Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is the national fire and rescue service of Scotland. It was formed by the merger of eight regional fire services in the country on 1 April 2013, it thus became the largest fire brigade in the United Kingdom, surpassing the London Fire Brigade After a consultation, the Scottish Government confirmed on 8 September 2011 that a single fire and rescue service would be created in Scotland to replace the eight existing services. Following further consultation on the detailed operation of the service, the Police and Fire Reform Bill was published on 17 January 2012. After scrutiny and debate by the Scottish Parliament, the legislation was approved on 27 June 2012; the Bill duly received royal assent as the Police and Fire Reform Act 2012. This Act created Police Scotland in place of the previous eight regional police forces; the mergers were effective from 1 April 2013. Eight months after the consolidation, an internal report said the reorganisation had not negatively affected operational response.
The service is headquartered in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, which houses a national training centre opened in January 2013. There are a further three service delivery centres in the east and north of the country. On 16 August 2012 the Scottish Government confirmed the first chief fire officer of the new service would be Alasdair Hay acting chief fire officer of Tayside Fire and Rescue Service, following an open recruitment exercise. Pat Watters, former president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, was announced as chair of the service, an appointment to run for three years from September 2012. Members of the SFRS Board appointed in October 2012 were Watters, Bob Benson, James Campbell, Kirsty Darwent, Marieke Dwarshuis, Michael Foxley, Robin Iffla, Bill McQueen, Sid Patten, Neil Pirie, Martin Togneri and Grant Thoms; the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service attended 25,002 fires in 2014/15. The service delivers a preventative programme, with 65,343 free home fire safety visits conducted in 2015/16.
As well as fighting fires, the service attends tens of thousands of specialist services such as road traffic collisions, water rescues and flooding incidents. In 2014/15 it attended 10,740 non-fire incidents; the service works alongside other emergency services during flooding events to ensure the safety of communities and rescue people in difficulty, with specialist swift water rescue teams positioned on major waterways and areas of activity. Firefighters are called out to water and boat rescues. For example, during Storm Frank in December 2015 the SFRS received 350 flood related calls in the space of six days. In 2015 the SFRS were called out to 78 wildfire incidents in total, with over half of those taking place in the north of Scotland. In 2015 a national trial was launched, in partnership with the Scottish Ambulance Service, which has seen firefighters at certain stations receive enhanced CPR training aimed at increasing survival rates for people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
As of March 2016, the SFRS operates 356 stations throughout Scotland. Stations are split into three categories: Wholetime: A station with full-time firefighters. Retained: Part-time, on a call-out basis and predominantly based in some of the more rural areas of Scotland. Volunteer: On a call-out basis and predominantly based in some of the more remote villages and islands; the most northerly station is Baltasound on the Shetland Islands. The most southerly is a volunteer station in the village of Drummore in Galloway; the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service National Training Centre opened in January 2013. The facility in Cambuslang features a mock town with realistic motorways, railway tracks and buildings, including a multi-storey tenement structure; the following services were merged to create the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service: Central Scotland Fire and Rescue Service and Galloway Fire and Rescue Service, Fife Fire and Rescue Service, Grampian Fire and Rescue Service and Islands Fire and Rescue Service and Borders Fire and Rescue Service, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, Tayside Fire and Rescue Service.
The number of control rooms handling 999 calls was reduced from eight to three. The consolidation of regional call centres has resulted in a number of dispatching errors. For example, in December 2016 a crew from Raasay was mobilised to an incident on Skye – a journey that would have required taking their fire engine on a ferry – despite an alternative crew being able to reach Skye directly via a road bridge. On another occasion, a crew from Beauly was sent to a blaze 10 miles away in Dingwall as the dispatcher was unaware Dingwall had its own fire station, her Majesty's Fire Service Inspectorate for Scotland Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland List of British firefighters killed in the line of duty Official website BBC news report, 29 March 2013: Why Grampian is losing its unusual white fire engines, other questions... Consultation document: Keeping Scotland Safe and Strong: A Consultation on Reforming Police and Fire and Rescue Services in Scotland Police and Fire Reform Bill
Fire services in the United Kingdom
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty agencies; these are known as a fire and rescue service, the term used in modern legislation and by government departments. The older terms of fire brigade and fire service survive in informal usage and in the names of a few organisations. England and Wales have local fire services which are each overseen by a fire authority, made up of representatives of local governments. Fire authorities have the power to raise a Council Tax levy for funding, with the remainder coming from the government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire services, so their authorities are committees of the devolved parliaments; the total budget for fire services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. Central government maintains national standards and a body of independent advisers through the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, created in 2007, while Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services provides direct oversight.
The devolved government in Scotland has HMFSI Scotland. Firefighters in the United Kingdom are allowed to join unions, the main one being the Fire Brigades Union, while chief fire officers are members of the National Fire Chiefs Council, which has some role in national co-ordination; the fire services have undergone significant changes since the beginning of the 21st century, a process, propelled by a devolution of central government powers, new legislation and a change to operational procedures in the light of terrorism attacks and threats. See separate article History of fire safety legislation in the United Kingdom Comprehensive list of recent UK fire and rescue service legislation: Fire services are established and granted their powers under new legislation which has replaced a number of Acts of Parliament dating back more than 60 years, but is still undergoing change. 1938: Fire Brigades Act 1938. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain and made it mandatory for local authorities to arrange an effective fire service.
