in that movement that opened Asia, albeit for a short time, to communication with Europe."
An outstanding geographical phenomenon of the 13th century. The book of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (1254 - 1344) should be called “On the Diversity of the World” or, as it is usually called now, “The Book of Marco Polo”18. This merchant made a long journey to East Asia (1271 -1295), served for a long time with Kublai Khan in Beijing, which gave him the opportunity to become widely acquainted with the life of the peoples of East Asia. In his book, in addition to a fairly truthful description of many places visited, Marco Polo mentions Japan and the island of Madagascar. Thus, he significantly expanded the spatial horizons of Europeans and, for the first time, widely and easily introduced them to the riches of the East.

It is characteristic that in 1477 the first printed edition of this book was published in German translation and it was one of the first printed books in Europe.
Literature of this kind also includes “Walking across Three Seas” by the Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin, who traveled in 1466 -1475. throughout southern and southwestern Asia, lived for a long time in India. True, his book was discovered and published only in the 19th century, but as an indicator of the level of development and interest in geographic information, A. Nikitin’s work is deservedly mentioned in the history of geographical science. He “was the first European to give a completely truthful, enormously valuable description of medieval India, which he described simply, realistically, efficiently, without embellishment. With his feat, he convincingly proves that in the second half of the 15th century, 30 years before the Portuguese “discovery” India, even a lonely and poor, but energetic person could travel to this country from Europe at his own risk, despite a number of extremely unfavorable conditions."
At the end of the period under review, geographical travel began to be undertaken purposefully. In this regard, the activities of the Portuguese prince Enrica (Henry), nicknamed the Navigator (1394-1460), who in 1415 founded a nautical school and observatory in the city of Segris in the south of Portugal, can be called outstanding. The captains of Enrica the Navigator discovered the western coast of Africa step by step, and their geographical discoveries continued until, on the eve of the Age of Discovery, in 1487, Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope.
A characteristic type of geographical literature of the period under review is the so-called commercial geography. In 1333, the “Trade Practice” of the Italian Pegoletti appeared, which contained information about the quality and manufacturing technology of the most important goods, about units of weight and measure, monetary units of countries, a description of duties and transport costs, as well as the caravan road from the Sea of ​​Azov to China. Starting from the 13th century, some semblance of a “quantitative” description of states emerged (in the services of governors and diplomatic agents of Italian city-states). To a certain extent, they contained some of the origins of economic geography.
In the field of cartography, the appearance of the compass should be considered an important point, which led to the creation of so-called portals - compass maps, where the degree grid was replaced by intersecting compass points, by which the courses of ships were determined. After the advent of the art of engraving on copper, these portals became available to a wide range of interested parties. Although they lacked a mathematical basis, the depiction of coastal objects was very complete and satisfied the unpretentious needs of contemporaries.
Thus, partly speculatively, partly empirically and mathematically, the ancient natural philosophers and their Arab commentators laid the foundations for the main modern trends in the natural science branch of geography. However, their systems, closely related to history and ethnic studies, were of a humanitarian nature, and therefore in their works one can find thoughts related to the social science branch of geography.
Of course, other outstanding travels and geographical discoveries were made in the Middle Ages, but many of them, for a number of reasons, did not have an impact on the development of human civilization, on the development of sciences and, in particular, geography. Among them, the most significant were the voyages of the Normans in the 7th-11th centuries, during which they visited the shores of the White Sea, discovered Iceland, Greenland, and a significant part of the eastern coast of North America. Such travels obviously include the travel of Chinese officials to Central and Southeast Asia, the voyages of Polynesians to Pacific Ocean etc. The common reason for the little knownness of these outstanding achievements in the world is their economic prematurity. Language barriers and the lack of internationalization of scientific knowledge were also important (for example, in Latin, as was the case in Europe).
Scientists of the period under review presented the diversity of geographical objects in some unity. The integrity of their thinking was manifested in the unification of many aspects of philosophy, history, mathematics, natural science, politics, medicine, ethnography and the rudiments of other sciences. Geographical ideas, not excluding the rare works on geography that have come down to us, developed in the unity of these views, without constituting something sharply specific - the geographical material merged, and in many cases, dissolved in other materials. “I believe that the science of geography, which I have now decided to study, just like any other science, is included in the circle of activities of a philosopher,” he wrote in the 1st century. AD Strabo (1964, p. 7). One could say this: geographical knowledge is one of the first forms of human reflection of the environment, and at the same time, geographical objects (mountains, rivers, settlements, etc.) are easily perceived by human physiological receptors, and geographic information is necessary for everyone - hunters , farmers, military, traders, politicians. Therefore, it is not surprising that geography played an important role in the abstract holistic constructions of ancient scientists.