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37 - Imaginative Geographies in the Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters

from Part VII - Scales, Polysystems, Canons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

Debjani Ganguly
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

This contribution prepares for a lengthy study of imaginative geography, and its metanarrative as an empowering narrative strategy. The classical and medieval Arab-Islamic geographer was not necessarily a geographer per se. Philologists often use their knowledge of space to construct a wide ranging inquiry that happened to serve generations of geographers. A close reading in a number of explanatory commentaries and marginalia helps to perceive the turns and fluctuations in geographic genealogies in relation to lands outside the Islamic core. The self-conscious geographer needs not only to define method or mode, but also to vindicate a departure, and claim or deny antecedent authority and source material. A republic of letters finds substantiation and root in these insights, and explanations, and complements other explorations in compendiums, encyclopedic knowledge, and literary or broad cultural exchange.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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