to be found in the World-Map of Marino Sanudo the Elder, constructed
between 1300 and 1320; and this may be regarded as an exceptionally
favourable specimen of the cosmography in vogue, for the author was a
diligent investigator and compiler, who evidently took a considerable
interest in geographical questions, and had a strong enjoyment and
appreciation of a map.[10] Nor is the map in question without some
result of these characteristics. His representation of Europe,
Northern Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, Arabia and its two gulfs, is a
fair approximation to general facts; his collected knowledge has
enabled him to locate, with more or less of general truth, Georgia,
the Iron Gates, Cathay, the Plain of Moghan, Euphrates and Tigris,
Persia, Bagdad, Kais, Aden (though on the wrong side of the Red Sea),
Abyssinia (_Habesh_), Zangibar (_Zinz_), Jidda (Zede), etc. But after
all the traditional forms are too strong for him. Jerusalem is still
the centre of the disk of the habitable earth, so that the distance is
as great from Syria to Gades in the extreme West, as from Syria to the
India Interior of Prester John which terminates the extreme East. And
Africa beyond the Arabian Gulf is carried, according to the Arabian
modification of Ptolemy’s misconception, far to the eastward until it
almost meets the prominent shores of India.
[Sidenote: The Catalan Map of 1375, the most complete mediæval
embodiment of Polo’s Geography.]