Britain, the Byzantine Empire, and the concept of an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy: Harun ibn Yahya’s ninth-century Arabic description of Britain

Britain, the Byzantine Empire, and the concept of an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy: Harun ibn Yahya’s ninth-century Arabic description of Britain

Al-Idrisi’s mid-twelfth-century Arabic map of southern Britain and northern Frances, from the copy preserved in the sixteenth-century Oxford MS Pococke 375, fol. 281b–282a. Note, north is at the bottom of this map (image: Bodleian Library). The aim of the following post is to offer a draft look at an interesting Arabic account of early medieval Britain…