h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Waqwaq - A740909
Author: PseudoRandom - U191240

The semi-mythical land of Waqwaq, from medieval Arab maps of the Indian Ocean

Hi there

good start its a little short though (not that this is necessarily a fault) and I think it would be good if the entry included some further information. For example, do you have a specific medieval geographer in mind who mentioned Waqwaq? And do you have a link to the Chawi website you mention? Were the Arabs and Chinese trading at the time, and is that how they got the name do you think?

take care,

J'au-æmne

you mentioned a medieval geographer. I meant to say, who was he? do you have any more information on him?

I'll be forgetting my own head next...

See my new entry on al-Idrisi...

The Chawi Net site is chawinet.com. But I expect this will be removed any day now - editorial policy doesn't allow us to link to potentially helpful websites, right? Or has that been changed yet?

Oh, and thanks for the review!

The Arabs and Chinese were certainly trading - the trade routes from Arabia to India and China were important even before Islam. Many late Roman emperors worried that their population's appetite for Chinese silk was depleting the country's gold and silver reserves, and there's some speculation that the Ethiopian alphabet was influenced (in its way of indicating vowels) by Indian alphabets. The oldest mosque in Canton has an inscription claiming that it was set up by the Prophet's uncle, but this is likely to be something of an exaggeration...