Research Catalog

The medieval Nile : route, navigation, and landscape in Islamic Egypt / John P. Cooper.

Title
The medieval Nile : route, navigation, and landscape in Islamic Egypt / John P. Cooper.
Author
Cooper, John P.
Publication
Cairo ; New York : The American University in Cairo Press, 2014.

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Details

Description
xvii, 421 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color); 24 cm
Summary
"An interdisciplinary study that draws together geography, historical navigation data, and eyewitness accounts into a comprehensive picture of one of the world's great rivers. This ground-breaking view of the navigational landscape of the Nile in medieval Egypt draws on a broad range of sources: medieval Arabic geographies; traveler accounts; archaeology; and meteorological, hydrological, and geological studies. John Cooper first charts the changing geography of the Nile waterways, particularly in the Delta, from the eve of Islam to the early modern period, and logs the 'rise and fall' of these waterways for natural and/or anthropogenic reasons. He then presents a new perspective on the Nile, drawing on traveler accounts and environmental data to portray the river as a uniquely challenging and sometimes dangerous navigational environment requiring extensive local knowledge by skilled and hard-working Nile navigators. Finally, he looks at how the main Delta and Red Sea ports of medieval Egypt fitted into the navigational landscape described, explaining how these ports were affected by changes occurring to the navigational landscape, and how they reflected the navigational conditions of the Nile and surrounding seas"--The publisher.
Uniform Title
University press scholarship online.
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • Sources.
  • Sources
  • History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 377-407) and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
Part 1. Geography -- Imagining the Nile -- The Pre-Islamic Nile delta -- The western delta in the Islamic Era -- The Eastern delta in the Ismamic Era -- The Bahr Yusuf -- Part 2. Navigation -- The Nile flood cycle -- Propulsion: Wind, current, and human labor -- Local hazards: Mouths, cataracts, and mountains -- Nile journey times -- Onward connections: The Mediterranean and Red Seas -- Part 3. Ports and the navigational landscape -- The ports of Fustat and Cairo -- Ports of the Western delta -- Ports of the Eastern delta -- Ports of the Red Sea.
ISBN
  • 9789774166143
  • 9774166140
LCCN
2014466245
OCLC
  • 894784159
  • SCSB-12764261
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library