Antiquarianism or Taḥqīq? Guillaume Postel’s Reading of Abu’l-Fidā’s Taqwīm al-Buldān

Abstract

This paper retraces Guillaume Postel’s (1510–1581) initial acquisition of a copy of Taqwīm al-Buldān (The Arrangement of Countries), a geographical treatise of the historian and geographer Abu’l-Fidā (672/1273–732/1331) and offers an analysis of his reading of the text through a careful examination of the manuscript itself, hitherto ignored by scholarship. After the introduction and the examination of the manuscript, I will discuss the use Postel made of the Arabic geography in his cosmographical writings advancing the hypothesis that Postel’s cosmography somehow shares a similar approach to Abu’l-Fidā with respect to the concept of “tradition.” Finally, by offering an analysis of a parallel to Postel’s appropriation of Taqwīm al-Buldān, i.e., Hajji Ahmed’s cordiform map, I will propose a new way to re-contextualize the surge of cosmographical works in sixteenth-century Europe, as, at least in part, a product of post-Mongol taḥqīq.