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Maslamah ibn Ahmad Majriti: Gayat al-Hakim;

(The Goal of The Wise) (1050) Spain

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Abu al-Qasim Maslama ibn Ahmad al-Majriti, was a Muslim astronomer, chemist, mathematician, economist and scholar in Islamic Spain. Al-Majriṭi took part in the translation of Ptolemy's Planisphaerium. The work might have been written by someone else claiming some of his glory as it was published middle of the eleventh century while he died around 1007.  It is more concerned with advanced esotericism, principally astrology and talismanic magic, although he also goes into prophecy. The Picatrix (1256AD) is the Latin translation of this book. In the book he gives a description of the Nile sources.

 

Taken from: Ziel des Weisen  by Maslamah ibn Aḥmad Majriṭi

Das Geheimnis des Hermes Trismegistos: Geschichte des Hermetismus by Florian Ebeling

p322

 (The Copts) claim that the first Hermes (1) had built a house with sculptures on which he could see the respective stand of the Nile at the Mondberg. He also built a temple for the sun. And he could conceal himself from men, so that they did not see him, even though he was with them.

p324-325

And he (al-Walid) (2) took possession of the estates of the land, and killed a number of the priests there. Then it occurred to him to go out, to get to know the sources of the Nile, and to confront the peoples who encountered him. He remained three years, and put Aun in charge over Egypt, and went out with his armies, and destroyed all the nations upon which he came. After remaining on the road for many years, he moved against the peoples of the South and into the Goldland. There the gold grows in thick stems, and they form the best and most magnificent forest. Al-Walid, (2) however, kept on moving until he reached the lowland where the waters of the Nile flowed. Then he moved on until he reached the temple of the sun and entered him. And it is said in a long history, which the Amalekites (3) and Copts report in their histories, that he had been spoken of there by the gods. And he came to the moon-mountain. This is a very mighty mountain, which is called so because the moon does not rise above it, as it protrudes before it 15 degrees over the equator, that is 1733 mils, and the length of the mountain is about 1000 mils. And he saw the Nile coming from under him, continuing in narrow streams until he ends in a lake, and from there flows out and forth two streams until they end in another lake, then it passes the equator to a spring around the Indian volcano and back under the Moon Mountain. Then he found the castle with the copper statues (4) that Hermes (2) the first made in the time of Al-Nodisheer, eighty-five statues (4) that he built as water passes so the water does not pour in the sand or the farm lands but to where the people can benefit from and be able to use; otherwise the land would have drowned.……..

Then the king Al-Waleed (2) saw the Moon mountain very high and glorious that he tried every way possible to climb it and to see what is under, he succeeded but he was able to see the stinking black see and he was hit with the smell that so many other people died of but he managed to get down from there before it gets to his lungs.

p393

Dagrit reported that on his voyage to India and elsewhere he had the experience that a certain country of the earth produces something which does not grow in another, and which, in the same way, is in the rest, for example, the balsam plant in Egypt; Sudan, the negro wood in the land of the negroes (al-zang), the banana and the cactus figs in the Magrib and other countries on the same latitude in the east, the incense tree in the Sihr of Oman…..