Middle Ages Geography

After the collapse of the Roman Empire many works of geography were to be found and the study of geography continued especially in Byzantine which was in Constantinople. There was much political divide there and Constantine VII wrote about the geography of the division in Byzantine which is the primary source today of political geography of the time.

Byzantine

The Syrian Bishop, Jacob of Edessa used the writings of Ptolemy, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Basil, who were Greek geographers, to created a detailed and structured diagram of the cosmos. Along with his picture of the cosmos he also wrote many texts in which he writes much more scientifically than his Greek sources and less theologically.

The Cosmos

While Jacob of Edessa studied texts and observed, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who was a merchant, did much travelling and went to places including India and today’s Ethiopia. Amongst the his writings of the places he had travelled to, Cosmas Indicopleustes also included Christian Topography were he crated many world maps. Although most Christian topographers at this time believed the earth to be round, Cosmas Indicopleustes believed it to be flat. However, geographers knew that the earth was spherical much earlier in BC times through many different experiments. One was measuring the length of the shadow of a stick in the ground from two different places on the earth and then working out the curvature of the earth.  

Flat Earth