A Few Arabic Letters, Estonia, and a 900-Year-Old Mystery | al-Idrisi’s Famous Map

When I traveled through the Baltic States (دُوَل البَلْطِيق), I did not expect to stumble upon Arab history so far north, near the Russian border. But in Estonia (إسْتونيا), the northernmost of the Baltic countries, I discovered a surprising connection to one of the great Arab scholars of the Middle Ages: al-Idrisi (الإدريسي).

That unexpected connection caught me off guard – and made the Baltic map suddenly look much more connected to the Arabic intellectual world than I had imagined.

Before we get started, let’s take a look at where we’re going geographically.

Where is Estonia?

Estonia is a small country in Europe with 1.4 million inhabitants, where the Baltic Sea comes to chill out. The country (a member of the European Union and Eurozone) has the most advanced and digitized bureaucracy in Europe.

The software Skype was created by Estonians; the mobility company Bolt has its headquarters there. The capital Tallinn, home to many startups, is well-known for its remarkable old town.

We will now go far back in Estonian history, about 1250 years. Here, we will find a remarkable connection to the Arab world.

The first mention of Estonia on a map links to al-Idrisi

I was in the Estonian History Museum in Tallinn when I came across the following information board:

On the information panel, we can read the following text:

WHEN WAS ESTONIA FIRST MENTIONED ON THE WORLD MAP?

The world map drawn by Arab cartographer Al-Idrisi on a silver plate in 1154 included “Astlanda”, which could be identified as Estonia, and many possibly Estonian place names.

Even today, many people would probably struggle to place Estonia precisely on a map. So how is it possible that al-Idrisi already knew of this far northern region in the 12th century? Before we answer that, let’s briefly look at the man behind the map.

Who was the cartographer al-Idrisi?

Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Idrisi (محمد بن محمد الإدريسي), also known as al-Sharif al-Idrisi (الشريف الإدريسي), was one of the great Arab geographers and cartographers of the Middle Ages.

What we know about al-Idrisi’s life

• His title al-Sharif points to his noble background: al-Idrisi belonged to the Idrisid line, a dynasty that claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad.
• Most biographies say that al-Idrisi was born in Sabtah (سَبْتَة), today’s Ceuta — a Spanish city on the North African coast, just across the Strait of Gibraltar from Europe. His family had once ruled in al-Andalus. After Málaga fell in 1057, his ancestors fled to Ceuta, where al-Idrisi was probablyborn around 1100 CE (493 AH). He died around 1165 CE (560 AH).
• But as so often with medieval figures, the details are not always clear. Some scholars think he may have spent part of his early life in Sicily or southern Italy.
• What we can say with more confidence is that he studied in Córdoba, one of the great cities of Islamic Spain. There, he learned the tools that later made him famous: geography, maps, travel reports, and the careful comparison of places.
• Al-Idrisi did not only study the world from books. As a young man, he traveled through North Africa and Spain.
• He may also have reached the French Atlantic coast, southern England, and Asia Minor.
• By the 1140s, he had arrived in Palermo, at the court of Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily. That is where his great map of the world began to take shape.

Now we will look at what ultimately connected the geographer with Estonia: it is a map.

The “Tabula Rogeriana”

Around 1138, Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily, asked al-Idrisi to do something enormous: map the known world.

Al-Idrisi did not simply sit down and draw from memory. He worked for years. He compared older Greek and Arabic sources. He listened to travelers. He checked reports against each other. And in 1154, shortly before Roger’s death, he completed one of the most impressive geographical works of the Middle Ages.

The result is usually known in the West as the Tabula Rogeriana. Its Arabic title is Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق), often translated as “The Excursion of the One Who Yearns to Penetrate the Horizons”. It was also known as Kitāb Rujār — “Roger’s Book” — after the Sicilian king who had ordered it.

The work was more than one single map. It included a large world map, 70 smaller regional maps, and a long Arabic text describing regions, cities, routes, seas, rivers, mountains, and peoples. Al-Idrisi divided the known world into seven “climates” — not climate zones in our modern sense, but broad geographical bands running across the inhabited world.

And then comes the part that still surprises modern viewers: the map is upside down — at least from our point of view.

On al-Idrisi’s map, south is at the top and north is at the bottom. Africa rises above Europe. The Mediterranean no longer sits where many of us expect it. Europe slips downward. The world suddenly feels unfamiliar.

That is what makes the map so fascinating. We often think our maps show the world “as it is”. But maps also show habits, choices, and worldviews. Al-Idrisi’s map reminds us that north does not have to be up. It only feels natural because we are used to it.

The original silver planisphere has not survived. What we see today comes from later manuscript copies and modern reconstructions, including the famous version by the German cartographer Konrad Miller, who transcribed the Arabic place names into the Latin alphabet.

