20. Concluding remarks

Abstract

In this book we have sought to provide an adequate description and characterization of the wide range of cartographic phenomena that flourished in premodern Islamic and South Asian societies before the impact of Western cartographic influence. Together the nineteen essays represent a new contribution toward our stated goal of broadening the canon of cartography beyond the more familiar products of Western mapmaking. The difficulties of delineating a corpus of maps for cultures for which nothing comparable has hitherto been written should not be underestimated. Much of the material in this book will be new to most Western (and indeed many Eastern) readers both in itself and as a corpus. Moreover, the essays go beyond mere description. They offer interpretations from which generalizations about the nature of cartography in these non-Western societies can be advanced for the first time. As editors we have set ourselves three tasks in these concluding remarks. First, we want to focus on the salient similarities between the cartographic histories of premodern Islamic and South Asian societies on the one hand and of Christian Europe and the Mediterranean before A.D. 1500 on the other. Second, we shall review the interaction of maps and society within the Islamic and South Asian cultures described in this book. And finally, we shall try to identify the· agendas for future research that have emerged from the essays as a whole.