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Abul Mufakhir: Ashkal al-alam of Jayhani (1219)

(The Shapes of the World)

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Taken from: Bulletin of the school of Oriental studies. 1949; A False Jayhani by V. Minorsky.

There are two copies of this mss in London; so I give both maps with their translations as taken from the Miller atlas.

The manuscript is a Persian translation of an Arabic abbreviation of Istakhris work.

It is surely not written by Jayhani.

The maps in the book resemble closely the maps of ibn al-Balhi’s geography.

With a bird (1) on the world map that has its head pointing to China and its tail separating Egypt from Nubia. The tail of the bird represents the sources of the Nile; its body is the Mediterranean and the head the Black sea (or Caspian) its beak the Oxus and Jaxartes flowing into the Aral sea.