Cosmas Indicopleustes

World map, by Cosmas Indicopleustes. The map is oriented with north to the top.

Cosmas Indicopleustes (Koinē Greek: Κοσμᾶς Ἰνδικοπλεύστης, lit. 'Cosmas who sailed to India'; also known as Cosmas the Monk) was a merchant and later hermit from Alexandria in Egypt.[1] He was a 6th-century traveller who made several voyages to India during the reign of emperor Justinian. His work Christian Topography contained some of the earliest and most famous world maps.[2][3][4] Cosmas was a pupil of the East Syriac Patriarch Aba I and was himself a follower of the Church of the East.[5][6]

  1. ^ Beatrice Nicolini, Penelope-Jane Watson, Makran, Oman, and Zanzibar: Three-terminal Cultural Corridor in the Western Indian Ocean (1799–1856), 2004, BRILL, ISBN 90-04-13780-7.
  2. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008, O.Ed, Cosmas Indicopleustes.
  3. ^ Yule, Henry (2005). Cathay and the Way Thither. Asian Educational Services. pp. 212–32. ISBN 978-81-206-1966-1.
  4. ^ Miller, Hugh (1857). The Testimony of the Rocks. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. p. 428.
  5. ^ Cosmas Indicopleustes (24 June 2010). The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk: Translated from the Greek, and Edited with Notes and Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 87. ISBN 978-1-108-01295-9. Retrieved 3 November 2012.
  6. ^ Johnson, Scott (November 2012). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press. p. 1019. ISBN 978-0-19-533693-1. Retrieved 3 November 2012.