In her first book, Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World (2012), Zayde Antrim examines Muslim geographic perceptions of land at the high point of the Abbasid period (ca. 750–1000 c.e.). With this second monograph, Mapping the Middle East, she has expanded her scope to provide the first in-depth analysis of the long-term development of local mapping in the Middle East,
... [Show full abstract] an ancient and diverse world region. Into this overlooked time and place, Antrim has advanced an important agenda in the history of cartography—by looking beyond the singular ideal imposed by modern Eurocentric cartographic standards, by recognizing the rich diversity of geographic imagery revealed by multiple cultural contexts, and by rescuing it from obscurity—that scholars have been pursuing since J. B. Harley’s call for a “humanistic turn” in the 1980s.
Antrim argues that history provides the best means to overcome the persistently Eurocentric perspective on mapping the Middle East and establish resilient alternative geographic perspectives for the future. Taking this approach, she builds her case on the region’s rich repository of precolonial, pre-national indigenous mapping traditions that offered users conceptualizations of terrain that appropriately addressed local concerns. Following a chronological thread, Antrim divides her book into five chapters that illustrate major transformations in Middle East mapping traditions that were closely connected to the region’s political history. Europeans caused the most significant change, as a consequence of their widespread influence during the colonial period, during which they imposed their perception of the region “as an object to be scrutinized, categorized and penetrated” (111), which began to constrain local cartographic perceptions based on nationalistic territorial claims. Antrim’s insightful and astute analysis of geography offers an illuminating perspective on Middle Eastern history that helps anyone interested in the region detangle the historical roots of its complicated political situation while also clarifying fundamental geographic issues such as the relationship between maps and state agendas, making good use of published and archival materials like the Piri Reis maps. The book’s visual aids keep the reader grounded in space while explicating complex issues through effective synthesis, such as in table 1, which presents the region’s medieval conceptualization and intricate divisions in a glance, a help to experts and general readers alike (22).
