In the early 1930s, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was determined to expand Italy’s African empire by annexing Ethiopia. In December 1934, a clash, provoked by the Italians, occurred between Italian and Ethiopian armed forces at Walwal on the Ethiopian side of the frontier with Italian Somaliland. Mussolini declared the incident “an act of self-defense” and thus not subject to arbitration under international agreements. Italy demanded compensation and formal recognition of the area as Italian. When Emperor Haile Selassie refused to yield to these demands, Italy began mobilizing its forces ...

This German-language military map, published some time in the late-19th century, depicts Egypt, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula. It also includes parts of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (present-day Sudan), Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Railroads, caravan routes, telegraph lines, pyramids, fortifications, and ruins are indicated by symbols shown in the key at the lower left. The German equivalents of some Arabic topographic terms are given. An inset map in the upper right shows the Nile Delta and the Sinai Peninsula. Relief is shown by shading, and the heights of important mountains and passes are ...

This map of the Middle East and Central and South Asia extending from the Nile Valley to the boundary of Afghanistan with British India is from Johnson’s New Illustrated Family Atlas, published in New York in 1864. The map shows national capitals, provincial capitals, principal towns, and railroads. The Suez Canal, under construction at this time, is shown as proposed. The map provides a detailed overview of the towns and cities along the Nile in Egypt, Nubia (present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan), and Sennar (present-day Sudan), and of ...

Life in the Desert, or, Recollections of Travel in Asia and Africa is an English translation of a work originally published in 1860 in France under the title Les Mystères du Désert. The author, Louis Du Couret (1812–67), was the son of a colonel in the French army. He traveled to the Middle East in 1836, where he served as a military officer under Muḥammad ʻAlī (1769–1849), pasha and wali (governor) of Egypt, and fought in the Battle of Nezib in Syria in 1839. He converted to Islam ...

This mid-19th-century British map shows the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring parts of Africa, including Egypt, the Sudan, and Abyssinia. The traditional Greek and Roman division of Arabia into the three parts of Arabia Petraea, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix is used. Qatar is shown as Catura. Also indicated are Oman, Bahrain, and the territories of Mecca and Medina. The map emphasizes the vast, empty interior of the peninsula with such annotations as “great space covered with sand” and “deserts very barren and continued between Mekka and Oman.” Four different caravan ...

This map of Arabia, published in London in 1794, is an English translation of a map by the French cartographer and geographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697−1782). Appointed the first geographer to the king of France in 1773, d’Anville was one of the most important mapmakers of the 18th century, known for the accuracy and scientific quality of his maps. The work presented here is said to contain “Additions and Improvements from Mr. Niebuhr,” a reference to Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815), a German-born Danish explorer and civil engineer ...

This map of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula is from the sixth edition (1875) of Stieler's Hand-Atlas über alle Theile der Erde (Stieler’s portable atlas of all parts of the Earth), edited by August Heinrich Petermann (1822−78) and published by the firm of Justus Perthes. The map reflects the high quality of German cartography in the latter part of the 19th century and the advances made by German mapmakers in incorporating into their work findings from geology, hydrography, ethnography, and other scientific fields. The map uses ...

“Arabia According to Its Modern Divisions” shows the Arabian Peninsula with the three-part division traditionally used in European sources into Arabia Petraea, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix. Deserts, seaports, and the pearl beds along the coast are indicated. Qatar is shown as Catura. Four different distance scales—Arabian miles, Turkish miles, Persian parasangs, and British miles—are provided. Published in 1794, the map was compiled and drawn by Samuel Dunn (circa 1723−94), a teacher of mathematics and navigation who made original contributions to solving the problem of determining longitude ...

This color map in German appeared as plate 80 in Grosser Hand-Atlas über alle Theile der Erde (Large portable atlas of all parts of the world), published by the Bibliographic Institute of Joseph Meyer (1796−1856). The map shows the Arabian Peninsula as well as neighboring parts of Africa, including Egypt, present-day Sudan, and Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia). Colored lines are used to demarcate kingdoms and other political entities. El Bedaa, an old city in Qatar (now the Al Bida area of Doha), is shown. Three inset maps in the upper ...

