Ancient Arabia

[Sapiento]

I really like the palette but as a whole it just doesn't seem to gel together like your maps usually do. I think the main reason is the way your elements don't feel part of the map but just placed on. For instance, your mountains show the colours coming through, which is ok, but when they go across several colours they betray their PS brush origins. One of the mountain peaks goes over a lake and the blue shows through the same as the white does elsewhere. Also, your TreeThing forests seem to lack any jittering so the trees are placed in digital lines that really stick out.

Sorry to be the dissenting voice here, I wasn't sure whether to post or not but then I asked myself, would I sooner someone posted an honest opinion on a map of mine or just keep quiet so as not to hurt my feelings and let me go on believing it was loved by all?

I'm thankful for every honest critique!
You're right with most of the points. I would have loved to work longer on the map, but time was the critical point here. Refining and polishing, which need some time for a map of this size, were reduced considerably and I was not able to cover everything as I wanted.
As I understood, parts of the map will be used for 3D elements and effects, so I guess the final product will be look different from my original map anyway.

Considering the very short time I had, I'm satisfied with the result.

[Sapiento]

Pretty, though it's nothing like a 7th century Arabic map

Your cartographer was also pretty ill-informed for the 7th century - Arabs were aware of the Iberian Peninsula and the Pillars of Hercules dividing Africa from Europe - not only did they have this knowledge from Greek and Roman writer and cartographers, and from Levantine traders, but the Caliphate had physically conquered all of North Africa and most of Spain by the late 7th century, so their geographic knowledge of this region would have been fairly good.

Assuming this is a work of fiction, more creative than historically / geographically accurate, we need to understand what kind of cartographer we are talking about. Two hypotheses:

- an "amateur" cartographer, not a real scholar, (and not in contact with a network of scholars), with little travel experience but a certain degree of knowledge of geography (but not so deep), that maybe had misunderstood maps of that time, in which the strait of gibraltar is a very "thin" sea strip (example);

- a cartographer that wanted to represent conceptually the unity of the Western Muslim lands after their conquest.


Otherwise the map is not very accurate, since we have many examples of our ancestors' knowledge of the geography of the Strait of Gibraltar: for example, the Umayyad conquered much of the Iberian peninsula as early as 711 AC , not to mention, long before, the Carthaginian attempt to conquer Rome passing through the territories of Hispania and Gallia (second punic war, 218-202 BC).

In any case, as I said, I really like this map.

Even that map you mention has the strait of Gibraltar, it's just very narrow. The Tabula Rogeriana is a lovely map, I've snagged a copy for my "map ideas" folder!

The Tabula is generally shown upside down. It's interesting that Arabic cartographers of the period put north at the bottom of their maps. I guess it's human nature to put what's familiar to you at the top and what's unfamiliar below - just like European map-makers put Europe at the top of maps, and Africa below.

Thank you, guys.

The knowledge of the Arab cartographers was only covered very minor in this map. I asked this question, too.
The original landmass layer was provided to me, and showed only the Mediterranean sea, with land west of it. The lakes and rivers in the north are my invention, I had more or less free hand for these parts.

[razcor]

Thank you, guys.

The knowledge of the Arab cartographers was only covered very minor in this map. I asked this question, too.
The original landmass layer was provided to me, and showed only the Mediterranean sea, with land west of it. The lakes and rivers in the north are my invention, I had more or less free hand for these parts.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity of such an interesting discussion!

[Sapiento]

I posted a link to the TV series where the map can be seen in the first post.

[Jaxilon]

It's pretty cool the way it came out in the vid link. Congrats!