Unravelling the Mystery of a Mythical Mountain Island in Premodern Islamic Maps

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Jabal al-Qilâl: Unraveling the Mystery of the Mythical Mountain Island Guarding the Mouth of the Mediterranean in Premodern Islamic Maps

Dominating the mouth of the Mediterranean, every medieval Islamic Istakhrian map of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Spain from the 11th century onwards has a thus-far unidentified mythical mountain-island named Jabal al-Qilâl located between the straits that separate Spain and North Africa.  So mysterious is this island that scholars have to date not even been able to definitively translate the meaning of it's name, “Qilâl,” in Arabic.  Nor have we been able to identify the location of this key but enigmatic mountain-island that dominated the Straits of Gibralter in the pre-modern Muslim imaginaire of the Mediterranean. Could it be related to ancient and medieval European traditions of the mysterious "Pillars of Hercules”  also said to have guarded the mouth of the Mediterranean?   The Islamic maps depict the island of Jabal al-Qilâl in a dramatic  scalloped triangular form dominated by one single mountain decorated with a variety of scary colored dots, stars, crescents, and pillars.  It is named in bold, striking calligraphy.  In the Islamic maps of the Mediterranean the mountain clearly guards the mouth of the Mediterranean, whereas with the maps of the Maghrib (which show the lands of North Africa and Spanish Andalusia) the mountain of Jabal al-Qilâl slips back further into the Mediterranean, closer to the European shore.  Based on extensive in-depth research of more than three decades on Islamic cartographic images of the Mediterranean and the Maghrib, along with on-site research, this paper will present possibilities for identifying this enigmatic but endlessly mysterious mountain-island that served as a lock into and out of the Mediterranean.

Karen Pinto, who is affiliated with the University of Colorado/Boulder, specializes in the history of Islamic cartography and its intersections between Ottoman, European, and other world cartographic traditions. Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, educated at Dartmouth and Columbia, Karen is into pre-modern maps of all kinds and sizes in a big way. She specializes in medieval Islamic maps and has spent the better part of three decades hunting them in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript collections around the world. She has a 3000-strong image repository of Islamic maps, many that have never been published before. Her book, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration (Chicago 2016), won a Choice’s 2017 Outstanding Academic Title award. Karen is also working on two monographs on Islamic maps of the Mediterranean and al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the Islamicate Cartographic Imagination along with a smaller book on the puzzling topic of “What is ‘Islamic’ about Islamicate Maps?"  

Karen’s work has received a number of distinguished fellowships, including an NEH Fellowship, a J. B. Harley Fellowship, and a Social Science Research Council Fellowship, along with an Ibn Khaldun prize for her essay on Islamic maps of the Mediterranean.

Copies of Karen’s articles are available through https://colorado.academia.edu/KarenPinto, and she can be reached through mapsgal@icloud.com