21-10-2016, 01:12 AM
Anton,
For what it's worth, I would not recommend comparing use of design motifs indifferently across the manuscript; the assumption of homogeneity isn't well supported by the internal evidence, and the fact that the manuscript appears to have been made in fifteenth century Europe doesn't justify our supposing the content is an homogenous product of that time or region.
The critical issues here are those rarely considered at all: cause-and-effect, and the question of significance.
Where that detail from the map which shows a high road between the East and South-East corners employs a striation-pattern as a way to describe a solid surface set above one formed of hard sand or pise (a common material for buildings in that region), another section could use the same pattern with no intention to have it any more than a bit of decoration. Comparing the two, and assuming them equal would be a false equivalence. In fact, I could show the same pattern used on everything from Asian metalwork, to ancient pottery, to twelfth-century English manuscript art, but as always what we have to do is understand the intention of the persons who first made a given image, and since the different sections (botanical, bathy- etc.) show clear evidence of having come from distinctly different sources, to suppose the intention the same across all is likely to be misleading.
Davidsch
If you feel up to it, I should think you might do well to begin collecting information from itineraries, geographies and histories of the road between, say, Chorasan and the region of the Persian-Gulf/Indian Ocean.
That's the section which you show in that detail. I realise that the new Beinecke foliation is awfully clunky "folio 85v and 86r" and that the older one was more apt and elegant (fol.86v), but better than using the meaningless "rosettes folio" which means nothing at all, since there isn't a single "rosette" strictly speaking anywhere on the map. Those canopy-like forms are versions of the wind-wheel or star-wheel, not ornamental rosettes. The thing is a map, and those wheels are not unknown in various forms on other maps. They helped the traveller literally get his bearings.
D.
For what it's worth, I would not recommend comparing use of design motifs indifferently across the manuscript; the assumption of homogeneity isn't well supported by the internal evidence, and the fact that the manuscript appears to have been made in fifteenth century Europe doesn't justify our supposing the content is an homogenous product of that time or region.
The critical issues here are those rarely considered at all: cause-and-effect, and the question of significance.
Where that detail from the map which shows a high road between the East and South-East corners employs a striation-pattern as a way to describe a solid surface set above one formed of hard sand or pise (a common material for buildings in that region), another section could use the same pattern with no intention to have it any more than a bit of decoration. Comparing the two, and assuming them equal would be a false equivalence. In fact, I could show the same pattern used on everything from Asian metalwork, to ancient pottery, to twelfth-century English manuscript art, but as always what we have to do is understand the intention of the persons who first made a given image, and since the different sections (botanical, bathy- etc.) show clear evidence of having come from distinctly different sources, to suppose the intention the same across all is likely to be misleading.
Davidsch
If you feel up to it, I should think you might do well to begin collecting information from itineraries, geographies and histories of the road between, say, Chorasan and the region of the Persian-Gulf/Indian Ocean.
That's the section which you show in that detail. I realise that the new Beinecke foliation is awfully clunky "folio 85v and 86r" and that the older one was more apt and elegant (fol.86v), but better than using the meaningless "rosettes folio" which means nothing at all, since there isn't a single "rosette" strictly speaking anywhere on the map. Those canopy-like forms are versions of the wind-wheel or star-wheel, not ornamental rosettes. The thing is a map, and those wheels are not unknown in various forms on other maps. They helped the traveller literally get his bearings.
D.