This map of the Arabian Peninsula appeared in the 1856 edition of the world atlas that was first published by James Wyld (1790−1836) in 1824 and in successive editions by his son, James Wyld the younger (1812−87). Political divisions are indicated by colored lines and the scale is in English miles. Cities, towns, wells, and caravan routes to Mecca are shown. An annotation on the map reflects the limited state of European knowledge about geography of parts of the peninsula: “The interior of Arabia is probably a high ...

This map of the coastlines of the Arabian Peninsula and adjacent regions is by the French hydrographer and cartographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703−72). Bellin was attached to the French Marine Office for more than 50 years and specialized in producing maritime maps. He also made most of the maps for Histoire générale des voyages: ou, Nouvelle collection de toutes les relations de voyages par mer et par terre, qui ont été publiées jusqu'à présent dans les différentes langues de toutes les nations connues (General history of the voyages, or ...

This Gospel book was written in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in the early 14th century, and was once owned by the church of Saint George in Debre Mark'os. It was written by the scribe Mäṭre Krǝstos in the official liturgical language of Ethiopia, Gǝ‛ǝz. Most notable is its prefatory image cycle, which makes references to holy places in Jerusalem, such as Golgotha and the Holy Sepulcher, as they appeared in the sixth century. The manuscript therefore appears to be based on a sixth-century exemplar containing images connected to the ...

This large Ethiopian Gospel book was made in the first half of the 16th century and is written in Gǝ‛ǝz, the traditional liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Containing 11 full-page miniatures, six canon tables, and five elaborately ornamented ḥarägs (headpieces), this manuscript represents the golden age of what has been termed the Gunda Gunde style, named after a monastery in the district of Agame. The Gunda Gunde style is characterized by bold blocks of color defined by detailed, and often delicate, linear motifs. Figures are highly stylized ...

Shown here is a large folding map produced by the General Staff of the German Army during World War II. Notes on the map indicate that it was solely for use within the army and that reproduction was prohibited. One side is a large map of the region stretching from the Balkan Peninsula to the eastern part of Iran. Shown are towns and cities by population size, international borders, the borders of republics and provinces within the Soviet Union, major and secondary roads, roads under construction, oil pipelines, mountain passes ...

This map was prepared for the Middle East Region Air Navigation Meeting of the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization (PICAO), which took place in Cairo, Egypt, in October 1946. It shows political borders and recommended facilities for search and rescue, including rescue-coordinating and rescue-alerting centers, bases for different types of search-and-rescue aircraft, and facilities for surface vessels. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was established under a convention signed by 52 countries at the November 1944 International Civil Aviation Conference in Chicago. From August 1945 to August 1947, as the ...

This map of airline routes in the Eastern Mediterranean and adjacent areas was compiled and drawn by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for the Department of State, based on information supplied by the Foreign Air Transport Division of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board. It presumably was for use by diplomats at the newly established International Civil Aviation Organization. Some of the airlines whose routes are shown exist to the present day; others have merged, gone bankrupt, or changed their names. Athens, Cairo, Lydda (Lod in present-day Israel; until ...

This map, produced in 1946 by the Survey of Egypt, shows a scheme for air traffic control in the Middle East. The International Convention on Civil Aviation, adopted by 52 countries in 1944, provided for the establishment of an international air-traffic control system aimed at preventing aircraft collisions. The world’s airspace was to be divided into contiguous regions, within each of which all traffic would be controlled by a designated air-traffic control authority. On longer flights, aircraft are passed by radio from the control of one region to another ...

This map, produced in 1943 by the Geographic Service of the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office) of Germany, shows the ethnic, linguistic, and religious makeup of the Middle East. Included are the Caucasus and other parts of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and parts of present-day Pakistan and India. The map and the explanatory text reflect the Nazi-era obsession with race and ethnicity. The long note at the top of the key states that the map "endeavors to show the Lebensraum [living space] of those oriental peoples located in Europe’s area ...

Marittima Italiana was an Italian shipping company, established in 1936 as an offshoot of the long-established firm of Lloyd-Triestino, which in the late 1930s operated shipping lines between Italy and east Africa, southern Africa, Asia, and Australia. Shown here is a map of Marittima Italiana’s line from Genoa to Bombay (Mumbai), India. Distances are given for the different sections of the route: from Genoa to Naples, Naples to Port Said, Port Said to Aden, and Aden to Bombay. Inset maps show these five ports and the Suez Canal, with ...

Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697−1782) was an important French cartographer known for his scrupulous attention to detail and his commitment to accuracy. His method was to collect and compare as many sources of geographic information as possible and to correct and reissue maps as new information became available. His own personal collection of maps eventually totaled nearly 9,000 items. This map of 1751 by d’Anville shows the part of Asia from its border with Africa and Europe in the west to most of the Indian subcontinent ...

This 1740s map shows the possessions of the Ottoman Empire in Asia (including present-day Turkey, Iraq, and the Levant), the Persian Empire (shown to include present-day Iran, Afghanistan, much of Pakistan, and the Caucasus), the country of the Uzbeks, Arabia, and Egypt. The boundaries of these territories are hand colored on this copy. The desert to the south and west of present-day Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates is described as “without water and without habitation.” The pearl-diving region of the southern Persian Gulf is indicated by shading and ...

This map of the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding areas was most likely created by the French cartographer and hydrologist Rigobert Bonne (1727−94). It is probably a proof copy of the map of the same title published in his Atlas des toutes les parties connues du globe terrestre (Atlas of all known land surfaces of the globe). The Arabian Peninsula is the main focus of the map, but it also covers much of the Nile Valley on the western shore of the Red Sea. The atlaswas created to serve ...

This map showing the Arabian Peninsula, Persia (present-day Iran), Afghanistan, and Baluchistan (present-day Iran and Pakistan) was copyrighted in 1858 by J.H. Colton & Company of New York. Coloring is used to indicate borders and certain provinces or settled areas. The map shows cities, mountains, and roads, and includes some notes on topographical features. The old Qatari city of al-Zabarah is shown. The map appeared in other editions of Colton’s General Atlas and reflects the general level of geographic knowledge of the Middle East in mid-19th-century America. J.H. Colton & Company was founded in New York City, most likely in 1831, by Joseph Hutchins Colton (1800–93), a Massachusetts native who had only a basic education and little or no formal training in geography or cartography. Colton built the firm into a major publisher of maps and atlases by purchasing the copyrights to other maps and republishing them before it began creating its own maps ...

William McEntyre Dye (1831–99) was a graduate of the United States Military Academy, a former colonel in the United States Army, and a veteran of the American Civil War. In late 1873, Dye entered the service of Ismail Pasha, the khedive of Egypt and Sudan, who was recruiting, with the assistance of General William T. Sherman, American officers to serve as advisors in his army. Egypt was at that time formally still part of the Ottoman Empire, but it exercised a high degree of autonomy. Dye served as assistant ...

Pierre Trémaux (1818-95) was a French architect, traveler, photographer, and amateur scientist who, in 1847-48, voyaged up the Nile to Nubia, Ethiopia, and eastern Sudan. Trémaux described the geology, flora and fauna, architectural monuments, and people of these countries in several works published in France in the 1850s and early 1860s. Some scholars consider his descriptions and sketches of Lower Nubia to be especially valuable, since much of this area now is covered by Lake Nubia, the extension into Sudan of Lake Nasser, created when the Aswan High Dam was ...

George Annesley, second Earl of Mountnorris (1770-1844), was a British aristocrat who, in 1802-06, undertook an extensive tour of parts of Asia and Africa. He was accompanied by Henry Salt (1780-1827), a trained artist who served as his secretary and draftsman. Mountnorris published this three-volume account of his travels upon his return to Britain, under the name Viscount Valentia, the title by which he was known in his younger years. The work includes engravings based on paintings and drawings made on the voyage by Salt, as well as two very ...

André Thevet (1516/17-92) was a Franciscan friar who traveled widely and, through his writings, helped to establish cosmographie--as geography was called at the time--as a science in 16th-century France. After making trips to Africa and the Middle East in the 1540s, he was appointed chaplain to the expedition of Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, which set out from Le Havre in May 1555 to establish a colony in Brazil. The expedition landed near present-day Rio de Janeiro in November of the same year. In January 1556, Thevet fell ill ...

Under the influence of Italian humanism and of his book-collector tutor János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443–1490), developed a passion for books and learning. Elected king of Hungary in 1458 at the age of 14, Matthias won great acclaim for his battles against the Ottoman Turks and his patronage of learning and science. He created the Bibliotheca Corviniana, in its day one of Europe’s finest libraries. After his death, and especially after the conquest of Buda by the Turks in 1541, the library ...

