al-Idrisi / 伊德里希

Overview

al-Idrisi / 伊德里希 is a Ceuta-born medieval geographer whose work for Roger II of Sicily supports both the wiki’s Mediterranean knowledge-network history and its earliest documentary evidence for dried pasta on Italian soil.

Current Profile

The Ceuta source emphasizes al-Idrisi’s geographic and cultural-translation role. Working in Norman Sicily, he gathered world geographic knowledge for Roger II, produced a silver world map that no longer survives, and completed the Book of Roger. The Italian-food source adds a concrete economic observation from 1154: large-scale production near Trabia of durum-wheat dried pasta called ytria, which was exported beyond Sicily.

Key Characteristics

• Ceuta-born geographer tied to medieval Mediterranean knowledge circulation.
• Worked in Sicily, a contact zone among Catholic, Byzantine Orthodox, and Islamic cultures in the source.
• Produced geographic work that preserves commercial and food-production evidence as well as maps and place knowledge.
• Represents Ceuta’s cultural and scholarly importance beyond military value.

Evidence

• Origin evidence: 496 移民潮背后的休达：从古典时代蛮族渡海、伊比利亚「收复失地运动」到葡萄牙大航海 identifies al-Idrisi as from Ceuta.
• Knowledge-network evidence: 496 移民潮背后的休达：从古典时代蛮族渡海、伊比利亚「收复失地运动」到葡萄牙大航海 places him in Norman Sicily and the Roger II project.
• Textual evidence: 496 移民潮背后的休达：从古典时代蛮族渡海、伊比利亚「收复失地运动」到葡萄牙大航海 says the Book of Roger survives and opens with a spherical-earth description.
• Food-production evidence: 484. The Food that Changed the World attributes to al-Idrisi a 1154 report of dried-pasta production and export near Palermo.

Qualifications

This page is source-bounded and does not attempt a full biography or textual history of al-Idrisi. The pasta claim is reported through a modern interview rather than a direct reading of the relevant manuscript passage, and “first documentary evidence” does not mean the product was invented at that moment.

What Changed

• Added the 1154 dried-pasta report as a second example of al-Idrisi preserving Mediterranean economic knowledge.

Relationships

• Ceuta - birthplace and historical setting in the source.
• Ceuta Imperial Borderland / 休达帝国边地 - broader frame in which scholarly, commercial, and military roles overlap.
• al-Andalus / 安达卢斯 - adjacent Islamic Mediterranean and Iberian knowledge context.
• Italian Cuisine as an Urban Network - food-history frame that uses his Palermo-area evidence.