Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education

Russian State Pedagogical University them. A. I. Herzen

department physical geography and nature management

Abstract on the topic:

Geography in the Middle Ages

Geographic representations early medieval

Geography in antiquity reached a high level of development. Ancient geographers adhered to the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth and had a fairly correct idea of ​​its size. In their writings, the doctrine of climate and the five climatic zones of the globe was developed, the question of the predominance of land or sea was sharply debated (dispute between oceanic and land theories). The pinnacle of ancient achievements was the cosmogonic and geographical theory of Ptolemy (2nd century AD), despite its shortcomings and inaccuracies, and unsurpassed until the 16th century.

The Middle Ages wiped ancient knowledge off the face of the earth. The dominance of the church in all areas of culture also meant a complete decline in geographical concepts: geography and cosmogony were entirely subordinated to the needs of the church. Even Ptolemy, left in the role of supreme authority in this area, was emasculated and adapted to the needs of religion. The Bible became the supreme authority in the field of cosmogony and geography; all geographical representations were based on its data and aimed at explaining them.

"Theories" about the earth floating in the ocean on whales or turtles, about the accurately outlined "end of the earth", about the firmament supported by pillars, etc., were widely spread. Geography obeyed the biblical canons: Jerusalem was located in the center of the earth, beyond the lands of Gog and Magog, there was a paradise from which Adam and Eve were expelled, all these lands were washed by the ocean that arose as a result global flood.

One of the most popular at that time was the "geographic theory" of the Alexandrian merchant, and then the monk Kozma Indikoplov (Indikopleist, that is, who sailed to India), who lived in the first half of the 6th century. He "proved" that the earth has the form of "the tabernacle of Moses", i.e. the tent of the biblical prophet Moses - a rectangle with a ratio of length to width as 2: 1 and a semicircular vault. An ocean with four gulfs-seas (Roman, i.e. Mediterranean, Red, Persian and Caspian) separates the inhabited land from eastern land where paradise is located and where the Nile, Ganges, Tigris and Euphrates originate. In the northern part of the land there is a high mountain, around which they revolve celestial spheres, in summer, when the sun is high, it does not hide behind the peak for long, and therefore summer nights are short compared to winter, when it goes behind the foot of the mountain.

Views of this kind, of course, were supported by the church as "true", corresponding to the spirit of Holy Scripture. It is not surprising that as a result of this, absolutely fantastic information was spread in Western European society about various regions and the peoples inhabiting them - people with dog heads and generally headless, having four eyes, living with the smell of apples, etc. A perverted legend, or even just fiction , which has no soil, became the basis of geographical representations of that era.

One of these legends, however, played a significant role in the political and social life of the early and developed Middle Ages; it's a legend about Christian State priest John, allegedly located somewhere in the east. Now it is already difficult to determine what is at the heart of this legend - either vague ideas about the Christians of Ethiopia, Transcaucasia, the Nestorians of China, or a simple fiction, caused by the hope of outside help in the fight against a formidable enemy. In search of this state, a natural ally of the European Christian countries in their struggle against the Arabs and Turks, various embassies and travels were undertaken.

Against the background of the primitive views of the Christian West, the geographical representations of the Arabs stand out sharply. Arab travelers and navigators already in the early Middle Ages collected a huge amount of data about many countries, including distant ones. “The horizon of the Arabs,” according to the Soviet Arabist I. Yu. Krachkovsky, “embraced in essence the whole of Europe with the exception of the Far North, the southern half of Asia, North Africa ... and the coast of East Africa ... The Arabs gave a complete description of all countries from Spain to Turkestan and the mouth of the Indus with a detailed enumeration of settlements, with a characteristic cultural spaces and deserts, indicating the area of ​​distribution of cultivated plants, locations of minerals.

The Arabs also played a big role in the preservation of the ancient geographical heritage, already in the 9th century. translating into Arabic the geographical writings of Ptolemy. True, having accumulated a huge wealth of information about the world around them, the Arabs did not create major generalizing works that would theoretically comprehend all this baggage; them general concepts about the structure earth's surface did not surpass Ptolemy. However, it was thanks to this that the Arab geographical science had big influence on the science of the Christian West.

Travels of the early Middle Ages were random, episodic. They were not faced with geographical tasks: the expansion of geographical representations was only a passing consequence of the main goals of these expeditions. And they were most often religious motives (pilgrimages and missionaries), trade or diplomatic goals, sometimes military conquests (often robbery). Naturally, the geographical information obtained in this way was fantastic and inaccurate, not long retained in people's memory.

However, before proceeding to the story of the geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages, it is necessary to understand the very concept of geographical discovery. The essence of this concept causes great disagreement among historians of geography. Some of them propose to consider the first historically proven visit by representatives of peoples as a geographical discovery. those who know the letter lands unknown to them; others are the first description or mapping of these lands; still others separate the discoveries of inhabited lands and uninhabited objects, etc.

Various "levels" of territorial openings are also considered. On the first of them, local, there is a discovery of this territory by the people inhabiting it. This information remains, as a rule, the property of one people and often disappears with it. Next level regional: information about various areas, regions, often located far from the places of settlements of peoples-researchers; they are often random in nature and do not have much influence on the geographical representations of subsequent eras. And, finally, the discoveries of the world, global level, becoming the property of all mankind.

The discoveries of Western European travelers of the early Middle Ages, as a rule, belong to the regional level. Many of them were forgotten or did not even become widely known to the then world; world science learned about them only in the XIX-XX centuries; the memory of others has survived through the centuries, but mostly in the form of legends and fantastic stories, so departed from their foundation that it is now impossible to establish their true essence. But this does not detract from the importance of sometimes insane in their boldness enterprises, which arouse in us both a feeling of admiration and distrust. These feelings are even more intensified at the thought that only a small part of the travels is reflected in written monuments.

The most common in the early Middle Ages were travels with "pious" purposes - pilgrimages and missionaries. As for pilgrimages, most of them were limited to Rome; only single individuals dared to go to Jerusalem. Missionary work, especially Irish, had a much greater scope. Irish hermit monks in the 6th-8th centuries. opened the way to the Hebrides, Shetland, Faroe Islands and even to Iceland and partially settled them (although this colonization, in particular Iceland, turned out to be short-lived). Sometimes missionaries undertook exceptionally bold journeys: these include the alleged journey of the Nestorian Syrian missionary Olopen (7th century) to China and the more reliable journey of the English bishop Sigelm (9th century) to South India.

The largest number of geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages falls to the share of the Normans. The Swedes, Norwegians and Danes pushed the boundaries of the medieval ecumene far apart, having visited Iceland and Greenland, on the shores of the White and Caspian Seas, in northern Africa and northeast America. Their discoveries are a vivid example of "regional" discoveries: by the second half of the 15th century. not only the Norman settlements in Greenland and Newfoundland degraded and died out, but the very news of the discoveries of these lands disappeared from the memory of medieval society, without having any impact on the formation of geographical representations of subsequent eras.

The embassies of that era had an immeasurably greater resonance in society. The most important of them are: the Estonian embassy to the court of Theodoric of Ostgoth (VI century), two embassies of Charlemagne to Harun al-Rashid (IX century), Arab diplomatic missions to Eastern Europe (Scandinavia, Volga Bulgaria etc.) and other diplomatic enterprises, sometimes with an insufficiently defined purpose (for example, in the “state of the priest John”). Actually, the diplomatic value of all these embassies was small, but they played a big role in arousing the interest of Western European society in new countries.

It can be seen from the foregoing that the scope of the travels of the early Middle Ages was small: over the course of half a millennium, only a few of them ended in serious discoveries. And the point here is not only that we know some of these enterprises; those who remained unknown were hardly widely known to contemporaries. The reason for the low scope of travel is that trade, the main incentive for this kind of activity, was of an accidental nature.

OLD SCANDINAVIAN GEOGRAPHICAL WORKS

Geographical representations of the ancient Scandinavians

Great interest in Scandinavia to the geography of the world in the XII-XIV centuries. quite natural. The richest practical experience and knowledge of the topography of Europe was accumulated back in the Viking Age as a result of the numerous campaigns of the Scandinavians to the west around Europe, to the islands of the North Atlantic up to the coast. North America and to the east, including Asia Minor, the Caspian countries, the Middle Volga region. This knowledge, not being fixed in writing until the 12th century, was nevertheless preserved in society and was reflected in the literature that existed at that time, primarily sagas. The penetration of Western European scholarly writings gave impetus to the creation of their own geographical literature, which was supposed to consolidate practical experience and summarize various information about the lands known to the Scandinavians.

At the same time, Latin chorography significantly expanded the range of geographical knowledge Scandinavians. By the XII century. it already had six centuries of existence and absorbed two very different traditions in character, the unification of which took place in the 6th-11th centuries. The most important complexes from which medieval geographers drew information and were guided by were late Roman geographical works (through which the Middle Ages became acquainted with ancient geography) and biblical cosmology and geography (72).

Ancient geography passed on to the Middle Ages both its major achievements (the idea of ​​the spherical shape of the Earth, latitudinal zonality, etc.) , Southeast Asia, Africa, except for the Mediterranean coast).

The direct source of ancient geographical knowledge was the works of Julius Solinus "Collection of Things Worthy of Mention", written at the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 4th century. n. e. and containing excerpts from the works of Mark Terentius Varro (116-27 BC), Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), Pomponius Mela (I century AD), Macrobius "Comments to the sleep of Scipio" (border of the 4th-5th centuries), Marcian, Chapel "On the marriage of Philology and Mercury" (5th century), finally, the most extensive encyclopedia of the Spanish bishop Isidore of Seville (c. 570-636) (73), which was the most important source of geographical knowledge of the Middle Ages.

The second fundamental source of medieval geography was biblical cosmogony and cosmology and biblical geography. The formation of geographical ideas was most influenced by the Old Testament literature of the books "Genesis" and "The Book of Job", from the New Testament - by the epistles of Paul. The interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis, which tells about the creation of the Universe and the Earth, brought to life an extensive literature, the beginning of which was laid by a Byzantine author of the 4th century BC. Basil of Caesarea (74). The role of the biblical tradition was especially great in the formation of the most general "theoretical" ideas about the world, which determined both the selection and interpretation of specific geographical facts.

However, despite the authoritarian biblical painting world, attempts to create a geographical model of the Earth only on the basis of the Bible without taking into account practical data have not gained distribution in Western Europe. "Christian topography" by Cosmas Indikoplova (beginning of the 6th century), representing an attempt to bring together and arrange in the form of a complete system biblical cosmological and geographical ideas, provoked criticism from contemporaries and did not find apologists in Western Europe (75). Therefore, the adaptation and coordination of ancient positive knowledge with the Christian concept of the universe, the formation of a more or less consistent picture of the Earth became the main task of Christian geographers of the early Middle Ages.

This task no longer faced the Scandinavian geographers of the 12th-14th centuries. The ancient heritage was reworked and included in the Christian geographical system much earlier and could not be perceived as something alien or foreign in it. The main task was to combine our own diverse and extensive practical experience with geographical information and the general picture of the Earth in Christian geography (76). The result was the creation of a kind of fusion of the Christian (but in many moments dating back to antiquity) ideas about the world, its division, landscape, peoples and specific, real information about Scandinavia itself and its surrounding lands. At the same time, the topography of the ecumene played important role and in Christian and pagan belief systems. Therefore, in the treatises published below, a complex interweaving of heterogeneous elements is found (77).

The spatial outlook of the Old Norse geographical treatises basically covers the ecumene ancient world(78) in the same form and degree as it was reflected in medieval chorography. The maximum expansion of the boundaries of known lands (before the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries) refers to two periods: IV century. BC e. - the time of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, when there was a direct acquaintance of Europeans with the countries of the East, Central Asia and there was real information about remote areas East Asia up to China, and the first centuries of our era - the heyday of the Roman Empire (79). This information continued to be preserved throughout the Middle Ages, but, not enriched by personal experience and direct contacts with remote territories of Asia and Africa, they freeze and harden as a stable and unchanging set of stamps.

Based on the works of Orosius (beginning of the 5th century), Isidore of Seville (late 6th - first third of the 7th century), Bada the Venerable (late 7th - first third of the 8th century), Old Norse geographical treatises reproduce the entire complex of traditional Western European chorography. They characterize the territory from India in the east to Spain and Ireland in the west, extending south as far as Ethiopia and the Sahara. The bookish origin of these descriptions is manifested both in the absence of any new data compared to their predecessors, and in the use of only well-established, dating back to ancient toponymy. The lack of one's own knowledge of Asia and Africa is also reflected in constant inaccuracies in the transfer of names, errors in the placement of countries, attribution (sometimes in one work) of the same country to different parts of the world, etc.

However, the spatial outlook in Old Norse geographical writings is wider than in Western European chorography. It also includes those territories that were practically unknown to Western European geographers, but are well known to the Scandinavians: the Scandinavian countries and Finland, Eastern Europe, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, North America. Knowledge about them accumulated gradually, starting from the 8th century, i.e. from the first campaigns of the Vikings, which was reflected in the oldest written sources of Scandinavia - runic monuments (80). Personal acquaintance with these regions is also evident from a large number of topographical, ethnographic, historical character(81), and from creating for them own place names.

Ideas about the shape, size and structure of the world are one of the most essential sections of geographical knowledge in any era. Created during the period of dominance of Christian ideology, geographical works could not but rely on cosmological and geographical ideas fundamental to Christianity. In Old Norse astronomical literature and computer science, based on practical observations, the Earth is often called jar ?ar bollr-" globe" (82). In geographical literature and sagas, the shape of the Earth is not specifically specified. In medieval geography, the idea of ​​the spherical shape of the Earth, inherited from antiquity, was not forgotten or rejected (83). Although the most famous Christian authors in Scandinavia, Orosius, Isidore and some others passed over the question of the shape of the Earth in silence, in other works, the manuscripts of which were also available in the medieval libraries of Scandinavia (for example, "De sphaera" by Sacrobosco), the sphericity of the Earth was not only affirmed, but also proved by experimental data.And with these ideas, the Old Norse the scribes could not but have known each other.The same assumption could have been made by the Scandinavians themselves on the basis of their own astronomical and navigational observations, for example, Odni the Astrologer (84).

According to geographical treatises, the ecumene is surrounded by the "world sea" ( úmsjór" or, according to the book, the Ocean"). The idea of ​​a river-ocean washing the inhabited world is characteristic of all ancient literature, began with Homer, and passes into the Middle Ages (85); at the same time, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200b" an outer sea ".

The inhabited world (heimr) is divided into three parts: Asia, Africa and Europe, the first of which occupies the eastern half (much less often - a third) of the world, the second - the south of the western half, the third - the north of the western half. Parts of the world are separated by the Mediterranean Sea, which is regarded as the gulf of the World Ocean, and the Tanais (Don) and Geon (Nile) rivers. It is obvious that the views on the division of the Earth and the boundaries of parts in Old Norse geography are not original, but borrowed from Western European authors, who, in turn, are completely based on the ancient tradition coming from Hecateus (86).

In the extreme east, in accordance with biblical geography, paradise is located, a detailed description of which was borrowed from Isidore (Etym., XIV, HI, 2-3) (87). Thus, ideas about the origin and organization of the physical-geographical space are fully consistent with the Christian concept of the world, developed in the works of the largest theologians of the 3rd-5th centuries. ad.

