Abstract

The Islamic Arab civilization is considered one of the civilizations that has a contributed in the development of the geographic thought through its great heritage in this field. This civilization has preceded many civilizations like Mesopotamia, Nile Valley in addition to the Indian, Persian and Greek civilizations. There is no doubt that the Arabs, during their intellectual rise, had acquired a lot from those who had preceded them. Yet, the Arabs must have had their additions in the field of geography. The aim of the present research is to study and reveal the originality and creativity of the Arab geographers.
The importance of the present research is to document and ascertain the originality added by the Arab geographers to the science of geography. This is accomplished by comparing a number of geographic thoughts that had emerged in the ancient civilizations with the modern Arabic civilization and geographic sciences. The research problem is in collecting the geographic thoughts in the ancient and Arabic civilizations by resorting to their original resources.
The most important conclusion of the present research is that the Arabs’ influence was not confined to quoting the geographic concepts from the ancient civilizations, but they had many geographic additions that reflected their originality and creativity in the field of geography, especially when modern geographic studies have verified those concepts in accordance with our present knowledge.