The Medieval Nile: Route, Navigation, and Landscape in Islamic Egypt - Hardcover

"A major contribution to our knowledge not only of the maritime dimensions of the Nile River, but also of the geography of medieval Egypt in general. The book is clearly a product of arduous research conducted over many years and Cooper manages to cover a wide array of disparate subjects in interdisciplinary fashion while retaining a tightly focused topical approach that is easy to follow. The text reads well and the work as a whole brings together so many sources and so much information that it is indispensable for anyone studying the material life of Egypt in any premodern interval."--Journal of Historical Geography "No student of Egyptian history can ignore The Medieval Nile, which also provides a model that no river historian can fail to consider for inspiration."--Lincoln Paine, The Northern Mariner "A volume that deserves to be read by all scholars of Egypt, regardless of the period they study, for the insights into the river and its people that it brings."--International Journal of Nautical Archaeology "An important contribution to the maritime perception of the Nile. . . . The combination of historical, geographic, meteorological and hydrological data draws a comprehensive picture of navigation and sailing conditions in the Nile during the medieval period."--Deborah Cvikel, The Mariner's Mirror

This ground-breaking view of the navigational landscape of the Nile in medieval Egypt draws on a broad range of sources: medieval Arabic geographies; traveler accounts; archaeology; and meteorological, hydrological, and geological studies. John Cooper first charts the changing geography of the Nile waterways, particularly in the Delta, from the eve of Islam to the early modern period, and logs the "rise and fall" of these waterways for natural and/or anthropogenic reasons. He then presents a new perspective on the Nile, drawing on traveler accounts and environmental data to portray the river as a uniquely challenging and sometimes dangerous navigational environment requiring extensive local knowledge by skilled and hard-working Nile navigators. Finally, he looks at how the main Delta and Red Sea ports of medieval Egypt fitted into the navigational landscape described, explaining how these ports were affected by changes occurring to the navigational landscape, and how they reflected the navigational conditions of the Nile and surrounding seas.