The problems of ethnogenesis in geographical treatises are essentially consistent with the biblical ethnogenetic legend: after the Flood, the world was inhabited by the descendants of Noah: Shem (Asia), Ham (Africa) and Japheth (Europe); from them come all the peoples that live in the world. However, the list of peoples given in the Bible (Genesis, IX, 18 - XI, 32) (88) and due to the spatial outlook of its creators, did not at all correspond to either the historical situation of the XII-XIV centuries, or the horizons of the Old Norse geographers. A significant number of the peoples of Europe, and first of all the Scandinavians themselves, turned out to be not involved in a single family of Christian peoples. Therefore, the lists of peoples descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, already somewhat replenished by Jerome and Isidore, are subject to further expansion and modernization in Scandinavia. Leaving the lists of the peoples of Asia and Africa practically untouched, the compilers of both the general descriptions of the Earth and the special treatise "On the settlement of the earth by the sons of Noah" include in the list of the peoples of Europe primarily the inhabitants of Scandinavia, the Eastern Baltic States, Ancient Russia, based on the information at their disposal about ethnic composition these regions.

Among the general problems of physical geography considered by ancient geographers (climate, the origin of physical and geographical phenomena, soils, etc.), the Middle Ages continued the development of the theory of latitudinal zonality (89). Following the Western European tradition, Old Norse geographers distinguish three climatic zones: hot, temperate and cold, of which only the temperate is considered habitable.

Based on their own observations, they northern borders habitable zone, move them much further north: they consider Bjarmaland and Greenland connected with it (according to the then ideas) as the extreme north of the inhabited area. European geographers, unfamiliar with Scandinavia, usually reach southern Sweden and Norway in their descriptions, sometimes mention Iceland, but the northern part of Fennoscandia and Eastern Europe is practically unknown to them.

Spatial orientation as a problem is more philosophical than geographical, but the principles of orientation of the physical space surrounding a person play a very important role in characterizing the geographical views of the ancient Scandinavians. It has long been noted that the direction of movement indicated in the sagas (and the directions of the world - in geographical treatises) can both correspond to the real one and deviate from it, and no system could be identified in these deviations. However, a study of the ancestral sagas (90) showed that there were two systems of orientation: one related to the description of voyages on the high seas and based on fairly accurate observations of the starry sky, the second - to characterize movement on land (in this study - inside Iceland) and when coastal voyages, based on administrative division Iceland by a quarter. In the first system, the directions are real and denoted by the terms nor ?r, su?r, vestr, austr ( north, south, west, east) coincide. In the second center of orientation is the administrative center of each of the quarters, and the direction of movement is determined relative to it, and not to the cardinal points, i.e. when moving from the Western quarter to the Northern direction, the direction was designated as northern, although the real one was northeast or east.

Apparently, similar principles of space orientation are also reflected in geographical treatises, where, as a rule, the center of orientation is the southern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the direction is determined by initial phase movement: that is, all lands, no matter how they really are located in relation to Scandinavia, are considered to lie to the east if the path to them goes through the Eastern Baltic and Russia (for example, Byzantium, Palestine), or located in the north if the path runs through the northern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Thus, the system of spatial orientation in geographical treatises in the highest degree conditional and does not always correspond to reality.

geographic middle ages traveler discovery

medieval discoveries

Discoveries of the peoples of Central, East and South Asia. Geographical results of the campaigns of Genghis Khan

The upper reaches of the Onon and Ingoda were the ancestral pastures of Temujin, the leader of one of the Mongol tribes. His military talent and the disunity of opponents from other clans allowed him to defeat his main rivals in the struggle for supreme power in 21 years (1183-1204). At the kurultai (congress) of the Mongolian aristocracy in 1206, the 50-year-old Temujin was proclaimed a great khan with the title "Genghis Khan". In the same year, he began a series of victorious campaigns of conquest, continued by his sons and other Genghisids after his death (1227) until the end of the 13th century. The striking force of the Mongol army was an exceptionally maneuverable numerous and well-armed cavalry. In 1207-1211. Chochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, took possession of the lands of the "forest peoples": the interfluve of the Angara and the upper Lena, where the Buryats lived, the country of Barguzhinskaya - the valleys of the river. Khilok and Barguzin. The Mongols reached the Vitim plateau and captured the area between the Shilka and Ergunekun (Argun) rivers. The Chochi cavalry passed through the valley of the Argun and its tributary Hailar and conquered the lands in the bend of the Amur, formed by the northern half of the ridge. Greater Khingan between 120 and 126° E. d. West of Baikal. "Chjochi took control of the Mongolian" territory in the upper reaches of the Yenisei and the Ob. Generals of Genghis Khan in 1219-1221 captured the vast expanses of the Kulunda, Baraba and Ishim steppes with numerous lakes (the largest Chany) and appeared on the outskirts of Vasyugan, a flat taiga-marsh region in the south of the West Siberian Plain. They got acquainted with the middle and lower reaches of the Irtysh and its tributary Ishim, and further to the west, crossing the Tobol, they reached the Middle Urals.

Not earlier than 1240, an anonymous Mongolian author created a historical chronicle “ Secret legend". In addition to the biography of Genghis Khan and information about the reign of his youngest son Ogedei, it contains the first geographical characteristic"mountain Burkan-Kallun", from which nine rivers flow, including Kerulen, Onon (Amur basin) and several tributaries of the Selenga. Obviously, we are talking about the Khentei Highlands, a major hydrographic junction of Central Asia (length 250 km, peak 2800 m).

Another source that makes it possible to judge the geographical knowledge of the Mongols is the "Collection of Chronicles" by F. Rashidaddin, an Iranian scientist and statesman end of the 13th-beginning of the 14th century. According to Rashidaddin, they had some idea of ​​the entire flat-topped upland of Khangai (about 700 km), from which many tributaries of the Selenga originate, including the Orkhon in the southeast and Adar (Ider) in the northwest.

The Mongols were the first to become familiar with for the most part R. Cam (Yenisei); they knew that in the upper reaches it receives eight rivers, and then flows into the "Ankara Muren River": even in our time, the Yenisei was considered a tributary of the Angara; they established that “this river [the Angara-Yenisei] flows into ... the region, in the neighborhood of which the [Kara] Sea is located. Silver is found everywhere [in that region].” Shortly after 1232, a detachment of 1,000 men was sent there on a ship under the command of three emirs. “They delivered a lot of silver to the bank [of the river], but they could not load it onto the ship ... more than 300 people did not return, the rest died from putrefactive air and damp fumes. All three emirs [however] returned safely and lived a long time [after the campaign]"

It is difficult, of course, to determine with certainty how far north this first expedition along the Yenisei got, but most likely they went down the river for 68 ° N. sh., i.e. traced more than 1500 km of its middle and lower reaches, and reached the region of the Norilsk mountains, the western part of the Putorana plateau, rich in various metals. In other words, they laid the foundation for the discovery of the Central Siberian Plateau.

Chinese explorers of the 6th-12th centuries

The basin of the middle reaches of the Huang He and Yangtze, as well as the Xijiang system in the VI century. examined the traveler and scientist Li Daoyuan. He paid attention not only to hydrography - he also described in great detail the vegetation, climate and topography of the areas he visited. The result of his research was extensive commentaries on the Shuijing, a work on the hydrography of the main river systems of China, compiled by an anonymous author in the 3rd century BC.

Until the 7th century the Chinese had no idea not only about the Tibetan Plateau and the tribes inhabiting this harsh land, but even about the true origins of "their" river. Huanghe. In 635, Hu Cunqi, the commander of a punitive expedition directed against the rebellious Tibetans, probably from Lanzhou, at 104 ° e. d., walked along the mountain roads to the west to Lake Dzharin-Nur and "contemplated the sources of the Yellow River." Its discovery almost two centuries later was confirmed by Liu Yuan-ting, who was appointed Chinese ambassador to Tibet. Departing from Xining, 102° E. in 822, on his way to Lhasa, he crossed the Yellow River near Djarin-Nur. Both, apparently, did not imagine that the Yellow River, skirting the ridge. Amne-Machin, makes an almost 500-kilometer "hook".

In the 8th century Chinese surveyors of the Tang Empire surveyed the coasts and basins of the main rivers of the country. Its results are reflected on a map compiled by the cartographer Jia Dan in the second half of the 8th century, carved on a stone stele in 1137 and which has survived to this day. It is oriented to the north; the relief is shown by disorderly "slides"; no scale; coastline, photographed for more than 5 thousand km from 40 to 20 ° N. sh., is very schematic: the Bohaiwan Bay has a strongly distorted outline, the Shandong Peninsula is presented as a short ledge, about. Hainan is a latitudinal oval, there is no Bakbo Bay. The survey gives an idea of ​​the general configuration of the main river systems: r. The Yellow River has two characteristic tribes - northern (Ordos) and southern (Taihang) and two relatively large tributaries, including the Weihe. To the north of the upper reaches of the Yellow River, surveyors photographed Lake Kukunor, and in the lower reaches four rivers flowing, like the Yellow River, into the Bohai Bay. The river system The Yangtze (excluding the upper course) is quite realistic: a knee is photographed east of the confluence of a short meridional tributary (Yalongjiang?), bends are noted before the exit from the Sanxia gorge and the confluence of the Khanynui, three large left tributaries are depicted - Minjiang, Jialingjiang and Hanshui, and from the right - Xiangjiang with Lake Dongting and Ganjiang, to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze, Lake Taihu is put on the map. Relatively close to reality, the currents of the river are photographed. Huaihe and Xijiang with numerous tributaries.

Probably at the end of the 11th century. a new survey of the coast and the same river systems was carried out. As a result, around 1100, another map appeared that had a square grid (the scale is 100 li on the side of the square, i.e. about 80 km in 1 cm), but without "hills"; the contours of the banks have been significantly improved; True, the shape of the Bohai Bay is still incorrect - there is no Liaodong Bay and the outlines of the Shandong Peninsula are distorted, but Minhongkou Bays have already been identified, at 35 ° N. sh., Hangzhouvan and Bakbo (its contours are rough - the Leizhou peninsula is very small) and the figure of Fr. Hainan. The configuration of the main river basins is very close to reality. The length of the filmed part of the river. The Huang He, counting from the mouth, was 2600 km, five left and five right tributaries, including Datonghe and Weihe, are almost correctly plotted. The Yangtze River has been mapped for about 2,700 km, contours main river and its three tributaries noted above are noticeably corrected, three more of its left tributaries are relatively correctly filmed; of the five right, except for Xiangjiang, Qianjiang, Yuanjiang, as well as Ganjiang with Poyang Lake were surveyed. Improved image of the Huaihe and Xijiang rivers. According to a number of historians, the work of Chinese surveyors, reflected on the map, is an outstanding achievement of the late Middle Ages: the outlines of the banks and the course of the main rivers on it are better than on any European or east map to the period of modern systematic surveys.

From the 7th century The Chinese began to settle the coastal areas of about. Hainan, which lasted until the XII century. The colonists, pushing the indigenous people, the ancestors of the Li and Miao peoples, to its central mountainous part, got acquainted with the whole island. Lutsguo Island (Taiwan), which is mentioned in Chinese chronicles of the 1st-3rd centuries, became the object of expansion in 610, when a 10,000-strong Chinese army landed on the island. Probably since that time the flow of colonists from the mainland has increased. In the second decade of the ninth century migrant Shi Jiangu, who tried (unsuccessfully) to unite the gaoshan tribes, i.e. mountaineers, carried out the first study of the island and compiled its detailed description.

Trade routes and discoveries of the Arabs in the Middle Ages

Arab trade routes

From the 7th century n. e. the Arabs who lived on the Arabian Peninsula began to spread their power and their new, militant Mohammedan, or Muslim, religion - Islam (submission in Arabic) - to vast territory. In the east, they conquered the entire Iranian Highlands and Turkestan, north of Arabia - Mesopotamia, the Armenian Highlands and part of the Caucasus, in the northwest - Syria and Palestine, in the west - all of North Africa. In 711, the Arabs crossed the strait, which from that time began to be called distorted Arabic name- Gibraltar and within seven years (711-718) conquered almost the entire Iberian Peninsula. Thus, in the VIII century. n. e. Arabs owned the western, southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, all the shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the northern coast of the Arabian Sea. They settled on the most important land roads connecting Eastern Europe - through Central Asia or the Caucasus and the Iranian Highlands - with India, and on the western section of the Great Silk Road. Thanks to this, the Arabs became intermediaries in Europe's trade with all of South and Southeast Asia and with China. Even in antiquity and at the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Arabs played an important role in the trade of the countries adjacent to the Indian Ocean. Now they have taken key positions on the great trade routes in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean and have become complete masters in its western part.

Light, flat-bottomed Arab medieval ships were built from the trunks of coconut palms. “Their ships are bad, and many of them die, because they are not knocked together with iron nails, but sewn with ropes from the bark of Indian [coconut] nuts ... These ropes are durable and do not deteriorate from salt water. Vessels have one mast, one sail and one oar” (Marco Polo). Arab sailors walked along the coast, and only the very experienced dared to cross the ocean.

The main Asian goods supplied by the Arabs to Europe through the Persian Gulf to Baghdad or through the Red Sea to the Isthmus of Suez were expensive fabrics, Ivory, gems and pearls, black slaves, gold, but especially spices. The fact is that in medieval Europe the mass slaughter of cattle was in late autumn, when pasture began to disappear. The meat was salted for future use in whole barrels, and spices were widely used so that the meat did not lose its taste and did not deteriorate. And they were valued on the European market literally worth their weight in gold. Tropical spices grew at that time only in the south and southeast of Asia. In trade, the first place was occupied by pepper, common in almost all of tropical Asia. But the main place of his culture was the Malabar coast, from which ginger and cardamom also came. Indonesia supplied cloves and nutmeg, Sri Lanka supplied cinnamon. And this Indian trade with Europe was monopolized by the Arabs.

Ibn Rust about the Volga Bulgarians and Rus

In the first decade of the X century. Persian Abu Ali Ibn Ruste (or Rusta) compiled in Arabic great work titled "Dear Values". Only the part devoted to astronomy and geography has come down to us: it, by the way, contains information about the peoples of Eastern Europe. He begins with the Turkic-speaking Volga-Kama Bulgarians, among whom no later than the 9th century. Islam began to spread. Ibn Ruste was not in their country, and he collected information, undoubtedly, from wandering Muslim merchants. “Bulgaria borders on the country of the Burtases. The Bulgarians live on the banks of the river, which flows into the Khazar Sea [Caspian] and is called Itil [Volga], flowing between the country of the Khazars and the Slavs. Their country is covered with swamps and dense forests, among which they live. The Khazars are bargaining with the Bulgarians, and in the same way the Rus bring their goods to them. All [peoples] who live on both banks of the mentioned river bring their goods to them [Bulgarians] ... sable, ermine, squirrel and other furs. The Bulgarians are an agricultural people... Most of them profess Islam... Between the Burtases and these Bulgarians there is a distance of three days' journey... The Bulgarians have horses, chain mail and full armament. Their main wealth is marten fur ... Marten fur is replaced by a voiced coin.

