With dazzling nuance and depth this book elucidates the intellectual profile of the Iberian Jewish cartographer and illuminator Elisha ben Abraham Cresques, argued by Kogman-Appel to be the primary maker of the Catalan Atlas (Paris, BnF, Cod. Espagnol 30)--called the Ecumene Chart by the author. Between its concise introduction and epilogue there is much to take in across eight chapters, and for this reason not every chapter is reviewed here. It brings into view the legacy of this artifact from an array of comparative sources, above all the Farhi Codex (Sassoon coll. Ms. 368), a Hebrew Bible and compendium. Elisha’s visual language and intellectual profile function in this book as a counterpoint to the Weltbild associated with the world maps (mappaemundi) to be found in the collections of Christian rulers. It is the fifteenth volume in the Brepols Terrarum Orbisseries on the representation of geographical and cosmographical space.
The first two chapters (“Book Art for Jewish Patrons--Charts for the Court,” and “Collecting Books”) lay out the landscape of Elisha’s intellectual profile by engaging the arguments of other scholars while synthesizing a vast literature that often lacks consensus in attributions and dates between the surviving maps. These chapters place the map maker in an anxious environment of uncertain futures for the Iberian Jewish community of Majorca leading up to the riots and persecutions which took place in 1391 CE, not long after Elisha died. Chapter 1 compares the Ecumene Chart to other maps through cartographic norms and different tracing and coloring methods, drawing on iconographic, stylistic, and formal analysis to identify hands and direct models, while also addressing toponyms, paleography, and the uses of Catalan as the dominant language. Even though Kogman-Appel acknowledges that multiple makers were involved to produce the Ecumene Chart, Elisha’s role is singled out as the one who “made crucial decisions and took responsibility of the products that left his workshop” (47). Questions are introduced about the map which are addressed in later chapters (“Was it used to teach young princes? Was it used to convey political messages to diplomats? Was it meant as a demonstration of the awareness that knowledge is power?” [44-45]). Chapter 2 surveys the private, or semi-private, libraries in Palma and Elisha’s interests and source through comparative views of the Farhi Codex, with sections on Midrash and exegesis, language and grammar, and cosmologies and calendars. Descriptions of the rota and zodiac man illustrations demonstrate how Arabic sciences were woven together with others, and Kogman-Appel concludes by returning to Elisha’s profile as a well-educated Iberian Jew responding to the requests of the royal family of Aragon.
Chapter 3 (“Vizualizing the Ecumene at Large”) defines the author’s rationale for naming the Ecumene Chart as such, arguing that Elisha Cresques was the first to develop the concept of “representing the ecumene in geographically reliable terms laid out on a rectangular surface” (109). Indebted to a Ptolemy’s Almagest, Al-Idrisi’s Book of Pleasant Journeys, Bar Hiyya’s Sefer tsurat ha’arets, and the anonymous Libro del conosçimiento among other sources--and this last being one of the most frequently mentioned by author--Kogman-Appel points to the reception of sources in Elisha’s Majorcan Jewish quarter (or call) as the most fruitful meeting ground to produce the geographical and cosmological concepts behind the Ecumene Chart and its lasting impact on European cartographic conventions.
Chapters 5 to 7 dig into the Weltbild of the Ecumene Chart. Chapters 6 and 7 (“Imaging Islam in Africa and the Middle East” and “The Mongol Khanates”) read between an array of sources and images to elucidate an Iberian Jewish vision of less hostile lands for Iberian Jews. The author’s analysis of the visual language of ruler portraits is particularly engaging, closely reading images of flags and modes of dress for rulers of Granada, Mali, and the Maghreb, moving along lines of trade and commerce as well as common laws, scriptures, and messianic visions. The Jewish perspective that Kogman-Appel draws is and that emerges from the comparative approach is perhaps the apex of the book’s analysis of Elisha’s intellectual profile, where “the same remote space that could be imagined by Christians as an exotic realm and a new crusading target, could be thought by Jews as a possible haven for a safer life” (218).
The eighth and final chapter (“Mythical Space: Past and Future”) explores the Ecumene Chart’s representations of far-off lands, such as the kingdom of Prester John and images of Gog and Magog associated with the Mongols. Charting the ways Elisha employed iconographic idiosyncrasies and draws information from literary sources old and new, Kogman-Appel again elaborates an alternative, hopeful Jewish lens, but one that is consistently argued to have been inaccessible to the map’s later owners in the royal libraries of Aragon and France.
The appendices are extensive, including transcriptions from manuscript sources, tables with the Cresques genealogy and Catalan/English/Hebrew glossaries, including toponyms, a 41-page bibliography, and indices. Some figures appear to be printed from images captured by screenshot (Fig. 1:29, for example, showing the author’s markup tool in action). This is a small criticism for such a copiously footnoted and skillfully produced volume.
One issue emerges: how to read or use the different parts of this book. In the preface, the author urges readers to browse the digitized Ecumene Chart at the Gallica website, and between the text, the color illustrations, the foldouts, and the digital surrogate at Gallica, there are many ways to comprehend the arguments made by the author. One wonders if a non-linear digital publication or digital supplement would produce a different experience. The foldouts tucked inside the back cover are especially helpful, but they are not numbered or labeled as cited in the text. This observation perhaps mirrors Kogman-Appel’s own appraisal of symbolic spaces in the Ecumene Chart and the Farhi Codex, where “our modern perception of books as a means of communication that has to be read through linearly does not fit the medieval circumstances” (249). Without asking for the undoing of the codex as a medium, my own response as a reader is to wonder how the products of our scholarly endeavors might adopt at least some of the non-linear reading experiences encountered in our objects of study.
Following the turn to the Global Middle Ages, images of the Ecumene Chart (or Catalan Atlas) feature prominently in poster projects, web landing pages, and book covers. The ruler portrait of Mansa Musa I of Mali (panel 2), for example, appears on the cover of Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time and is briefly discussed in the introduction by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, where it is called a view of the world from the perspective of Aragon which emphasizes, among other things, the location of resources. [1] Kogman-Appel similarly addresses the question of European proto-colonial ambitions in the fourteenth century in her chapters, interpreting the portrait of Mansa Musa (labeled musse melly) through the Jewish biblical lens of a strong ruler, seemingly rendering “any possible notion of Africa in terms of proto-colonial attraction ambiguous” (194). The layers of meaning between the Iberian Jewish map maker and the intended royal owners are consistently interpolated here and throughout this book. It will be an enduring touchpoint as new curricula for Global Middle Ages programs tentatively reshape programs at many American universities.
The chapters of Kogman-Appel’s book deftly pan from macro to micro to analyze overlapping conceptual frameworks, points of view, and literary sources while never losing sight of individual makers and the lived experiences of Iberian Jewish communities. Scholars will return to the chapters of this book for years to come, and although it is written for an academic audience and fulfills the highest standards in that regard, its arguments deserve to be brough to the wider public.
-------
Notes:
1. Kathleen Bickford Berzock, “Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time,” in Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa, ed. Kathleen Bickford Berzock (Evanston and Princeton: Block Museum of Art and Princeton University Press, 2019), 25.