Italy, a relative latecomer to the scramble by the European powers for African colonies, took control of coastal areas of present-day Eritrea in 1885. The Treaty of Wichale (Uccialli) of 1889, concluded with Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia, gave Italy sovereignty over the territory that the Italians called Eritrea, a name derived from Mare Erythraeum, the Roman designation for the Red Sea. The Italian government tasked the Florence-based Institute for Military Geography to produce detailed and precise topographical maps of the new colony. The institute published this map in 1896. The ...

A. Donaldson Smith was an American medical doctor and amateur big-game hunter who, in 1894-95, undertook an 18-month expedition from Berbera, Somalia (then British Somaliland) to Lake Turkana (then Lake Rudolf) in Kenya. He explored the headwaters of the Shabeelle River in Ethiopia and, on his return journey, descended the Tana River to the Kenyan coast. This book is his account of the expedition. Its appendices contain detailed descriptions and illustrations of the fishes, spiders and scorpions, moths, geological specimens, fossils, plants, and ethnographic objects collected on the expedition. Also ...

In preparation for the peace conference that was expected to follow World War I, in the spring of 1917 the British Foreign Office established a special section responsible for preparing background information for use by British delegates to the conference. Abyssinia is Number 129 in a series of more than 160 studies produced by the section, most of which were published after the conclusion of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The book includes sections on physical and political geography, political history, social and political conditions, and economic conditions. It summarizes ...

In 1868, The Illustrated London News commissioned the Scottish artist William Simpson (1823–99) to cover a military campaign launched by Britain against Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) to rescue several British officials and missionaries held by the Emperor Theodore (also called Tewodros II, ruled 1855–68). The commission was Simpson’s first major work for the Illustrated London News and the beginning of a long relationship with the paper that ended only with his death. Although Simpson’s primary task was to document the campaign, he was also interested in people ...

In 1868, The Illustrated London News commissioned the Scottish artist William Simpson (1823–99) to cover a military campaign launched by Britain against Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) to rescue several British officials and missionaries held by the Emperor Theodore (also called Tewodros II, ruled 1855–68). The commission was Simpson’s first major work for the Illustrated London News and the beginning of a long relationship with the paper that ended only with his death. This watercolor is Simpson’s depiction of Theodore. After the hostages were freed, the British forces ...

In 1868, The Illustrated London News commissioned the Scottish artist William Simpson (1823–99) to cover a military campaign launched by Britain against Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) to rescue several British officials and missionaries held by the Emperor Theodore (also called Tewodros II, ruled 1855–68). The commission was Simpson’s first major work for the Illustrated London News and the beginning of a long relationship with the paper that ended only with his death. Although Simpson’s primary task was to document the campaign, he was also interested in people ...

In 1868, The Illustrated London News commissioned the Scottish artist William Simpson (1823–99) to cover a military campaign launched by Britain against Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) to rescue several British officials and missionaries held by the Emperor Theodore (also called Tewodros II, ruled 1855–68). The commission was Simpson’s first major work for the Illustrated London News and the beginning of a long relationship with the paper that ended only with his death. Although Simpson’s primary task was to document the campaign, he was also interested in people ...

In 1868, The Illustrated London News commissioned the Scottish artist William Simpson (1823–99) to cover a military campaign launched by Britain against Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) to rescue several British officials and missionaries held by the Emperor Theodore (also called Tewodros II, ruled 1855–68). The commission was Simpson’s first major work for the Illustrated London News and the beginning of a long relationship with the paper that ended only with his death. Although Simpson’s primary task was to document the campaign, he was also interested in people ...

This book is a first-hand account of a trip taken by John Bland-Sutton (1855–1936) in 1910 from the port of Mombasa (present-day Kenya) to Uganda and back to the coast via the Rift Valley of Ethiopia and Kenya. Bland-Sutton was a distinguished British surgeon who did pioneering work in several areas of medicine. His interest in the natural sciences is reflected in his careful descriptions of the animals he observed, which included antelopes, gazelles, lions, crocodiles, and many species of birds. The book also provides descriptions of the Masai ...