Further, Ibn Ruste reports on the Slavs and Russ. This confused story is probably borrowed from Muslim al-Jarmi, whose works have not come down to us. Ibn Ruste read or heard about the city of Kuyab (Kyiv), located “near the border of the country of the Slavs... The path to their country goes through the steppes, through the lands without roads, through streams and dense forests. The country of the Slavs is flat and wooded; they live in the forests... Russes live on the island, among the lakes. This island ... occupies the space of three days' journey. It is covered with forests and swamps ... They raid the Slavs: they approach them on boats, land, take them prisoner, take them to Khazaria and Bulgaria and sell them there. They have no arable land, and they feed on what they bring from the land of the Slavs ... their only trade is the trade ... in furs. They dress untidy, their men wear gold bracelets. Slaves are treated well. They have many cities and live in open spaces. They are tall, prominent and courageous people, but they show this courage not on horseback - they make all their raids and campaigns on ships.

Russian discovery of Eastern and Northern Europe and the first campaigns in Western Siberia (IX-XV centuries)

Campaigns in Yugra and North-Western Siberia in the XI-XIV centuries

In the Tale of Bygone Years, the year 1096 contains the story of the Novgorodian Gyuryata Rogovits: “I sent [about 1092] my youth [combatant] to Pechora, to the people who give tribute to Novgorod; and my boy came to them, and from there he went to [land] Yugra. Yugra is a people, but its language is incomprehensible; neighbors with the Samoyed in the northern countries. Yugra said to my child: “there are mountains, they go into the bow [bay] of the sea; their height is up to the sky ... and in [one] mountain a small window was cut through, and from there they speak, but do not understand their language, but they point to iron and wave their hands, asking for iron; and if anyone gives them a knife or an axe, they give furs in return. The path to those mountains is impassable because of the abysses, snow and forests, and therefore we do not always reach them; He goes further north. From this story, the Russian historian D. M. Karamzin concluded that the Novgorodians crossed the Urals already in the 11th century. However, they could also collect such information west of the Stone. As can be seen from the words of Gyurata, his messenger did not even see the high mountains. And yet, today, historians believe that the “lad” traveled beyond the Urals, but how (with the help of Komi guides) did he get there? Most likely, he climbed the river. Pechora to its tributary Shchugor and crossed Northern Ural the most convenient road for crossing, which was later used by many Novgorod squads. On the Pechora, the envoy apparently met with "forest people" ("pe-chera") - taiga hunters and fishermen. Beyond the Urals, in the basin of the North Sosva (Ob system), in a country rich in fur-bearing animals, the Yugra lived - and to this day, so, or rather, the Yegra, the Komi are called the Voguls (Mansi). It was they who told the "lad" through the interpreters - the same Komi people - about the Sirt people ("chud" of Russian chronicles), "cutting the earth."

In the second half of the XII century. chroniclers note two campaigns of the Ushkuins for tribute to Yugra. In 1193, the governor of Novgorod, Yadrey, made a campaign there. He collected tribute in silver, sables and "ina uzorochye" (bone products) and delivered information about the sa-moyadi - the northern neighbors of yugra, who lived in the forests ("pe-chera") and in the tundra ("laitanchera"). In the middle of the XIII century. Novgorodians named Perm, Pechora and Ugra among their northern volosts. According to the records of the XII-XIII centuries. it is still impossible to find out which Yugra is being referred to, Podkamennaya or Zakamennaya, in other words, it cannot be argued that the combatants crossed the Urals. But the Rostov record of the XIV century. is already quite clear: “In the same winter, the Novgorodians arrived from Yugra. Boyar children and young people of the voevoda Alexander Abakumovich fought on the Ob River and to the sea, and the other half up the Ob ... ”This entry leaves no doubt that they penetrated east beyond the Urals, but it does not indicate which way. Probably, the detachment operating in the lower reaches of the Ob, “to the sea”, climbed the Usa, the right tributary of the lower Pechora, and then crossed the Sob, a tributary of the Ob, through the Polar Urals. And the detachment that fought “higher along the Ob” could go there by the southern route, along the river. Shchugor to the upper reaches of the Northern Sosva, and crossed the Northern Urals, and the territory along the lower Ob to the mouth of the Irtysh became the Novgorod parish.

Discovery of the Kara Sea and the way to Mangazeya

Probably in the XII-XIII centuries. Russian industrialists-Pomors, in search of "precious junk" (furs) and new walrus rookeries through the Yugorsky Shar or the Karskie Vorota, entered the Kara Sea. They "sailed" to the east across the sea through the "evil places" to the Yamal Peninsula, on its western low-lying coast they discovered rich deposits of walruses; went up the river Mutnaya, which flows into Baydaratskaya Bay; through a short dry portage (watershed) they dragged their boats to the upper reaches of the river. Green, flowing into the Gulf of Ob. “A dry drag from lake to lake in the upper reaches of both rivers from half a verst or more, and the place is flat, the earth is sandy.” Descending along the Zelenaya, the Pomors entered the mouths of the Ob and Taz. Usually the sea route from the Northern Dvina to the Taz took four to five weeks, and from the mouth of the Pechora - no more than three. On the Taza, industrialists organized several trading posts (ostrozhki) and conducted “silent bargaining” there with local residents- Khanty and Nenets. The lower reaches of the Taza - this was the core of Mangazeya, which was then dreamed of by all Russian fur traders.

In addition to the northern sea route through the great sea-okiyap. Other roads led from the Pechora to Mangazeya, longer and more difficult, along the tributaries of the Pechora and through the watersheds of the Stone Belt to the tributaries of the Ob. The first, northern road, as already indicated, went up the Usa to Kamen, and then along the Sobsky portage to the Sob, the northern tributary of the Ob. The second led from Pechora through Kamen to the Northern Sosva and the Ob. The third, southern one led from the Kama basin and its tributary Chusovaya to the Irtysh basin through the Tura, Tavda and Tobol. But it was also the longest: instead of three weeks of sailing, it took about three months, if it was not "spotted" by the Siberian Tatars who lived along the lower Tobol and the Irtysh. The Tatars were scattered and weak in the 15th century, and some of their princes even paid tribute to the Grand Duke of Moscow.

As a result of numerous voyages and trips to the northern fur regions of Western Siberia, the Pomor industrialists collected the first information about the Samoyeds - the Samoyedic peoples who lived beyond the Yugra land, east of the Ob Bay. This news is reflected in the legend "About the unknown people in eastern country', dated to the end of the 15th century. Seemingly fantastic only with a superficial acquaintance, it contains a fairly accurate characterization based on real facts. anthropological type Samoyeds (mostly Nenets) and their daily lives. In the legend there is a mention of the lands "above the Ob River", the population of which lives in dugouts and mines ore, which should probably be associated with Altai and its "Chudsky" mines.

List of sources used

#"justify">Ancient Scandinavians. Sons of the northern gods. Davidson Hilda

Discoveries of ancient and medieval peoples. Magidovich V.I.

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Geography of the Middle Ages (from the 5th to the 17th centuries).

The Middle Ages include the period from the 5th to the 17th century. It is also generally accepted that this period was characterized by a general decline in relation to the previous brilliant period of Antiquity.

In general, in the Middle Ages, the development of geographical knowledge continued within the framework of the country studies direction. The main carriers of geographical knowledge are merchants, officials, soldiers and missionaries. Thus, the Middle Ages were not fruitless, especially with regard to spatial discoveries (Markov, 1978).

In the Middle Ages, two main "worlds" can be distinguished in terms of the development of geographical representations - Arabic and European.

AT Arab world the traditions of ancient science were largely adopted, but in geography, the regional study trend was most preserved. This is due to the vastness of the Arab Caliphate, which stretched from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula.

Arabic geography was of a reference nature and had more practical meaning than speculative. The earliest summary of this kind is the “Book of Ways and States” (IX century), written by the official Ibn Hardadbek.

Among travelers greatest success reached the wandering merchant Moroccan Abu Abdullah Ibn Battuta, who traveled to Egypt, Western Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iran. Was also in the Crimea, on the lower Volga, in Central Asia and India. On his last journey in 1352-1353. he crossed Western and Central Sahara.

Among the prominent Arab scholars involved in geographical issues Biruni can be noted. This great Khorezm scholar-encyclopedist was the greatest geographer in the 11th century. In his research, Biruni wrote about erosion processes and sorting of alluvium. He gave information about the ideas of the Hindus, about the connection of the tides with the moon.

Despite these isolated achievements, Arabic geography did not surpass ancient geography in terms of theoretical concepts. The main merit of Arab scientists was to expand their spatial horizons.

AT medieval Europe, as in the Arab world, the main contribution to the development of geographical knowledge was made by travelers. It should be noted that, unlike the Arabs, the theoretical achievements of ancient geographers were sometimes rejected. For example, one of the well-known medieval geographical works is "Christian Geography" by Kozma Indikoplova (VI century). This book provides country-specific information on Europe, India, Sri Lanka. At the same time, it resolutely rejects the sphericity of the Earth, which is recognized as a delusion.

The expansion of the geographical outlook of Europeans began after the 10th century, which was associated with the beginning of the Crusades (XI-XII centuries). Subsequently, significant geographical discoveries were obtained as a result of the embassy missions of the Catholic Church to the Mongol khanates.

Among the prominent European travelers of the Middle Ages, one can note Marco Polo, who visited and studied China in the 4th century, as well as the Russian merchant Athanasius Nikitin, who described in the 15th century. India.

At the end of the Middle Ages, geographical travel began to be carried out purposefully. Particularly noticeable in this regard is the activity of the Portuguese prince Henry, nicknamed the Navigator (1394-1460). The captains of Henry the Navigator explored the West Coast of Africa step by step, discovering, in particular, the Cape of Good Hope (Golubchik, 1998).

In general, it can be noted that in the Middle Ages, geography was not much different from ancient times, as in ancient times, it was the same. It covered the entire sum of the then knowledge about the nature of the earth's surface, as well as about the occupations and life of the peoples inhabiting it. According to academician I.P. Gerasimov, it provided the economic activity of people with the necessary scientific information about the natural conditions and resources of the developed territories and supplied internal and external political actions with the most complete information about near and far countries (Maksakovsky, 1998).

Separately, in medieval times in Europe, the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries stands out - they close this stage in the development of geography and represent a bright and unique action, as a result of which the main elements of the modern geographical picture of the world were formed.

1 Geography in Feudal Europe.

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world.

3 Geography in the countries of the Arab world.

4 Development of geography in medieval China.

1 Geography in Feudal Europe. From the end of the 2nd century slave society was in deep crisis. The invasion of the Gothic tribes (3rd century) and the strengthening of Christianity, which became the state religion from 330, accelerated the decline of Roman-Greek culture and science. In 395, the division of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern parts took place. From that time on, the Greek language and literature gradually began to be forgotten in Western Europe. In 410, the Visigoths occupied Rome, and in 476 the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist (26,110,126,220,260,279,363,377).

Trade relations during this period began to decline significantly. The only essential stimulus to knowledge distant countries there were Christian pilgrimages to "holy places": to Palestine and Jerusalem. According to many historians of geography, this transitional period brought nothing new to the development of geographical concepts (126,279). At best, old knowledge has been preserved, and even then in an incomplete and distorted form. In this form, they passed into the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages came a long period decline, when the spatial and scientific horizons of geography narrowed sharply. The extensive geographical knowledge and geographical representations of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians have been largely forgotten. Former knowledge was preserved only among Arab scientists. True, the accumulation of knowledge about the world continued in Christian monasteries, but on the whole the intellectual climate of that time did not favor their new understanding. At the end of the XV century. the era of the great geographical discoveries began, and the horizons of geographical science again began to rapidly move apart. The flow of new information that poured into Europe had an extremely great impact on all aspects of life and gave rise to that definite course of events that continues to this day (110, p. 25).

Despite the fact that in Christian Europe of the Middle Ages the word "geography" practically disappeared from the ordinary lexicon, the study of geography still continued. Gradually, curiosity and curiosity, the desire to find out what distant countries and continents are, prompted adventurers to go on journeys that promised new discoveries. The crusades, carried out under the banner of the struggle for the liberation of the "holy land" from the rule of the Muslims, drew into their orbit masses of people who had left their native places. Returning, they talked about foreign peoples and unusual nature that they have seen. In the XIII century. the paths blazed by missionaries and merchants became so long that they reached China (21).

Geographical representations of the early Middle Ages were formed from biblical dogmas and some conclusions of ancient science, cleared of everything "pagan" (including the doctrine of the sphericity of the Earth). According to "Christian Topography" by Kosma Indikopov (6th century), the Earth looks like a flat rectangle washed by the ocean; The sun hides behind the mountain at night; all great rivers originate in paradise and flow under the ocean (361).

Modern geographers unanimously characterize the first centuries of the Christian Middle Ages in Western Europe as a period of stagnation and decline in geography (110,126,216,279). Most of the geographical discoveries of this period were repeated. Countries known to the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were often re-discovered for the second, third and even fourth time.

In the history of geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages, the most prominent place belongs to the Scandinavian Vikings (Normans), who in the VIII-IX centuries. their raids devastated England, Germany, Flanders and France.

Along the Russian route "from the Varangians to the Greeks," Scandinavian merchants traveled to Byzantium. Around 866 the Normans rediscovered Iceland and established themselves there, and around 983 Eric the Red discovered Greenland, where they also established permanent settlements (21).

In the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the Byzantines had a relatively broad spatial outlook. The religious ties of the Eastern Roman Empire extended to the Balkan Peninsula, later to Kievan Rus and Asia Minor. Religious preachers reached India. They brought their writing to Central Asia and Mongolia, and from there penetrated into the western regions of China, where they founded their numerous settlements.

The spatial outlook of the Slavic peoples, according to the "Tale of Bygone Years", or the Chronicle of Nestor (the second half of the XI - beginning of XII centuries), extended almost to the whole of Europe - up to about 60 0 n. and to the shores of the Baltic and North Seas, as well as to the Caucasus, India, the Middle East and the northern coast of Africa. In the "Chronicle" the most complete and reliable information is given about the Russian Plain, primarily about the Valdai Upland, from where the main Slavic rivers (110,126,279).

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors and brave travelers. The greatest achievement of Scandinavians of Norwegian origin, or the so-called Vikings, was that they were able to cross the North Atlantic and visit America. In 874, the Vikings approached the coast of Iceland and founded a settlement, which then began to develop rapidly and prosper. In 930, the world's first parliament, the Althing, was established here.

Among the inhabitants of the Icelandic colony was someone Eric the Red , which was distinguished by a violent and stormy disposition. In 982, he was expelled from Iceland along with his family and friends. Having heard about the existence of a land lying somewhere far to the west, Eric set sail on the stormy waters of the North Atlantic and after a while found himself at south coast Greenland. Perhaps the name Greenland, which he gave to this new land, was one of the first examples of arbitrary name-creation in world geography - after all, there was nothing green around. However, the colony founded by Eric attracted some Icelanders. Close maritime links developed between Greenland, Iceland and Norway (110,126,279).

