His chief novelties were the
long river channel from the Sea of Azov to the North Sea, and the strait
between South Africa and the shadowy Southern Continent. On his scheme
the Indian Ocean, or Sea of Habasch, contains most of the water surface
of the world, and the Sea of Aral appears for the first time in Moslem
geography. Lastly his account of the Arab coasting voyages from the
Persian Gulf to Socotra and Madagascar proves, implicitly, that as yet
there was no use of the compass.
Massoudy cut down the girth of the world even more than Ptolemy. The
latter had left an ocean to the west of Africa: the former made the
Canaries or Fortunate Islands, the limit of the known Western world,
abut upon India, the limit of the Eastern.
The first age of Arabic geography ends with Massoudy, its greatest name,
in the middle of the tenth century. The second age is summed up in the
work of the Eastern sage Albyrouny and of Edrisi, the Arabic Ptolemy
(A.D. 1099-1154), who found a home at the Christian Court of Roger of
Sicily. In the far East and West alike, in Spain and Morocco, in
Khorassan and India, Moslem science was now driven to take refuge among
strangers on the decay of the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova.
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