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If you have noticed strange behaviour on this site over the last month or so, it is because this site was hit by the WordPress Pharma Hack. The hack has been removed, but a few of the posts might appear a bit strange until I can rebuild some of the posts. Thank you for your patience!

…we’re back!

Something mysteriously ate a closing comment bracket in the code. How odd.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch recently reported that a generous donation from Seymour I. Schwartz, distinguished alumni professor in the University of Rochester’s Department of Surgery, ensures that the University of Virginia is now home to some of the world’s finest rare maps.

The monetary value of the collection is unknown, but 80 year old Schwartz says he

…doesn’t even want to hear questions about the worth of the maps he collected for more than 40 years. All he’ll say is that the collection he started in 1964 didn’t cost much then, relatively speaking.

Schwartz said maps moved him intensely. He loved looking at the maps in his collection every day. He appreciated their beauty and historical meaning and even holding them.

The collection of 16th-, 17th- and 18th- century maps includes:

famous explorer Hernando Cortes’ 1524 map of Mexico City — the first to show Florida;

a 1508 map that is one of the first to show the Western Hemisphere; and

George Washington’s map of the Ohio River Valley drawn when he was an unknown surveyor.

About 50 of the maps are currently on display in  “On the Map,” at the school’s special collection library. The exhibit will be on display until January, 2009.

The full story, which includes a brief slideshow, can be read here.

[tags]antique maps, map collections, university of virginia, map exhibits[/tags]

An article by Mohamed Elmasry outlines a few of the contributions and achievements made to many fields by the Islamic culture, including many in the of cartography:

The leading 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi, a star product of the brilliant Islamic culture that flourished in Sicily, was commissioned by the Norman King Roger II to compile a world atlas. 

…knowledge gained by Muslim geographers and cartographers was passed to the West largely through translators appointed by Christian kings, who were eager to advance their own nations by enriching them with Islamic scientific and intellectual achievements.