Around 1000, the son of Eric the Red, Leif Eirikson , returning from Greenland to Norway, got into a violent storm; the ship is off course. When the sky cleared, he found himself on an unfamiliar coast, stretching north and south as far as he could see. Coming ashore, he found himself in a virgin forest, the tree trunks of which were twined with wild grapes. Returning to Greenland, he described this new land, lying far to the west of his home country (21,110).

In 1003, someone Karlsefni organized an expedition to take another look at this new land. About 160 people sailed with him - men and women, a large supply of food and livestock was taken. There is no doubt that they managed to reach the coast of North America. The large bay they described, with a strong current emanating from it, is probably the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. Somewhere here people landed on the shore and stayed for the winter. The first European child on American soil was born right there. The next summer they all sailed to southbound reaching the peninsula of Southern Scotland. They may have been further south, by the Chesapeake Bay. They liked this new land, but the Indians were too belligerent towards the Vikings. The raids of local tribes caused such damage that the Vikings, who made so much effort to settle here, were eventually forced to go back to Greenland. All stories related to this event are captured in the "Saga of Eric the Red" passed from mouth to mouth. Historians of geographical science are still trying to find out exactly where the people who sailed from Karlsefni landed. It is quite possible that even before the 11th century sailings were made to the shores of North America, but only vague rumors of such travels reached European geographers (7,21,26,110,126,279,363,377).

3 Geography in the countries of the Arab world. From the 6th century Arabs begin to play a prominent role in the development of world culture. By the beginning of the 8th century they created a huge state that covered the whole of Asia Minor, part of Central Asia, northwestern India, North Africa and most of the Iberian Peninsula. Among the Arabs, craft and trade prevailed over subsistence farming. Arab merchants traded with China and African countries. In the XII century. the Arabs learned of the existence of Madagascar, and according to some other sources, in 1420 Arab navigators reached the southern tip of Africa (21,110,126).

Many nations have contributed to Arab culture and science. Started in the 8th century decentralization of the Arab Caliphate gradually led to the emergence of a number of major cultural scientific centers in Persia, Spain and North Africa. Scientists of Central Asia also wrote in Arabic. The Arabs adopted a lot from the Indians (including the written account system), the Chinese (knowledge of the magnetic needle, gunpowder, making paper from cotton). Under Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809), a college of translators was established in Baghdad, which translated Indian, Persian, Syriac and Greek scientific works into Arabic.

Of particular importance for the development of Arabic science were the translations of the works of Greek scientists - Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Strabo, Ptolemy, etc. To a large extent, under the influence of Aristotle's ideas, many thinkers of the Muslim world rejected the existence of supernatural forces and called for an experimental study of nature. Among them, first of all, it is necessary to note the outstanding Tajik philosopher and scientist-encyclopedist Ibn Sinu (Avicenna) 980-1037) and Muggamet Ibn Roshd, or Avverroes (1126-1198).

To expand the spatial horizons of the Arabs, the development of trade was of paramount importance. Already in the VIII century. geography in the Arab world was seen as "the science of postal communication" and "the science of paths and regions" (126). Description of travel becomes the most popular form of Arabic literature. From travelers of the VIII century. the most famous merchant Suleiman from Basra, who sailed to China and visited Ceylon, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, as well as the island of Socotra.

In the writings of Arab authors, information of a nomenclature and historical-political nature predominates; nature, however, has received unjustifiably little attention. In the interpretation of physical and geographical phenomena, scientists who wrote in Arabic did not contribute anything essentially new and original. The main significance of Arabic literature of geographical content lies in new facts, but not in the theories to which it adhered. The theoretical ideas of the Arabs remained underdeveloped. In most cases, the Arabs simply followed the Greeks without bothering to develop new concepts.

Indeed, the Arabs collected a lot of material in the field of physical geography, but failed to process it into a coherent scientific system (126). In addition, they constantly mixed the creations of their imagination with reality. Nevertheless, the role of the Arabs in the history of science is very significant. Thanks to the Arabs, in Western Europe after the Crusades, a new system of "Arabic" numbers began to spread, their arithmetic, astronomy, as well as Arabic translations Greek authors, including Aristotle, Plato and Ptolemy.

The works of the Arabs on geography, written in the VIII-XIV centuries, were based on a variety of literary sources. In addition, Arab scholars used not only translations from Greek, but also information received from their own travelers. As a result, the knowledge of the Arabs was much more correct and accurate than that of the Christian authors.

One of the earliest Arab travelers was Ibn Haukal. The last thirty years of his life (943-973) he devoted to traveling to the most remote and remote regions of Africa and Asia. During his visit to the east coast of Africa, at a point about twenty degrees south of the equator, he drew his attention to the fact that here, in these latitudes, which the Greeks considered uninhabited, a large number of people lived. However, the theory of the uninhabitedness of this zone, which was held by the ancient Greeks, was revived again and again, even in the so-called modern times.

Arab scientists own several important observations on the climate. In 921 Al Balkhi summarized information about climatic phenomena collected by Arab travelers in the first climatic atlas of the world - "Kitab al-Ashkal".

Masudi (died 956) penetrated as far south as present-day Mozambique and made a very exact description monsoons. Already in the X century. he correctly described the process of evaporation of moisture from the water surface and its condensation in the form of clouds.

In 985 Makdisi proposed a new subdivision of the Earth into 14 climatic regions. He found that climate changes not only with latitude, but also westward and eastward. He also owns the idea that most of the southern hemisphere is occupied by the ocean, and the main land masses are concentrated in the northern hemisphere (110).

Some Arab geographers expressed correct ideas about the formation of the forms of the earth's surface. In 1030 Al-Biruni wrote a huge book on the geography of India. In it, he spoke in particular of rounded stones that he found in alluvial deposits south of the Himalayas. He explained their origin by the fact that these stones acquired a rounded shape due to the fact that swift mountain rivers rolled them along their course. He also drew attention to the fact that alluvial deposits deposited near the foot of the mountains have a coarser mechanical composition, and that as they move away from the mountains, they are composed of smaller and smaller particles. He also spoke about the fact that, according to the ideas of the Hindus, the tides are caused by the moon. His book also contains an interesting statement that as one moves towards the South Pole, night disappears. This statement proves that even before the 11th century, some Arab navigators penetrated far to the south (110,126).

Avicenna, or Ibn Sina , who had the opportunity to directly observe how mountain streams produce valleys in the mountains of Central Asia, also contributed to deepening knowledge about the development of the earth's surface forms. He owns the idea that the highest peaks are composed of hard rocks, especially resistant to erosion. Rising, mountains, he pointed out, immediately begin to undergo this process of grinding, going very slowly, but relentlessly. Avicenna also noted the presence in the rocks that make up the highlands, fossil remains of organisms, which he considered as examples of attempts by nature to create living plants or animals that ended in failure (126).

Ibn Battuta - one of the greatest Arab travelers of all times and peoples. He was born in Tangier in 1304 into a family in which the profession of a judge was hereditary. In 1325, at the age of twenty-one, he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he hoped to complete his study of the laws. However, on the way through northern Africa and Egypt, he realized that he was much more attracted by the study of peoples and countries than by the practice of legal intricacies. Having reached Mecca, he decided to dedicate his life to travel, and in his endless wanderings through the lands inhabited by the Arabs, he was most concerned about not going twice in the same way. He managed to visit those places of the Arabian Peninsula, where no one had been before him. He sailed the Red Sea, visited Ethiopia and then, moving farther and farther south along the coast of East Africa, he reached Kilwa, lying almost under 10 0 S.l. There he learned about the existence of an Arab trading post in Sofala (Mozambique), located south of the present port city of Beira, that is, almost 20 degrees south of the equator. Ibn Battuta confirmed what Ibn Haukal insisted on, namely, that the hot zone of East Africa was not sizzlingly hot and that it was inhabited by local tribes who did not oppose the establishment of trading posts by the Arabs.

Returning to Mecca, he soon sets off again, visits Baghdad, travels around Persia and the lands adjacent to the Black Sea. Following through the Russian steppes, he eventually reached Bukhara and Samarkand, and from there through the mountains of Afghanistan came to India. For several years, Ibn Battuta was in the service of the Sultan of Delhi, which gave him the opportunity to freely travel around the country. The Sultan appointed him as his ambassador to China. However, many years passed before Ibn Battuta arrived there. During this time, he managed to visit the Maldives, Ceylon and Sumatra, and only after that he ended up in China. In 1350 he returned to Fes, the capital of Morocco. However, his travels did not end there. After a trip to Spain, he returned to Africa and, moving through the Sahara, reached the Niger River, where he managed to collect important information about the Negro Islamized tribes living in the area. In 1353 he settled in Fez, where, by order of the Sultan, he dictated a long narrative about his travels. For about thirty years, Ibn Battura covered a distance of about 120 thousand km, which was an absolute record for the XIV century. Unfortunately, his book, written in Arabic, did not have any significant impact on the way of thinking of European scientists (110).

4 Development of geography in medieval China. Beginning around the 2nd century BC. and until the 15th century, the Chinese people had the highest level of knowledge among other peoples of the Earth. Chinese mathematicians began to use zero and created a decimal system, which was much more convenient than the sexagesimal system used in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Decimal reckoning was borrowed from the Hindus by the Arabs around 800, but it is believed that it entered India from China (110).

Chinese philosophers differed from ancient Greek thinkers mainly in that they attached paramount importance to the natural world. According to their teaching, individuals should not be separated from nature, since they are its organic part. The Chinese denied the divine power that prescribes laws and creates the universe for man according to a certain plan. In China, for example, it was not considered that after death life continues in the Garden of Eden or in the circles of hell. The Chinese believed that the dead are absorbed by the all-pervading universe, of which all individuals are an inseparable part (126,158).

Confucianism taught a way of life in which friction between members of society was minimized. However, this doctrine remained relatively indifferent to the development of scientific knowledge about the surrounding nature.

The activity of the Chinese in the field of geographical research looks very impressive, although it is characterized more by the achievements of a contemplative plan than by the development of a scientific theory (110).

In China, geographical research was primarily associated with the creation of methods that made it possible to make accurate measurements and observations with their subsequent use in various useful inventions. Starting from the XIII century. BC, the Chinese conducted systematic observations of the weather.

Already in the II century. BC. Chinese engineers made accurate measurements of the amount of silt carried by rivers. In 2 AD China conducted the world's first population census. Among technical inventions China owns the production of paper, printing of books, the use of rain gauges and snow gauges to measure the amount of precipitation, as well as a compass for the needs of sailors.

The geographical descriptions of Chinese authors can be divided into the following eight groups: 1) works devoted to the study of people (human geography); 2) descriptions of the interior regions of China; 3) descriptions of foreign countries; 4) travel stories; 5) books about the rivers of China; 6) descriptions of the coasts of China, especially those that are important for shipping; 7) works of local lore, including descriptions of areas subordinate to and ruled by fortified cities, famous mountain ranges, or certain cities and palaces; 8) geographical encyclopedias (110, p. 96). Highly great attention it was also given to the origin of geographical names (110).

The earliest evidence of Chinese travel is a book probably written between the 5th and 3rd centuries. BC. She was discovered in the tomb of a man who ruled around 245 BC. territory that occupied part of the Wei He valley. The books found in this burial were written on strips of white silk glued to bamboo cuttings. For better preservation, the book was rewritten at the end of the 3rd century. BC. In world geography, both versions of this book are known as "The Travels of Emperor Mu".

The reign of Emperor Mu fell on 1001-945. BC. Emperor Mu, these works say, desired to travel around the whole world and leave traces of his carriage in every country. The history of his wanderings is full of amazing adventures and embellished with fiction. However, the descriptions of the wanderings contain such details that could hardly be the fruit of fantasy. The emperor visited the forested mountains, saw snow, hunted a lot. On the way back he crossed a vast desert so waterless that he even had to drink the blood of a horse. There can be no doubt that in very ancient times, Chinese travelers traveled considerable distances from the Wei He valley, the center of their cultural development.

Well-known descriptions of travels of the Middle Ages belong to Chinese pilgrims who visited India, as well as the regions adjacent to it (Fa Xian, Xuan Zang, I. Ching, and others). By the 8th century refers to the treatise Jia Danya "Description of nine countries", which is a country guide South-East Asia. In 1221 a Taoist monk Chan Chun (XII-XIII centuries) traveled to Samarkand to the court of Genghis Khan and collected quite accurate information about the population, climate, vegetation of Central Asia.

In medieval China, there were numerous official descriptions of the country, which were compiled for each new dynasty. These works contained a variety of information on the history, natural conditions, population, economy and various sights. The geographical knowledge of the peoples of South and East Asia had practically no effect on the geographical outlook of Europeans. On the other hand, geographical representations medieval Europe remained almost unknown in India and China, except for some information received through Arab sources (110,126,158,279,283,300).

Late Middle Ages in Europe (XII-XIV centuries). In the XII century. feudal stagnation in the economic development of the countries of Western Europe was replaced by a certain upsurge: handicrafts, trade, commodity-money relations new cities emerged. The main economic and cultural centers in Europe XII in. there were Mediterranean cities through which trade routes to the East passed, as well as Flanders, where various crafts flourished and commodity-money relations developed. In the XIV century. the area of ​​the Baltic and North Seas, where the Hanseatic League of trading cities was formed, also became a sphere of lively trade relations. In the XIV century. paper and gunpowder appear in Europe.

In the XIII century. sailing and rowing ships are gradually being replaced by caravels, the compass is coming into use, the first sea charts are being created - portolans, methods for determining the latitude of a place are being improved (by observing the height of the Sun above the horizon and using tables of solar declination). All this made it possible to move from coastal navigation to navigation on the high seas.

In the XIII century. Italian merchants began to sail through the Strait of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Rhine. It is known that at that time the trade routes to the East were in the hands of the Italian city-republics of Venice and Genoa. Florence was the largest industrial and banking center. That is why the cities of Northern Italy in the middle of the XIV century. were the center of the Renaissance, the centers of the revival of ancient culture, philosophy, science and art. The ideology of the urban bourgeoisie that was being formed at that time found its expression in the philosophy of humanism (110,126).

Humanism (from the Latin humanus - human, humane) is the recognition of the value of a person as a person, his right to free development and manifestation of his abilities, the assertion of the good of a person as an evaluation criterion public relations. In a narrower sense, humanism is the secular freethinking of the Renaissance, opposed to scholasticism and the spiritual dominance of the church and associated with the study of newly discovered works of classical antiquity (291).

The greatest humanist of the Italian Renaissance and world history in general was Francis of Assis (1182-1226) - an outstanding preacher, author of religious and poetic works, the humanistic potential of which is comparable to the teachings of Jesus Christ. In 1207-1209. he founded the Franciscan order.

From among the Franciscans came the most advanced philosophers of the Middle Ages - Roger Bacon (1212-1294) and William of Ockham (about 1300 - about 1350), who opposed the scholastic dogmatism and called for an experimental study of nature. It was they who laid the foundation for the disintegration of official scholasticism.

In those years, interest in ancient culture, the study of ancient languages, and translations of ancient authors was intensively revived. The first prominent representatives of the Italian Renaissance were petrarch (1304-1374) and Bocaccio (1313-1375), although, undoubtedly, it was Dante (1265-1321) was the forerunner of the Italian Renaissance.