Now let’s focus on Estonia.

Estonia and Tallinn on the map Tabula Rogeriana

This is where the story becomes really interesting. On al-Idrisi’s map, we find a northern land called “Astlanda”, usually understood as Estonia. We also find a place-name that many have linked to Tallinn.

That does not mean al-Idrisi had walked through Tallinn’s Old Town, of course. The medieval city we see today did not yet exist in that form. But the place already mattered. Around that time, people were using the area as a market, a fishing port, and a fortified site on Toompea Hill.

Al-Idrisi described a small town that looked like a large castle. For anyone who has stood in Tallinn and looked up at Toompea, that detail is hard to ignore.

View over Tallinn’s Old Town from the heights of Toompea. Long before it became Estonia’s capital, this hilltop and harbor area already mattered as a fortified place and trading site. Photo: Gerald Drißner.

Still, we should be careful. Many popular histories call al-Idrisi’s map the first mention of Tallinn. Some historians are more cautious and say the identification is not certain.

What we can say safely is this: in the 12th century, an Arab geographer working in Sicily already knew enough about the far north of Europe to place Astlanda – Estonia – on his map. And one of the names he recorded may well point to the place we now know as Tallinn.

The name Tallinn – is there a connection to Arabic?

Now we reach the part that made me stop and ask questions in Estonia.

Where does the name Tallinn come from? At first, the answer seems simple. The most common explanation links it to Taani linn — “Danish town” or “Danish castle” — after the Danes captured the stronghold on Toompea in 1219. Another explanation connects it with tali linn, “winter town” or “winter castle”.

But then al-Idrisi enters the story — and suddenly the name becomes much less simple.

When I spoke with local specialists and linguists, they were careful. They did not say: “Yes, al-Idrisi clearly wrote Tallinn.” What they said was more interesting: medieval place names travelled by mouth. Sailors, merchants, messengers, and mapmakers heard names, repeated them, changed them, and wrote them down in their own scripts.

That is probably what happened here.

Al-Idrisi never walked through Tallinn. But news from the Baltic Sea reached him in Sicily. Scandinavian and Russian merchants knew the northern routes. Fortresses, harbors, and marketplaces along the Baltic mattered. Somewhere in this chain of voices, a place-name from the far north reached an Arab geographer in Palermo.

In al-Idrisi’s work, we find a northern land usually linked with Estonia. And we find a strange place-name written in Arabic letters. In later readings, it appears in forms such as قلون, قلوري, or قلوني – often transcribed into Latin letters as qlwn, qlwry, or qlwny.

For Arabic learners, this is where it gets fun.

Arabic script usually does not write short vowels. So q-l-w-n is not a full name yet. It is more like a skeleton. Later readers had to add the vowels themselves. Some read the name as something close to Kolyvan, an old East Slavic name connected with Tallinn. But Kolyvan still looks far away from Tallinn.

Then comes the tiny letter puzzle.

What if the first letter was misread?

In Arabic, the beginning of ت and ق can look confusing in old handwritten texts, especially when dots are unclear or later copyists work from damaged manuscripts:

تـ
قـ

If the first letter was not ق / qāf, but ت / tāʾ, then qlwn becomes tlwn.

And now the name starts to move.

Add possible vowels, and tlwn could be read as something like Taliuin. That sounds much closer to the idea of tali linn — “winter town” or “winter castle” — than to Kolyvan.

There is another small Arabic detail. Classical Arabic has no normal letter for “v”. The letter و can work as w, ū, or sometimes stand in for foreign sounds when names move between languages. So a name passing through Arabic letters could easily look strange when it comes back into Latin script.

And because this is Arabic for Nerds, we should also look at the tempting snow connection.

In Arabic, ثَلْج means snow or ice. The root ث-ل-ج carries this cold, icy meaning. Estonia, of course, sits in the far north, and some medieval descriptions of the region are full of darkness, cold, winter, and ice. It is tempting to connect this with Estonian words such as talv, “winter”, or tali, “winter-“.

But here we have to stop ourselves.

That does not prove that Tallinn comes from Arabic. It almost certainly does not. Estonian talv belongs to the Finnic language family. The Arabic ثَلْج connection is a beautiful little echo, not an etymology.

So what can we say?

Not that Tallinn is an Arabic name. That would be too much.

But we can say this:

One of the earliest possible written traces of the Tallinn area may have passed through Arabic script. A name from the cold Baltic north may have reached al-Idrisi’s desk in sunny Palermo. He wrote it down in Arabic letters. Later readers tried to solve the puzzle. Was it qlwn? qlwry? Kolyvan? Taliuin? Tallinn? We still do not know for sure.

And that is exactly why this story is so fascinating. A few Arabic letters on a 12th-century map can still make linguists, historians, and nerds argue almost 900 years later.