In this, the latest installment of the ongoing blog series I call “If I find my research fascinating, everyone else will, too,” I wanted to show you some images from a thirteenth century book.

According to the NLM website, the original book was created by Abu Yahya Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud-al-Qazwini (ca. 1203-1283 CE) or just al-Qazwini to his friends, and is called Kitab Aja’ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat, translated as “The Wonders of Creation.” You can go here and actually turn the virtual pages. It’s awesome. (Don’t forget you’d read the book from right to left.)

It was originally compiled in the middle 1200s in what is now Iran or Iraq. Says the NLM website, “The vibrantly illustrated work is considered one of the most important natural history texts of the medieval Islamic world.” A Persian translation was created in 1537, in what is now Pakistan. The pictures show exotic places and creatures. Al-Qazwini was known to be a good writer, who compiled his version of the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial world by collecting stories from the ancient world and from his contemporaries. What I love about these pictures, besides how beautiful and weirdly contemporary they are, is you can totally conjure up stories from the Odyssey and from the Arabian Nights–like the islands visited by Sinbad. I was obsessed with the the Odyssey and Arabian Nights as a kid. (See? I told you it’s all about me.)

A sampling for you:

A map of the world

A dragon

A phoenix

“creatures from the isle of zaneh”

neckless humans

The moon

Coconut and palm trees

An African elephant and a small mammal

Some devils

A sea monster

Neckless humans from the NLM Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlmhmd/8616730368/