Science of the Catholic countries of Europe in the XIII-XIV centuries. was in the firm hands of the church. However, already in the XII century. the first universities were established in Bologna and Paris; in the 14th century there were more than 40 of them. All of them were in the hands of the church, and theology occupied the main place in teaching. Church councils of 1209 and 1215 decided to ban the teaching of Aristotle's physics and mathematics. In the XIII century. prominent representative of the Dominicans Thomas Aquinas (1225-1276) formulated the official teaching of Catholicism, using some of the reactionary aspects of the teachings of Aristotle, Ibn Sina, and others, giving them their own religious and mystical character.

Undoubtedly, Thomas Aquinas was an outstanding philosopher and theologian, a systematizer of scholasticism on the methodological basis of Christian Aristotelianism (the doctrine of act and potency, form and matter, substance and accidents, etc.). He formulated five proofs of the existence of God, described as the root cause, the ultimate goal of existence, etc. Recognizing the relative independence of natural being and human reason (the concept of natural law, etc.), Thomas Aquinas argued that nature ends in grace, reason - in faith, philosophical knowledge and natural theology, based on the analogy of being, - in supernatural revelation. Thomas Aquinas' main writings are Summa Theologia and Summa Against the Gentiles. The teachings of Aquinas underlie such philosophical and religious concepts as Thomism and Neo-Thomism.

The development of international relations and navigation, the rapid growth of cities contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons, aroused the keen interest of Europeans in geographical knowledge and discoveries. In world history, the entire XII century. and the first half of the thirteenth century. represent the period of the exit of Western Europe from centuries of hibernation and the awakening of a stormy intellectual life in it.

At this time, the main factor in the expansion of the geographical representations of European peoples were the crusades undertaken between 1096 and 1270. under the pretext of liberating the Holy Land. Communication between Europeans and Syrians, Persians and Arabs greatly enriched their Christian culture.

In those years, representatives of the Eastern Slavs also traveled a lot. Daniel from Kyiv , for example, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and Benjamin of Tudela traveled to different countries of the East.

A noticeable turning point in the development of geographical concepts occurred approximately in the middle of the 13th century, one of the reasons for which was the Mongol expansion, which reached its extreme western limit by 1242. Since 1245, the Pope and many Christian crowns began to send their embassies and missions to the Mongol khans for diplomatic and intelligence purposes and in the hope of converting the Mongol rulers to Christianity. Merchants followed the diplomats and missionaries to the east. Greater accessibility of countries under Mongol rule, in comparison with Muslim countries, as well as the presence of a well-established system of communications and means of communication, opened the way for Europeans to Central and East Asia.

In the XIII century, namely from 1271 to 1295, Marco Polo made a trip to China, visited India, Ceylon, South Vietnam, Burma, the Malay Archipelago, Arabia and East Africa. After the journey of Marco Polo, merchant caravans were often equipped from many countries of Western Europe to China and India (146).

The study of the northern outskirts of Europe was successfully continued by Russian Novgorodians. After they in the XII-XIII centuries. All major rivers of the European North were discovered; they paved the way to the Ob basin through the Sukhona, Pechora and Northern Urals. The first campaign to the Lower Ob (to the Gulf of Ob), about which there are indications in the annals, was undertaken in 1364-1365. At the same time, Russian sailors moved to the East along the northern coasts of Eurasia. By the end of the XV century. they explored the southwestern coast of the Kara Sea, the Ob and Taz Bays. At the beginning of the XV century. Russians sailed to Grumant (Spitsbergen archipelago). However, it is possible that these voyages began much earlier (2,13,14,21,28,31,85,119,126,191,192,279).

Unlike Asia, Africa remained for the Europeans of the 13th-15th centuries. almost unexplored mainland, with the exception of its northern outskirts.

With the development of navigation, the emergence of a new type of maps is associated - portolans, or complex charts, who had a direct practical value. They appeared in Italy and Catalonia around 1275-1280. Early portolans were images of the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, often made with very high accuracy. Bays, small islands, shoals, etc. were especially carefully indicated on these drawings. Later, portolans appeared on the western coasts of Europe. All portolans were oriented to the north, at a number of points compass directions were applied to them, for the first time a linear scale was given. Portolans were in use until the 17th century, when they began to be replaced by nautical charts in the Mercator projection.

Along with portolans, unusually accurate for their time, in the late Middle Ages there were also "monastery cards" which for a long time retained their primitive character. Later they increased in format and became more detailed and precise.

Despite the significant expansion of the spatial outlook, XIII and XIV centuries. gave very little new in the field of scientific geographical ideas and presentations. Even the descriptive-regional direction did not show much progress. The term "geography" itself at that time, apparently, was not used at all, although literary sources contain extensive information related to the field of geography. This information in the XIII-XV centuries, of course, became even more numerous. The main place among the geographical descriptions of that time is occupied by the stories of the crusaders about the wonders of the East, as well as writings about travel and the travelers themselves. Of course, this information is not equivalent both in volume and in objectivity.

The greatest value among all the geographical works of that period is the "Book" of Marco Polo (146). Contemporaries reacted to its content very skeptically and with great distrust. Only in the second half of the XIV century. and at a later time, the book of Marco Polo began to be valued as a source of various information about the countries of East, Southeast and South Asia. This work was used, for example, by Christopher Columbus during his wanderings to the shores of America. Up until the 16th century. Marco Polo's book served as an important source of various information for compiling maps of Asia (146).

Especially popular in the XIV century. used descriptions of fictional travels, full of legends and stories of miracles.

On the whole, it can be said that the Middle Ages were marked by an almost complete degeneration of general physical geography. The Middle Ages practically did not give new ideas in the field of geography and only preserved for posterity some ideas of ancient authors, thereby preparing the first theoretical prerequisites for the transition to the Great geographical discoveries (110,126,279).

Marco Polo and his Book. The most famous travelers of the Middle Ages were Venetian merchants the Polo brothers and the son of one of them, Marco. In 1271, when Marco Polo was seventeen years old, he went on a long journey to China with his father and uncle. The Polo brothers had already visited China up to this point, spending nine years on the way back and forth - from 1260 to 1269. The Great Khan of the Mongols and the Emperor of China invited them to visit his country again. The return journey to China lasted four years; for another seventeen years, three Venetian merchants remained in this country.

Marco served with the khan, who sent him on official missions to various regions of China, which allowed him to acquire in-depth knowledge of the culture and nature of this country. The activity of Marco Polo was so useful for the khan that the khan with great displeasure agreed to Polo's departure.

In 1292, the Khan provided all the Polos with a flotilla of thirteen ships. Some of them were so large that the number of their team exceeded a hundred people. In total, together with the Polo merchants, about 600 passengers were accommodated on all these ships. The flotilla departed from a port located in southern China, approximately from the place where the modern city of Quanzhou is located. Three months later, the ships reached the islands of Java and Sumatra, where they stayed for five months, after which the voyage continued.

Travelers visited the island of Ceylon and South India, and then, following along its west coast, went to the Persian Gulf, dropping anchor in the ancient port of Hormuz. By the end of the voyage, out of 600 passengers, only 18 survived, and most of the ships perished. But all three Polos returned unharmed to Venice in 1295 after a twenty-five-year absence.

During naval battle In 1298, in the war between Genoa and Venice, Marco Polo was captured and until 1299 was kept in a Genoese prison. While in prison, he dictated stories about his travels to one of the prisoners. His descriptions of life in China and the perilous adventures on the way back and forth were so vivid and lively that they were often taken as products of a fervent imagination. In addition to stories about those places where he directly visited, Marco Polo also mentioned Chipango, or Japan, and the island of Madagascar, which, according to him, was located at southern limit inhabited land. Since Madagascar was located much south of the equator, it became obvious that the sizzling, sultry zone was not such at all and belonged to the inhabited lands.

However, it should be noted that Marco Polo was not a professional geographer and did not even suspect the existence of such a field of knowledge as geography. Nor was he aware of the heated discussions between those who believed in the uninhabitability of the hot zone and those who disputed this notion. He also heard nothing of the controversy between those who believed that the underestimated value of the earth's circumference was correct, following Posidonius, Marines of Tyre, and Ptolemy in this, and those who preferred the calculations of Eratosthenes. Marco Polo did not know anything about the assumptions of the ancient Greeks that the eastern tip of the Oikumene is located near the mouth of the Ganges, nor did he hear about Ptolemy's statement that Indian Ocean"closed" from the south by land. It is doubtful that Marco Polo ever attempted to determine the latitude, let alone the longitude, of the places he visited. However, he tells you how many days you need to spend and in what direction you need to move in order to reach one or another point. He does not say anything about his attitude to the geographical representations of previous times. At the same time, his book is one of those that tell about the great geographical discoveries. But in medieval Europe it was perceived as one of the numerous and ordinary books of that time, filled with the most incredible, but very interesting stories. It is common knowledge that Columbus had a personal copy of Marco Polo's book with his own notes (110,146).

Prince Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese Sea Voyages . Prince Heinrich , nicknamed the Navigator, was the organizer of major expeditions of the Portuguese. In 1415, the Portuguese army under the command of Prince Henry attacked and stormed the Muslim stronghold on the southern coast of the Strait of Gibraltar in Ceuta. Thus, for the first time, a European power came into possession of a territory lying outside Europe. With the occupation of this part of Africa, the period of colonization of overseas territories by Europeans began.

In 1418 Prince Heinrich founded the world's first geographical research institute in Sagrisha. In Sagrisha, Prince Heinrich built a palace, a church, an astronomical observatory, a building for storing maps and manuscripts, as well as houses for the employees of this institute to live. He invited here scientists of different faiths (Christians, Jews, Muslims) from all over the Mediterranean. Among them were geographers, cartographers, mathematicians, astronomers, and translators capable of reading manuscripts written in different languages.

someone Jakome from Mallorca was appointed chief geographer. He was given the task of improving the methods of navigation and then teaching them to the Portuguese captains, as well as teaching them the decimal system. It was also necessary to find out, on the basis of documents and maps, the possibility of sailing to the Spicy Islands, following first south along the African coast. In this regard, a number of very important and complex issues have arisen. Are these lands near the equator habitable? Does the skin turn black in people who get there, or is it fiction? What are the dimensions of the Earth? Is the Earth as big as Marin of Tyre thought? Or is it the way the Arab geographers imagined it, having carried out their measurements in the vicinity of Baghdad?

Prince Heinrich was developing a new type of ship. The new Portuguese caravels had two or three masts and Latin rigging. They were rather slow-moving, but they were distinguished by their stability and the ability to travel long distances.

Prince Henry's captains gained experience and self-confidence by sailing to the Canary and Azores. At the same time, Prince Henry sent his more experienced captains on long voyages along the African coast.

The first reconnaissance voyage of the Portuguese was undertaken in 1418. But soon the ships turned back, as their teams were afraid to approach the unknown equator. Despite repeated attempts, it took 16 years for the Portuguese ships to pass 26 0 7 'N in their advance to the south. At this latitude, lying a little south canary islands, on the African coast, a low sandy cape called Bojador juts out into the ocean. A strong ocean current runs along it, directed to the south. At the foot of the cape, it forms whirlpools, marked by foaming wave crests. Whenever the ships approached this place, the teams demanded to stop sailing. Of course, there was boiling water here, as ancient Greek scientists wrote about!!! This is the place where people should turn black!!! Moreover, an Arab map of this coast immediately south of Bojador showed the hand of the devil rising from the water. However, on the portolan of 1351, nothing unusual was shown near Bojador, and he himself was only a small cape. In addition, in Sagrisha there was an account of the travels of the Phoenicians led by Hanno , in ancient times sailing far south of Bojador.

In 1433 the captain of Prince Henry Gil Eanish tried to go around Cape Bojador, but his crew rebelled and he was forced to return to Sagrish.

In 1434, Captain Gilles Eanish resorted to a maneuver suggested by Prince Henry. From the Canary Islands, he boldly turned into the open ocean so far that the land disappeared from his eyes. And south of the latitude of Bojador, he sent his ship to the east and, approaching the shore, made sure that the water did not boil there and no one turned into a negro. The Bojador barrier was taken. The following year, Portuguese ships penetrated far south from Cape Bojador.

Around 1441, Prince Henry's ships sailed so far south that they were already reaching the transitional zone between desert and humid climates, and even countries beyond it. south of the cape Cap Blanc, on the territory of modern Mauritania, the Portuguese captured first a man and a woman, and then ten more people. They also found some gold. In Portugal, this caused a sensation, and hundreds of volunteers immediately appeared who wanted to sail south.

Between 1444 and 1448 almost forty Portuguese ships visited the African coast. As a result of these voyages, 900 Africans were captured for sale into slavery. Discoveries as such were forgotten in the pursuit of profits from the slave trade.

Prince Heinrich, however, managed to return the captains he had nurtured to the righteous path of research and discovery. But this happened after ten years. Now the prince knew that a much more valuable reward awaited him if he could sail around Africa and reach India.

The coast of Guinea was explored by the Portuguese in 1455-1456. The sailors of Prince Henry also visited the Cape Verde Islands. Prince Henry the Navigator died in 1460, but the business he started continued. More and more expeditions left the coast of Portugal to the south. In 1473, a Portuguese ship crossed the equator and failed to catch fire. A few years later, the Portuguese landed on the coast and erected their stone monuments (padrans) there - evidence of their claims to the African coast. Placed near the mouth of the Congo River, these monuments, according to eyewitnesses, were still preserved in the last century.

Among the glorious captains of Prince Henry was Bartolomeu Dias. Dias, sailing along the African coast south of the equator, got into a zone of headwind and current directed to the north. To avoid the storm, he turned sharply to the west, moving away from the coast of the continent, and only when the weather improved, he again swam to the east. However, having traveled, according to his calculations, in this direction more time than it was necessary to reach the coast, he turned north in the hope of finding land. So, he sailed to the shores of South Africa near Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth). On the way back, he passed Cape Agulhas and the Cape of Good Hope. This brave voyage took place in 1486-1487. (110)

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ON BOATS, IN THE SADDLE AND ON FOOT

A number of scientists tend to consider the beginning of the early Western European Middle Ages of the 3rd century BC. n. e. We can agree with R. Hennig that the end of ancient geography should be dated to the end of the 2nd century. n. e. He writes: “... it was in the 2nd century that the Roman Empire reached the apogee of its power and territorial expansion... The geographical outlook of the people of this era reached a breadth that remained unsurpassed until the 15th century, if we exclude studies of the northern countries... When the limits of known to the ancient world, the great genius of Ptolemy 1 united the entire body of geographical knowledge into a single whole and presented them in a brilliant framework of broad generalizations ... During the centuries that elapsed between the activities of Ptolemy and Columbus (i.e., from the 3rd to the 15th centuries - A. D.), in the overwhelming majority of cases, research expeditions only led to the re-conquest for geographical science of those countries that were already known and often visited in antiquity ”(Hennig, 1961. Vol. II. P. 21).

However, one cannot fully agree with the last statement of the scientist, since during the Middle Ages Western Europeans had the opportunity to get acquainted not only with the northern regions of Europe and the regions of the North Atlantic, unknown to the ancient peoples of Greece and Rome, but also with the unknown vast expanses of Europe, with its northern outskirts, with regions of Central and East Asia, with the western shores of Africa, about which the ancient geographers had almost no idea, or had vague and half-legendary information. The Middle Ages, in particular Western Europe, contributed to the expansion of the spatial horizons thanks to numerous land campaigns and sea voyages.

