A certain conception of the “earth” (gē) emerges from the Homeric verses, the first work surviving in written form in ancient Greek literature. Therefore, from the very beginning, Greek people accepted the idea of a place where they lived and shared with the gods as a requirement of the concept of nature they adopted. Both the “Catalogue of Ships” in the Iliad and the travels in the Odyssey describe the borders of the Mediterranean, presenting views of this notion intertwined with myth. Early approaches in which myth and reality are intertwined within the framework of the definition of space were gradually replaced by solid perspectives based on observable data. The definition and framing by a calculating mind of the earth by “specialized knowledge” (epistēmē), which was thought to be purely uncanny in the early period, takes place gradually, due to the variety of disciplines of Ancient Greek acquired knowledge – mathematics, geometry, astronomy, geography, and history, etc. – in close contact with one another. The accumulation of other efforts, especially in the Greek Classical Age, is embodied in work that gained momentum under the auspices of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty and focused on the problem of defining the “inhabited [earth]” (oikoumenē). The work of Eratosthenes, a polymath who lived in the 3rd century BC, plays an important role in the formation of certain notions of geography, especially its name (geōgraphia). Although his work has survived mostly in fragments, Eratosthenes’ systematizations, such as the “seven climates” (hepta klimata), which subsequently affected the scientific world profoundly, may also be included within this framework. While Eratosthenes marks the initial emergence of geography as an established science, the works by the 2nd century AD scholar Ptolemy centuries later, who lived in the Roman Imperial Period, constitutes the complementary endpoint of the institutionalization of geography, both by virtue of his solid criticisms of Eratosthenes and the establishment of certain systematic principles. A precise description of the inhabited earth accords with an astronomical sky made precise by mathematical calculation also. The landscape presented by means of this process makes understandable certain details, such as the idea of hodological space in pictorial cartography, a result of the human desire to dominate the earth, as well as the role that certain notions play in the institutionalization of geography. Thanks to the precise relationship established between the earth and the cosmos that surrounds him, man’s desire for this domination also gains altitude over time. Institutionalization, at first glance, brings with it independence, and over time, independence brings with it separation from companions such as astrology/astronomy. Therefore, the institutionalization of geography needs to be evaluated within the framework of certain conceptualizations and their relations with neighboring sciences, and the seemingly isolated geography needs to be reconsidered together with the metaphysical thinking it is associated with.
The details of this institutionalization process reveal the main tendencies that shaped the science of geography. The determination of the trends in question is largely the tendency of political will to define and define the boundaries of space, that is, the inhabited earth, and the cosmos in general, from a geographical perspective. The unique tendencies of the early period of the Islamic civilization, which was closely influenced by Greco-Roman geography, are related to these defining and boundary-setting purposes. As a result, the institutionalization of geography as a science in the Greco-Roman tradition and the consequences of the legacy left by its independent guise can be observed in some attitudes in the first centuries when Islam spread in a very early period. Although a full understanding of the connection of these attitudes with the Greco-Roman tradition requires a detailed analysis, revealing some clear presumptions will expand the research horizon on this subject. In this article, it will be discussed how geography emerged as an established and in certain respects independent science in the Greco-Roman tradition, as well as from what perspective and thanks to which presumptions Early Islamic scientists can be considered as heirs of the Greco-Roman tradition. A closer examination of this heir-decedent relationship shows that philologically based textual transmission is only one of how inheritance is transmitted. Therefore, one branch of the idea of institutionalized geographical space continued its own process of independence in the hands of the early Islamic geographers. From this perspective, the article also aims to suggest which aspects of the detachment should be examined in detail.