The Turin wheel map of 1080 can serve as an example of maps (drawings) made in monasteries as illustrations of biblical writings. It is kept in the library of the city of Turin. It depicts the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia, separated from each other by the Mediterranean Sea and the rivers Nile and Tanais (Don), which are located in the form of a capital letter T of the Latin alphabet. The outer circle, in which the letter T is inscribed, corresponds to the ocean surrounding the entire land. Such a layout of the continents, as the researchers suggest, was first proposed by the Spanish encyclopedist, Bishop of the city of Seville Isidore, the author of the famous Etymology in the Middle Ages. The map is oriented to the east: Asia is placed in the upper half, Europe is in the lower left part of the map, Africa is in the lower right part of the map. This arrangement was based on the religious conception of Christians: the East, i.e. Asia, where the "holy places" of Palestine and the "Holy Sepulcher" are located, as it were, crowns the map. At the very top of the map, the figures of Adam and Eve symbolized the biblical paradise; in the center of the map is the city of Jerusalem. On the Turin map, as well as on the oval map compiled around 776 by the monk Beat, another fourth, southern mainland (south of Africa), inhabited by antipodes, is depicted - an undoubted echo of ancient ideas.

If in antique time the main factors that contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons and led to territorial geographical discoveries were military campaigns (Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC to the Near East and Central Asia and India, Roman legionnaires across the Sahara and Nubia, military expeditions of Julius Caesar to Gaul and Britain in the 1st century BC, etc.), as well as trade relations between the Greco-Roman world and other peoples (Gippal’s voyage to India and his “discovery” of winds periodically changing their direction - monsoons, Greek voyages and Egyptian sailors to the shores of Indochina, which was reflected on the map of Ptolemy, or the journey of Pytheas from Massalia to the North Atlantic, etc.), then in the early Middle Ages another factor begins to acquire a certain significance, namely, the spread of Christian missionaries of their teachings among pagans. peoples of Europe, Northeast Africa, Western, South and East Asia.

Of course, this factor could not be as decisive as K. Ritter imagined it, noting that “the history of the spread of Christianity” in medieval Europe “is at the same time the history of discoveries and successes in the field of geography” (1864, p. 117 ). To some extent he was echoed by A. Gettner, who wrote that "... the spatial expansion of geographical knowledge approximately coincides with the spread of Christianity" (1930, p. 36). Moreover, Gettner argued that the clergy were the only carriers of science in that era. However, at the same time, he noted that the main factor in the spread of Roman Christianity was that it spread from the Mediterranean region to the north, covering all of Western Europe, while North Africa was inaccessible to him due to the spread of Islam by the Arabs in the 7th century. . A. Gettner draws attention to the fact that numerous pilgrimages to Rome and Palestine contributed to the spread of geographical knowledge in the states of Western Europe. Several descriptions of this kind of travel have survived to our time. C. R. Beasley (1979) also believes that medieval pilgrims had a large role as discoverers, especially from the time of Charlemagne to the Crusades.

Apparently, the factor of the spread of Christianity cannot be underestimated, since pilgrimages to the largest religious centers of the Christian world played a big role in the history of medieval trade, since the pilgrims themselves often performed the functions of small merchants, and their routes served as the basis for the emerging network of trade routes.

Pilgrimages to Palestine, to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea with the aim of visiting the “Holy Sepulcher” and other “holy places” that are described in the Bible, played a completely definite role in expanding the spatial horizons of Western Europeans in the southeast direction. According to Beasley, these pilgrimages began from the time of Emperor Constantine

"Map of the whole world" by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela (43).

(who made Constantinople the new capital of the Roman Empire in 324-330). His mother Helena, through her visit to Palestine, the construction of a Christian church in Bethlehem, and the “finding” of relics in Jerusalem (the remains of the cross on which Christ was crucified) contributed to the fact that the pilgrimage began to be considered the dominant fashion.

A. Gettner showed that the Greek, or Byzantine, East in the early Middle Ages was a completely different cultural area, separated from the Western Roman Empire after the division in 395 of the once united Roman Empire into two independent states. In Byzantium they spoke a different (Greek) language than in the countries of Western Europe, they also adhered to a different religion - Orthodox, and not Catholic, characteristic of the Western Roman Empire; here, in Byzantium, there was also a different geographical outlook, since a lively trade was maintained with Asia Minor.

In 569-571. Byzantine ambassador Zimarch made a trip to the Altai Turks. The description of this journey, during which the Aral Sea was discovered as an independent basin, has come down to us in the historical work of Menander Petiktor (who lived in the second half of the 6th century) “On the reign of Emperor Justinian”. Also in the VI century. a voyage to India was made by Constantine of Antioch (who, after being tonsured a monk, took the name of Cosmas Indikoplova). As a merchant and engaged in trade, Constantine sailed in three seas: the Roma (Mediterranean), Arabian (Red) and Persian (Persian Gulf). In the Eritrean Sea, as the Indian Ocean was called at that time, Constantine was caught in a severe storm. Whether he reached Hindustan is unknown, but he undoubtedly visited the island of Taprobana (Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka), which is described in the XI book (chapter) of his work. In 522-525. Constantine visited Ethiopia and the Somali Peninsula (where the "Land-Bearing Land" was located). He may have visited the source of the Blue Nile, which rises from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands. He knew the Sinai Peninsula. Researchers believe that he took the veil in Sinai, where he graduated life path his companion and friend Mina. Becoming a monk, Cosmas wrote "Christian Topography" (c. 547-550), which, on the one hand, provides important information about distant countries, and on the other hand, draws a completely fantastic picture of the world, which caused criticism of the Armenian scientists of the 7th century. and Patriarch Photius of Constantinople. It is known that Cosmas was familiar with the Persian Mar Aba, who mastered the Syrian and ancient Greek culture. From him he borrowed his cosmographic views of the Nestorian Christians.

"Christian topography", widespread in Byzantium and known in Armenia, remained unfamiliar to Western European figures for a long time. In any case, the name of Kosma Indikoplova is found only in a parchment list of the 6th century, stored in Florence in the Laurentian Library. The authors of the early Western European Middle Ages do not mention the name of Cosmas.

Except for the already mentioned travels in the eastern direction - Cosmas Indikoplova to India and East Africa and the embassy of Zimarch to the Altai through Central Asia - the earliest travel to the East from Byzantium was an overland journey of two Christian monks around 500 to the country "Serinda" sent by the emperor Justinian for gren of silkworms. The story about this is contained in the work of the historian Procopius from Caesarea "War with the Goths." This journey was very important from an economic point of view, since before that time in Europe they were not engaged in sericulture and were forced to buy Chinese silk (through the Persians or Ethiopians) at a high price. True, it still remains unknown where exactly the country called by Procopius “Serinda” was located, since this geographical name is not found anywhere else in the literature of that time. Some researchers localize it with China or Indo-China, but others, in particular R. Hennig (1961), convincingly show that the monks sent by the emperor did not visit China, but Sogdiana, that is, in the area lying between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers , with its capital in Samarkand, where, according to some historical sources, in the VI century. raised silkworms and produced silk. The monks secretly smuggled grenae of silkworms in their staffs to Byzantium and thus created an opportunity for the production of silk here.

In 636 the Christian missionary Olopena (Alopena) traveled to China. This is evidenced by a stone stele with a text in Chinese and Syriac, installed in one of the Chinese cities around 780. This journey in time coincides with the spread of Nestorian Christianity in China, brought to this country as early as the 7th century. Nestorian monks. There it flourished for about 200 years, during which churches were built in many cities. According to scientists, the establishment of a stone stele speaks of fairly close ties between the East and West of the ecumene of that time.

It should be said that Christianity in Western Europe spread quite quickly. Already by 380, a significant part of the vast Roman Empire (before its division into Eastern and Western) was considered Christian. After Christianity was recognized as the official religion in the empire by the edict of Emperor Constantine in 313, this religion began to spread among other, non-Roman peoples.

So, in 330, the Iberians, inhabitants of Western Transcaucasia, were converted to Christianity, and soon the first Christian church on the southern slope of the Caucasus Range. In 354 the monk Theophilos spread Christianity in South Arabia. In Aden, Jafar, and Oman, Roman merchants kept merchants, many of whom were Christians. Somewhat earlier, in 340, the missionaries Frumentius and Edesius preached their religion in the Aksumite kingdom, an ancient state in the territory modern Ethiopia. Their writings (which have not come down to us) served as the basis for a chapter on the planting of Christianity in Northeast Africa, which was included in the "History of the Church" by Rufinus of Turan. This work supplemented the work of the same name by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, written in the 4th century BC.

From the beginning of the 4th c. began the spread of Christianity in the territory of Armenia. In 301, the baptism of King Trdat (Tiridate) III and his court, along with the troops stationed there, took place in Bagavan, carried out by presbyter Gregory the Illuminator.

100-150 years later, the Christian religion spread from Gaul throughout Western Europe and penetrated into the British Isles. Around 450, a British resident Patrick became an Irish bishop, whose letters contain perhaps the first geographical description of the island of Ireland. It names some mountain ranges (for example, Antrim), lakes (Lochney and others), rivers (Shannon and others). True, some modern researchers the authenticity of Patrick's letters is disputed. So, there is an opinion that even before Patrick, Ireland was already a Christian country, and Patrick himself was sent there to eradicate the heresy of Pelagius 2 and his activities on the island were limited to the Wicklow area (in the east of the island). The legend of Patrick as "the apostle of all Ireland" was created by the Roman Catholic Church only in the 7th century in order to have a "patron of the country" alien to heresies (Magidovichi, 1970).

Apparently around 670 north of british isles Irish Christian hermits discovered the Faroe Islands, where only wild sheep lived. This was first reported in 825 by the Irish monk Dikuil, the author of the above-mentioned treatise On the Measurement of the Earth, the first geography manual written in the empire of Charlemagne.

In addition, the 7th century relates a very popular legend, overgrown with legendary details, about the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean of the monk Brandan, which has been preserved in Irish epic tales. The literary work "The Sailing of St. Brandan", which dates back to the 10th century, speaks of the discoveries by this navigator of the shores of Greenland and Jan Mayen Island in the North Atlantic. I.P. and V.M. Magidovichi (1982) tend to consider Brandan a historical person, whose activities can be attributed to the discovery of these geographical objects, but R. Ramsey (1977) has a negative attitude towards the legend, despite the fact that on the famous Hereford map world, created in 1260 by the monk Richard Heldingham, even the sailing routes of Brandan are shown 3 .

The most famous Western European travelers of the end of the 7th century. were the Frankish or Gallic bishop Arculf and the Irish priest Willibald. The first of them visited Palestine shortly after the conquest of Asia Minor by the Muslims. Around 690, he visited Jerusalem, was in the Jordan Valley (in the waters of this river, according to the biblical legend, Jesus Christ was baptized by John the Baptist), visited the city of Nazareth and other "holy places". Then he traveled to Egypt, where he was impressed by the size of the city of Alexandria and the huge Pharos lighthouse (even in ancient times considered one of the "seven wonders of the world"). Arculf was struck by the nature of Egypt. This country, he said, "without rain is very fertile." Arkulf climbed up the Nile "to the city of elephants" (as he called the ancient Elephantine - now Aswan), beyond which, at the rapids, the river "fell in a wild wreck from the cliff" (Beasley, 1979, p. 39).

On the way back, when the pilgrims sailed past Sicily, he was struck by the "island of Vulcan" (in the group of the Aeolian Islands), "spewing flames day and night with a noise like thunder." Arkulf adds that, according to people who have already been here, this volcano makes a particularly loud noise on Fridays and Saturdays.

Willibald set off from Ireland on his journey in 721. In describing the journey, he reports that when he sailed from Naples to Sicily, he saw a volcano, which, when erupting, if the veil of St. Agatha was brought to it, “immediately subsides” (Beasley, C 42) . Further, sailing past the islands of Samos and Cyprus, he reached the “country of the Saracens”, where the entire group of pilgrims was imprisoned on suspicion of espionage, from where, however, everyone was soon released thanks to the intercession of some Spaniard. Willibald then manages to visit Damascus, where he receives a pass to visit the "holy places" of Palestine. He walked through the “holy places” of Jerusalem, visited the springs of the rivers Jor and Dan, saw the “glorious church of Helen” in Bethlehem, but he was especially moved by the sight of the columns in the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. These columns, according to legend, had the ability to cleanse a person from all sins if he managed to crawl between them and the wall. On the way back, sailing among the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Willibald, like Arkulf, saw a volcanic eruption, throwing pumice onto the coast of the island and into the sea. According to him, in the mouth of the volcano was the tyrant Theodoric, who was doomed to eternal torment for his "hardened Arianism." Willibald wanted to see all this for himself, but he could not climb the steep slopes of the mountain.

So in the works of the pilgrims, along with the description of the objects actually seen, fantastic information was also reported and legendary explanations of natural phenomena were given.

As emphasized by Beasley (1979), the attitude of Catholicism of that time (8th century) to the countries known world contributed to the fact that Willibald's report was made public with the sanction of Pope Gregory III along with Arculf's report and received recognition, becoming good comment to the old Itinerary of Bordeaux, compiled 400 years earlier.

The geographical information required by pilgrims and set forth in the two main "guides" compiled by Arculf and Willibald was confirmed and supplemented by the monks Fidelius (who visited Egypt around 750) and Bernard the Wise, who passed through all the "holy places" of Palestine around 867.

True, this information was more historical and geographical than purely geographical. Thus, Fidelius is fascinated by the “granaries of Joseph” (as Christians at that time usually called the Egyptian pyramids, which amazed them with their size). According to biblical tradition, Joseph the Beautiful, who served with the Egyptian pharaoh, accumulated an unprecedented supply of grain over the course of seven years of abundance, which he kept in special granaries. At the onset of famine years, he began to sell bread to the Egyptians and residents of other countries. (This legend was also widespread in the Muslim world.) Fidelius describes in detail his voyage along the Necho freshwater channel (which in ancient times connected one of the channels of the Nile with the Red Sea), where Moses, according to the Bible, crossed the dry sea with the Israelites, and then very briefly reports sailing around the Sinai Peninsula to the pier of Ezion-Geber (in the Gulf of Aqaba).

Bernard the Wise, a monk from the French peninsula of Brittany, describing the sights of Jerusalem, did not forget to talk about the inns for pilgrims that existed at that time, built by order of the Frankish king Charlemagne.

Finally, around 850, one of the pilgrims (his name remains unknown) also wrote a treatise entitled "On the Houses of God in Jerusalem." This work, along with the "guides" of Fidelius and Bernard the Wise, was one of the last geographical monuments of this kind, which, according to Beasley (1979), preceded the "Norman era".

Notes:
1 This refers to the Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who created a map of the world known at that time and compiled a description of it in the work "Geographical Manual" (abbreviated often called simply "Geography").
2 On Pelagius (the author of the doctrine of free will as the source of virtuous and malicious actions, which was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 430), see: Donini, 1979.
3 See rec. Kogan M. A. on the book. Ramsey R. "Discoveries that never were" (1978).
4 See: Maiorov, 1978. Ch. 4, 5; Sokolov, 1979.
5 In ancient Russian literature, another work of Honorius was circulated in manuscripts - "Lucidarium" (from the Latin "Elacidarium" - enlightener), which outlined cosmographic and geographical views. (See: Raikov, 1937.)
6 About Cassiodorus see: Golenishchev-Kutuzov IN Medieval Latin Literature of Italy. M., 1972.
7 See: "From the Editor" in the book. Kiseleva L.I. "What Medieval Manuscripts Tell About" (1978).

DEVELOPMENT OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Parameter name	Meaning
Article subject:	DEVELOPMENT OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Rubric (thematic category)	Geography

1 Geography in Feudal Europe.

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world.

3 Geography in the countries of the Arab world.

4 Development of geography in medieval China.

1 Geography in Feudal Europe. From the end of the 2nd century slave society was in deep crisis. The invasion of the Gothic tribes (III century) and the strengthening of Christianity, which became from 330 ᴦ. state religion, hastened the decline of Roman-Greek culture and science. In 395 ᴦ. The Roman Empire was divided into Western and Eastern parts. From that time on, the Greek language and literature gradually began to be forgotten in Western Europe. In 410 ᴦ. The Visigoths occupied Rome, and in 476 ᴦ. The Western Roman Empire ceased to exist (26,110,126,220,260,279,363,377).

Trade relations in this period began to decline significantly. The only significant stimulus to the knowledge of distant countries were Christian pilgrimages to ʼʼholy placesʼʼ: to Palestine and Jerusalem. According to many historians of geographical science, this transitional period did not introduce anything new in the development of geographical ideas (126,279). At best, old knowledge has been preserved, and even then in an incomplete and distorted form. In this form, they passed into the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages, a long period of decline set in, when the spatial and scientific horizons of geography narrowed sharply. The extensive geographical knowledge and geographical representations of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians have been largely forgotten. Former knowledge was preserved only among Arab scientists. True, the accumulation of knowledge about the world continued in Christian monasteries, but on the whole the intellectual climate of that time did not favor their new understanding. At the end of the XV century. the era of the great geographical discoveries began, and the horizons of geographical science again began to rapidly move apart. The flow of new information that flooded into Europe had an extremely great impact on all aspects of life and gave rise to that certain course of events that continues to this day (110, p. 25).

Despite the fact that in Christian Europe of the Middle Ages the word ʼʼgeographyʼʼ practically disappeared from the ordinary lexicon, the study of geography still continued. Gradually, curiosity and curiosity, the desire to find out what distant countries and continents are like, prompted adventurers to go on journeys that promised new discoveries. The crusades, carried out under the banner of the struggle for the liberation of the ʼʼholy landʼʼ from the rule of the Muslims, involved masses of people who had left their native places into their orbit. Returning, they talked about foreign peoples and unusual nature that they happened to see. In the XIII century. the paths blazed by missionaries and merchants became so long that they reached China (21).

Geographical representations of the early Middle Ages were formed from biblical dogmas and some conclusions of ancient science, cleared of everything ʼʼpaganʼʼ (including the doctrine of the sphericity of the Earth). According to Kosma Indikopov's "Christian topography" (VI century), the Earth looks like a flat rectangle washed by the ocean; The sun hides behind the mountain at night; all great rivers originate in paradise and flow under the ocean (361).

Modern geographers unanimously characterize the first centuries of the Christian Middle Ages in Western Europe as a period of stagnation and decline in geography (110,126,216,279). Most of the geographical discoveries of this period were repeated. Countries known to the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were often re-discovered for the second, third and even fourth time.

In the history of geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages, the most prominent place belongs to the Scandinavian Vikings (Normans), who in the VIII-IX centuries. their raids devastated England, Germany, Flanders and France.

Along the Russian path ʼʼfrom the Varangians to the Greeksʼʼ Scandinavian merchants traveled to Byzantium. About 866 ᴦ. the Normans re-discovered Iceland and firmly established themselves there as well around 983 ᴦ. Eric the Red discovered Greenland, where their permanent settlements also originated (21).

In the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the Byzantines had a relatively broad spatial outlook. The religious ties of the Eastern Roman Empire extended to the Balkan Peninsula, and later to Kievan Rus and Asia Minor. Religious preachers reached India. Οʜᴎ brought their writing to Central Asia and Mongolia, and from there penetrated into the western regions of China, where they founded their numerous settlements.

The spatial outlook of the Slavic peoples, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, or Nestor's chronicle (second half of the 11th - early 12th centuries), extended almost to the whole of Europe - up to about 60 0 N.L. and to the shores of the Baltic and North Seas, as well as to the Caucasus, India, the Middle East and the northern coast of Africa. The ʼʼChronicleʼʼ contains the most complete and reliable information about the Russian Plain, primarily about the Valdai Upland, from where the main Slavic rivers flow (110,126,279).

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors and brave travelers. The greatest achievement of Scandinavians of Norwegian origin, or the so-called Vikings, was that they were able to cross the North Atlantic and visit America. In 874 ᴦ. the Vikings came to the shores of Iceland and founded a settlement, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ then began to rapidly develop and prosper. In 930 ᴦ. here was created the world's first parliament - altinᴦ.

Among the inhabitants of the Icelandic colony was someone Eric the Red , which was distinguished by a violent and stormy disposition. In 982 ᴦ. he, along with his family and friends, was expelled from Iceland. Having heard about the existence of a land that lay somewhere far to the west, Eric set sail on the stormy waters of the North Atlantic and after a while found himself off the southern coast of Greenland. Perhaps the name Greenland, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ he gave to this new land, was one of the first examples of arbitrary name-creation in world geography - after all, there was nothing green around. However, the colony founded by Eric attracted some Icelanders. Close maritime links developed between Greenland, Iceland and Norway (110,126,279).

About 1000 ᴦ. son of Eric the Red, Leif Eirikson , returning from Greenland to Norway, got into a violent storm; the ship is off course. When the sky cleared, he found himself on an unfamiliar coast, stretching north and south as far as he could see. Coming ashore, he found himself in a virgin forest, the tree trunks of which were twined with wild grapes. Returning to Greenland, he described this new land, lying far to the west of his native country (21,110).

In 1003 ᴦ. someone Karlsefni organized an expedition to take another look at this new land. About 160 people sailed with him - men and women, a large supply of food and livestock was taken. There is no doubt that they managed to reach the coast of North America. The large bay they described, with a strong current emanating from it, is probably the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. Somewhere here people landed on the shore and stayed for the winter. The first European child on American soil was born right there. The next summer they all sailed southward, reaching the peninsula of South Scotland. They may have been further south, by the Chesapeake Bay. They liked this new land, but the Indians were too belligerent towards the Vikings. The raids of local tribes caused such damage that the Vikings, who made so much effort to settle here, were eventually forced to go back to Greenland. All stories related to this event are captured in the ʼʼ Saga of Eric the Red ʼʼ, which was passed from mouth to mouth. Historians of geographical science are still trying to find out exactly where the people who sailed from Karlsefni landed. It is quite possible that even before the 11th century sailings were made to the shores of North America, but only vague rumors of such travels reached European geographers (7,21,26,110,126,279,363,377).

3 Geography in the countries of the Arab world. From the 6th century Arabs begin to play a prominent role in the development of world culture. By the beginning of the 8th century they created a huge state that covered the whole of Asia Minor, part of Central Asia, northwestern India, North Africa and most of the Iberian Peninsula. Among the Arabs, handicraft and trade prevailed over subsistence farming. Arab merchants traded with China and African countries. In the XII century. the Arabs learned about the existence of Madagascar, and according to some other sources, in 1420 ᴦ. Arab navigators reached the southern tip of Africa (21,110,126).

Many nations have contributed to Arab culture and science. Started in the 8th century decentralization of the Arab Caliphate gradually led to the emergence of a number of major cultural centers of learning in Persia, Spain and North Africa. Scientists of Central Asia also wrote in Arabic. The Arabs adopted a lot from the Indians (including the written account system), the Chinese (knowledge of the magnetic needle, gunpowder, making paper from cotton). Under Caliph Harun ar-Rashid (786-809), a college of translators was established in Baghdad, which translated Indian, Persian, Syriac and Greek scientific works into Arabic.

Of particular importance for the development of Arabic science were the translations of the works of Greek scientists - Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Strabo, Ptolemy and others.
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Largely influenced by the ideas of Aristotle, many thinkers in the Muslim world rejected the existence of supernatural forces and called for an experimental study of nature. Among them, first of all, it is extremely important to note the outstanding Tajik philosopher and scientist-encyclopedist Ibn Sinu (Avicenna) 980-1037 gᴦ.) and Muggamet Ibn Roshd, or Avverroes (1126-1198 gᴦ.).

To expand the spatial horizons of the Arabs, the development of trade was of paramount importance. Already in the VIII century. geography in the Arab world was seen as the ʼʼscience of postal communicationʼʼ and the ʼʼscience of paths and regionsʼʼ (126). Description of travel becomes the most popular form of Arabic literature. From travelers of the VIII century. the most famous is the merchant Suleiman from Basra, who sailed to China and visited Ceylon, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and the island of Socotra.

In the writings of Arab authors, information of a nomenclature and historical-political nature predominates; but unjustifiably little attention has been paid to nature. In the interpretation of physical and geographical phenomena, scientists who wrote in Arabic did not contribute anything essentially new and original. The main significance of Arabic literature of geographical content lies in new facts, but not in the theories to which it adhered. The theoretical ideas of the Arabs remained underdeveloped. In most cases, the Arabs simply followed the Greeks without bothering to develop new concepts.

Indeed, the Arabs collected a lot of material in the field of physical geography, but failed to process it into a coherent scientific system (126). At the same time, they constantly mixed the creations of their imagination with reality. Nevertheless, the role of the Arabs in the history of science is very significant. Thanks to the Arabs, after the Crusades, a new system of ʼʼArabʼʼ numbers began to spread in Western Europe, their arithmetic, astronomy, as well as Arabic translations of Greek authors, incl. Aristotle, Plato and Ptolemy.

The works of the Arabs on geography, written in the VIII-XIV centuries, were based on a variety of literary sources. At the same time, Arab scholars used not only translations from Greek, but also information received from their own travelers. As a result, the knowledge of the Arabs was much more correct and accurate than that of the Christian authors.

One of the earliest Arab travelers was Ibn Haukal. The last thirty years of his life (943-973) he devoted to traveling to the most remote and remote regions of Africa and Asia. During his visit to the east coast of Africa, at a point about twenty degrees south of the equator, he drew his attention to the fact that here, in these latitudes, which the Greeks considered uninhabited, a large number of people lived. At the same time, the theory of the uninhabitedness of this zone, which the ancient Greeks adhered to, was revived again and again, even in the so-called modern times.

Arab scientists own several important observations on the climate. In 921 ᴦ. Al Balkhi summarized information about climatic phenomena collected by Arab travelers in the first climatic atlas of the world - ʼʼKitab al-Ashkalʼʼ.

Masudi (died 956 ᴦ.) penetrated as far south as present-day Mozambique and made a very accurate description of the monsoons. Already in the X century. he correctly described the process of evaporation of moisture from the water surface and its condensation in the form of clouds.

In 985 ᴦ. Makdisi proposed a new subdivision of the Earth into 14 climatic regions. He found that climate changes not only with latitude, but also westward and eastward. He also owns the idea that most of the southern hemisphere is occupied by the ocean, and the main land masses are concentrated in the northern hemisphere (110).

Some Arab geographers expressed correct ideas about the formation of the forms of the earth's surface. In 1030 ᴦ. Al-Biruni wrote a huge book on the geography of India. In it, he spoke in particular of rounded stones that he found in alluvial deposits south of the Himalayas. He explained their origin by the fact that these stones acquired a rounded shape due to the fact that swift mountain rivers rolled them along their course. He also drew attention to the fact that alluvial deposits deposited near the foot of the mountains have a coarser mechanical composition, and that as they move away from the mountains, they are composed of smaller and smaller particles. He also spoke about the fact that, according to the ideas of the Hindus, the tides are caused by the moon. His book also contains an interesting statement that as one moves towards the South Pole, night disappears. This statement proves that even before the 11th century, some Arab navigators penetrated far to the south (110,126).

Avicenna, or Ibn Sina , who had the opportunity to directly observe how mountain streams produce valleys in the mountains of Central Asia, also contributed to deepening knowledge about the development of the earth's surface forms. He owns the idea that the highest peaks are composed of hard rocks, especially resistant to erosion. Rising, mountains, he pointed out, immediately begin to undergo this process of grinding, going very slowly, but relentlessly. Avicenna also noted the presence in the rocks that make up the highlands, fossil remains of organisms, which he considered as examples of attempts by nature to create living plants or animals that ended in failure (126).

Ibn Battuta - one of the greatest Arab travelers of all times and peoples. He was born in Tangier in 1304 ᴦ. in a family in which the profession of a judge was hereditary. In 1325 ᴦ. at the age of twenty-one, he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he hoped to complete his study of the laws. At the same time, on the way through northern Africa and Egypt, he realized that he was much more attracted to the study of peoples and countries than to engaging in legal wisdom. Having reached Mecca, he decided to devote his life to travel, and in his endless wanderings through the lands inhabited by the Arabs, he was most concerned about not going twice in the same way. He managed to visit those places of the Arabian Peninsula, where no one had been before him. He sailed the Red Sea, visited Ethiopia, and then, moving farther and farther south along the coast of East Africa, he reached Kilwa, lying almost under 10 0 S. latitude. There he learned about the existence of an Arab trading post in Sofala (Mozambique), located south of the present port city of Beira, that is, almost 20 degrees south of the equator. Ibn Battuta confirmed what Ibn Haukal insisted on, namely, that the hot zone of East Africa was not sizzlingly hot and that it was inhabited by local tribes who did not oppose the establishment of trading posts by the Arabs.

Returning to Mecca, he soon sets off again, visits Baghdad, travels through Persia and the lands adjacent to the Black Sea. Following through the Russian steppes, he eventually reached Bukhara and Samarkand, and from there through the mountains of Afghanistan came to India. For several years, Ibn Battuta was in the service of the Sultan of Delhi, which gave him the opportunity to freely travel around the country. The Sultan appointed him as his ambassador to China. However, many years passed before Ibn Battuta arrived there. During this time, he managed to visit the Maldives, Ceylon and Sumatra, and only after that he ended up in China. In 1350 ᴦ. he returned to Fes, the capital of Morocco. However, his travels did not end there. After a trip to Spain, he returned to Africa and, moving through the Sahara, reached the Niger River, where he managed to collect important information about the Negro Islamized tribes living in the area. In 1353 ᴦ. he settles in Fez, where, by order of the Sultan, he dictates a long narrative about his travels. For about thirty years, Ibn Battura covered a distance of about 120 thousand km, which was an absolute record for the XIV century. Unfortunately, his book, written in Arabic, did not have any significant impact on the way of thinking of European scientists (110).

4 Development of geography in medieval China. Beginning around the 2nd century BC. and until the 15th century, the Chinese people had the highest level of knowledge among other peoples of the Earth. Chinese mathematicians began to use zero and created a decimal system of calculation, which was much more convenient than the sexagesimal system used in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Decimal reckoning was borrowed from the Hindus by the Arabs about 800 ᴦ., but it is believed that it penetrated into India from China (110).

Chinese philosophers differed from ancient Greek thinkers mainly in that they attached paramount importance to the natural world. According to their teaching, individuals should not be separated from nature, since they are its organic part. The Chinese denied the divine power that prescribes laws and creates the universe for man according to a certain plan. In China, for example, it was not considered that after death life continues in the Garden of Eden or in the circles of hell. The Chinese believed that the dead are absorbed by the all-pervading universe, of which all individuals are an inseparable part (126,158).

Confucianism taught a way of life in which friction between members of society was minimized. At the same time, this doctrine remained relatively indifferent to the development of scientific knowledge about the surrounding nature.

The activity of the Chinese in the field of geographical research looks very impressive, although it is characterized more by the achievements of a contemplative plan than by the development of a scientific theory (110).

In China, geographical research was primarily associated with the creation of methods that made it possible to make accurate measurements and observations with their subsequent use in various useful inventions. Starting from the XIII century. BC, the Chinese conducted systematic observations of the weather.

Already in the II century. BC. Chinese engineers made accurate measurements of the amount of silt carried by rivers. At 2 ᴦ. AD China conducted the world's first population census. Among the technical inventions, China owns the production of paper, printing books, the use of rain gauges and snow gauges to measure precipitation, as well as a compass for the needs of sailors.

The geographical descriptions of Chinese authors can be divided into the following eight groups: 1) works devoted to the study of people (human geography); 2) descriptions of the interior regions of China; 3) descriptions of foreign countries; 4) travel stories; 5) books about the rivers of China; 6) descriptions of the coasts of China, especially those that are important for shipping; 7) local history works, including descriptions of areas subordinated to and controlled by fortified cities, famous mountain ranges, or certain cities and palaces; 8) geographical encyclopedias (110, p. 96). Much attention was also paid to the origin of geographical names (110).

The earliest evidence of Chinese travel is a book probably written between the 5th and 3rd centuries. BC. She was discovered in the tomb of a man who ruled around 245 ᴦ. BC. territory that occupied part of the Wei He valley. The books found in this burial were written on strips of white silk glued to bamboo cuttings. For better preservation, the book was rewritten at the end of the 3rd century. BC. In world geography, both versions of this book are known as ʼʼJourneys of Emperor Muʼʼ.

The reign of Emperor Mu fell on 1001-945 ᴦ. BC. Emperor Mu, these works say, desired to travel around the whole world and leave traces of his carriage in every country. The history of his wanderings is full of amazing adventures and embellished with fiction. At the same time, the descriptions of wanderings contain such details that could hardly be a figment of fantasy. The emperor visited the forested mountains, saw snow, hunted a lot. On the way back, he crossed a vast desert so dry that he even had to drink the blood of a horse. There can be no doubt that in very ancient times, Chinese travelers traveled considerable distances from the Wei He valley, the center of their cultural development.

Well-known descriptions of travels of the Middle Ages belong to Chinese pilgrims who visited India, as well as the regions adjacent to it (Fa Xian, Xuan Zang, I. Ching, etc.). By the 8th century refers to the treatise Jia Danya ʼʼDescription of nine countriesʼʼ, which is a guide to the countries of Southeast Asia. In 1221 ᴦ. taoist monk Chan Chun (XII-XIII centuries) traveled to Samarkand to the court of Genghis Khan and collected fairly accurate information about the population, climate, and vegetation of Central Asia.

In medieval China, there were numerous official descriptions of the country, which were compiled for each new dynasty. These works contained a variety of information on history, natural conditions, population, economy and various sights. The geographical knowledge of the peoples of South and East Asia had practically no effect on the geographical outlook of Europeans. On the other hand, the geographical representations of medieval Europe remained almost unknown in India and China, except for some information received through Arabic sources (110,126,158,279,283,300).

Late Middle Ages in Europe (XII-XIV centuries). In the XII century. feudal stagnation in the economic development of the countries of Western Europe was replaced by a certain upsurge: handicrafts, trade, commodity-money relations developed, new cities arose. The main economic and cultural centers in Europe in the XII century. there were Mediterranean cities through which trade routes to the East passed, as well as Flanders, where various crafts flourished and commodity-money relations developed. In the XIV century. the area of ​​the Baltic and North Seas, where the Hanseatic League of trading cities was formed, also became a sphere of lively trade relations. In the XIV century. paper and gunpowder appear in Europe.

In the XIII century. sailing and rowing ships are gradually being replaced by caravels, the compass is coming into use, the first sea charts are being created - portolans, methods for determining the latitude of a place are being improved (by observing the height of the Sun above the horizon and using solar declination tables). All this made it possible to move from coastal navigation to navigation on the high seas.

In the XIII century. Italian merchants began to sail through the Strait of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Rhine. It is known that at that time the trade routes to the East were in the hands of the Italian city-republics of Venice and Genoa. Florence was the largest industrial and banking center. It is in connection with this that the cities of Northern Italy in the middle of the XIV century. were the center of the Renaissance, the centers of the revival of ancient culture, philosophy, science and art. The ideology of the urban bourgeoisie that was being formed at that time found its expression in the philosophy of humanism (110,126).

Humanism (from the Latin humanus - human, humane) - recognition of the value of a person as a person, his right to free development and manifestation of his abilities, affirmation of the good of a person as a criterion for assessing social relations. In a narrower sense, humanism is the secular freethinking of the Renaissance, opposed to scholasticism and the spiritual dominance of the church and associated with the study of newly discovered works of classical antiquity (291).

The greatest humanist of the Italian Renaissance and world history in general was Francis of Azis (1182-1226) - an outstanding preacher, author of religious and poetic works, the humanistic potential of which is comparable to the teachings of Jesus Christ. In 1207-1209. he founded the Franciscan order.

From among the Franciscans came the most advanced philosophers of the Middle Ages - Roger Bacon (1212-1294 gᴦ.) and William of Ockham (about 1300 - about 1350 gᴦ.), who opposed scholastic dogmatism and called for an experimental study of nature. It was they who laid the foundation for the disintegration of official scholasticism.

In those years, interest in ancient culture, the study of ancient languages, and translations of ancient authors was intensively revived. The first prominent representatives of the Italian Renaissance were petrarch (1304-1374 gᴦ.) and Bocaccio (1313 -1375 rᴦ.), although, undoubtedly, it was Dante (1265-1321) was the forerunner of the Italian Renaissance.

Science of the Catholic countries of Europe in the XIII-XIV centuries. was in the firm hands of the church. However, already in the XII century. the first universities were established in Bologna and Paris; in the 14th century there were more than 40 of them. All of them were in the hands of the church, and theology occupied the main place in teaching. Church councils of 1209 and 1215. decided to ban the teaching of Aristotle's physics and mathematics. In the XIII century. prominent representative of the Dominicans Thomas Aquinas (1225-1276) formulated the official teaching of Catholicism, using some of the reactionary aspects of the teachings of Aristotle, Ibn Sina and others, giving them their own religious and mystical character.

Undoubtedly, Thomas Aquinas was an outstanding philosopher and theologian, a systematizer of scholasticism on the methodological basis of Christian Aristotelianism (the doctrine of act and potency, form and matter, substance and accident, etc.). He formulated five proofs of the existence of God, described as the root cause, the ultimate goal of existence, etc. Recognizing the relative independence of natural being and human reason (the concept of natural law, etc.), Thomas Aquinas argued that nature ends in grace, reason - in faith, philosophical knowledge and natural theology, based on the analogy of being, - in supernatural revelation. The main writings of Thomas Aquinas are ʼʼThe Sum of Theologyʼʼ and ʼʼThe Sum Against the Gentilesʼʼ. The teachings of Aquinas underlie such philosophical and religious concepts as Thomism and neo-Thomism.

The development of international relations and navigation, the rapid growth of cities contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons, aroused the keen interest of Europeans in geographical knowledge and discoveries. In world history, the entire XII century. and the first half of the thirteenth century. represent a period of Western Europe emerging from centuries of hibernation and the awakening of a stormy intellectual life in it.

At this time, the main factor in the expansion of the geographical representations of European peoples were the crusades undertaken between 1096 and 1270. under the pretext of liberating the Holy Land. Communication between Europeans and Syrians, Persians and Arabs greatly enriched their Christian culture.

In those years, representatives of the Eastern Slavs also traveled a lot. Daniel from Kyiv , for example, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and Benjamin of Tudela traveled to different countries of the East.

A noticeable turning point in the development of geographical concepts occurred approximately in the middle of the 13th century, one of the reasons for which was the Mongol expansion, which reached 1242 ᴦ. its extreme western limit. From 1245 ᴦ. the pope and many Christian crowns begin to send their embassies and missions to the Mongol khans for diplomatic and intelligence purposes and in the hope of converting the Mongol rulers to Christianity. Merchants followed the diplomats and missionaries to the east. The greater accessibility of the countries under Mongol rule compared to Muslim countries, as well as the presence of a well-established system of communications and means of communication, opened the way for Europeans to Central and East Asia.

In the XIII century, namely from 1271 to 1295, Marco Polo traveled through China, visited India, Ceylon, South Vietnam, Burma, the Malay Archipelago, Arabia and East Africa. After the journey of Marco Polo, merchant caravans were often equipped from many countries of Western Europe to China and India (146).

The study of the northern outskirts of Europe was successfully continued by Russian Novgorodians. After they in the XII-XIII centuries. All major rivers of the European North were discovered, they paved the way to the Ob basin through the Sukhona, Pechora and Northern Urals. The first trip to the Lower Ob (to the Gulf of Ob), about which there are indications in the annals, was undertaken in 1364-1365. At the same time, Russian sailors moved to the East along the northern coasts of Eurasia. By the end of the XV century. they explored the southwestern coast of the Kara Sea, the Ob and Taz Bays. At the beginning of the XV century. Russians sailed to Grumant (Spitsbergen archipelago). At the same time, it is possible that these voyages began much earlier (2,13,14,21,28,31,85,119,126,191,192,279).

Unlike Asia, Africa remained for the Europeans of the 13th-15th centuries. almost unexplored mainland, with the exception of its northern outskirts.

With the development of navigation, the emergence of a new type of maps is associated - portolans, or complex charts, which were of direct practical importance. Οʜᴎ appeared in Italy and Catalonia around 1275-1280 ᴦ. Early portolans were images of the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, often made with very high accuracy. Bays, small islands, shoals, etc. were especially carefully indicated on these drawings. Later, portolans appeared on the western coasts of Europe. All portolans were oriented to the north, at a number of points compass directions were plotted on them, and a linear scale was given for the first time. Portolans were in use until the 17th century, when they began to be replaced by nautical charts in the Mercator projection.

Along with portolans, unusually accurate for their time, in the late Middle Ages there were also ʼʼmonastic mapsʼʼ, which for a long time retained their primitive character.
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Later they increased in format and became more detailed and precise.

Despite the significant expansion of the spatial outlook, XIII and XIV centuries. gave very little new in the field of scientific geographical ideas and ideas. Even the descriptive-regional direction did not show much progress. The term ʼʼgeographyʼʼ itself at that time, apparently, was not used at all, although literary sources contain extensive information related to the field of geography. This information in the XIII-XV centuries, of course, became even more numerous. The main place among the geographical descriptions of that time is occupied by the stories of the crusaders about the wonders of the East, as well as writings about travel and the travelers themselves. Of course, this information is not equivalent both in terms of volume and objectivity.

The greatest value among all the geographical works of that period is the ʼʼBookʼʼ of Marco Polo (146). Contemporaries reacted to its content very skeptically and with great distrust. Only in the second half of the XIV century. and at a later time, the book of Marco Polo began to be valued as a source of various information about the countries of East, Southeast and South Asia. This work was used, for example, by Christopher Columbus during his wanderings to the shores of America. Up until the 16th century. Marco Polo's book served as an important source of various information for compiling maps of Asia (146).

Especially popular in the XIV century. used descriptions of fictional travel, full of legends and stories of miracles.

On the whole, it can be said that the Middle Ages were marked by an almost complete degeneration of general physical geography. The Middle Ages practically did not give new ideas in the field of geography and only preserved for posterity some ideas of ancient authors, thereby preparing the first theoretical prerequisites for the transition to the Great geographical discoveries (110,126,279).

Marco Polo and his ʼʼBookʼʼ. The most famous travelers of the Middle Ages were the Venetian merchants, the Polo brothers and the son of one of them, Marco. In 1271, when Marco Polo was seventeen years old, he went on a long journey to China with his father and uncle. The Polo brothers had already visited China up to this point, spending nine years there and back, from 1260 to 1269. The Great Khan of the Mongols and Emperor of China invited them to visit his country again. The return journey to China lasted four years; for another seventeen years, three Venetian merchants remained in this country.

Marco served with the khan, who sent him on official missions to various regions of China, which allowed him to acquire in-depth knowledge of the culture and nature of this country. The activity of Marco Polo was so useful for the khan that the khan with great displeasure agreed to Polo's departure.

In 1292 ᴦ. Khan provided all the Polos with a flotilla of thirteen ships. Some of them were so large that the number of their team exceeded a hundred people. In total, together with the Polo merchants, about 600 passengers were accommodated on all these ships. The flotilla left the port located in South China, approximately from the place where the modern city of Quanzhou is located. Three months later, the ships reached the islands of Java and Sumatra, where they stayed for five months, after which the voyage continued.

Travelers visited the island of Ceylon and South India, and then, following its western coast, they entered the Persian Gulf, dropping anchor in the ancient port of Hormuz. By the end of the voyage, out of 600 passengers, only 18 survived, and most of the ships perished. But all three Polos returned unharmed to Venice in 1295 after a twenty-five-year absence.

During the naval battle of 1298 ᴦ. in the war between Genoa and Venice, Marco Polo was captured and up to 1299 ᴦ. was kept in a Genoese prison. While in prison, he dictated stories about his travels to one of the prisoners. His descriptions of life in China and the perilous adventures on the way back and forth were so vivid and lively that they were often taken as products of a fervent imagination. In addition to stories about the places where he directly visited, Marco Polo also mentioned Chipango, or Japan, and the island of Madagascar, which, according to him, was located at the southern limit of the inhabited earth. Since Madagascar was located much south of the equator, it became obvious that the sizzling, sultry zone was not at all such and belonged to inhabited lands.

However, it should be noted that Marco Polo was not a professional geographer and did not even suspect the existence of such a field of knowledge as geography. Nor was he aware of the heated discussions between those who believed in the uninhabitability of the hot zone and those who disputed this notion. He also heard nothing of the controversy between those who believed that the underestimated value of the earth's circumference was correct, following Posidonius, Marinus of Tyre, and Ptolemy, and those who preferred the calculations of Eratosthenes. Marco Polo did not know anything about the assumptions of the ancient Greeks that the eastern tip of the Oikumene is located near the mouth of the Ganges, nor did he hear about the assertion

DEVELOPMENT OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "DEVELOPMENT OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES" 2017, 2018.