1947: Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. 1959: Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act. It was repealed in Wales along with the 1947 Act. 1999: Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of national fire strikes, with much of the discontent caused by the aforementioned report into the fire service conducted by Prof Sir George Bain. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the industrial action still ongoing. Bain's report led to a change in the laws relating to firefighting. 2002: Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004: Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 only applying to England and Wales. 2006: The Regulatory Reform Order 2005 This piece of secondary legislation or statutory instrument replaces several other acts that dealt with fire precautions and fire safety in premises, including the now defunct process of issuing fire certificates.
It came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises: 2006: The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on "Fire and rescue services. Promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation." But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries. There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association, its website outlines future changes, specific projects: "The aim of the Fire Modernisation Programme is to adopt modern work practices within the Fire & Rescue Service to become more efficient and effective, while strengthening the contingency and resilience of the Service to react to incidents. " The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee. In June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report.
Committee report The committee's brief is described on its website: The Communities and Local Government Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure and policy of the Department for Communities and Local Government and its associated bodies. Government response This document, the subsequent government response in September 2006, are important as they outlined progress on the FiReControl, efforts to address diversity and the planned closure of HMFSI in 2007 among many issues. Both documents are interesting as they refer back to Professor Bain's report and the many recommendations it made and continue to put forward the notion that there is an ongoing need to modernise FRSs. For example, where FRSs were inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office. Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Governm
Hundred (county division)
A hundred is an administrative division, geographically part of a larger region. It was used in England, some parts of the United States, Southern Schleswig, Finland and Norway, it is still used in other places, including South Australia, The Northern Territory. Other terms for the hundred in English and other languages include wapentake, herad, hérað, härad or hundare, Satakunta or kihlakunta and cantref. In Ireland, a similar subdivision of counties is referred to as a barony, a hundred is a subdivision of a large townland; the use of "hundred" for a division of a county has what the OED describes as an "exceedingly obscure" etymology. It may once have referred to an area of 100 hides, though a "hide" is not a specific area: instead it was conceptually the amount of land required to support a family. Alternatively it may have been based on the area liable to provide 100 men under arms, or because it was an area settled by 100 men at arms. There was an equivalent traditional Germanic system, in Old High German a huntari, a division of a gau, but the OED believes that the link between the two is not established.
In England a hundred was the division of a shire for military and judicial purposes under the common law, which could have varying extent of common feudal ownership, from complete suzerainty to minor royal or ecclesiastical prerogatives and rights of ownership. Until the introduction of districts by the Local Government Act 1894, hundreds were the only used assessment unit intermediate in size between the parish, with its various administrative functions, the county, with its formal, ceremonial functions; the term "hundred" is first recorded in the laws of Edmund I as a measure of land and the area served by a hundred court. In the Midlands, they covered an area of about 100 hides, but this did not apply in the south; the Hundred Ordinance, which dates to the middle of the century, provided that the court was to meet monthly, thieves were to be pursued by all the leading men of the district. The name of the hundred was that of its meeting-place. During Norman times, the hundred would pay geld based on the number of hides.
To assess how much everyone had to pay, a clerk and a knight were sent by the king to each county. There would be two knights from each hundred. After it was determined what geld had to be paid, the bailiff and knights of the hundred were responsible for getting the money to the sheriff, the sheriff for getting it to the Exchequer. Above the hundred was the shire, under the control of a sheriff. Hundred boundaries were independent of both parish and county boundaries, although aligned, meaning that a hundred could be split between counties, or a parish could be split between hundreds. Exceptionally, in the counties of Kent and Sussex, there was a sub-division intermediate in size between the hundred and the shire: several hundreds were grouped together to form lathes in Kent and rapes in Sussex. At the time of the Norman conquest of England, Kent was divided into seven lathes and Sussex into four rapes; the system of hundreds was not as stable as the system of counties being established at the time, lists differ on how many hundreds a county had.
In many parts of the country, the Domesday Book contained a radically different set of hundreds from that which became established. The numbers of hundreds in each county varied widely. Leicestershire had six, whereas Devon, nearly three times the size, had 32. Over time, the principal functions of the hundred became the administration of law and the keeping of the peace. By the 12th century, the hundred court was held twelve times a year; this was increased to fortnightly, although an ordinance of 1234 reduced the frequency to once every three weeks. In some hundreds, courts were held at a fixed place; the main duty of the hundred court was the maintenance of the frankpledge system. The court was formed of freemen. According to a 13th-century statute, freeholders did not have to attend their lord's manorial courts, thus any suits involving them would be heard in a hundred court. For serious crimes, the hundred was under the jurisdiction of the Crown. However, many hundreds came into private hands, with the lordship of the hundred being attached to the principal manor of the area and becoming hereditary.
Helen Cam estimated that before the Conquest, over 130 hundreds were in private hands. Where a hundred was under a lord, a steward, acting as a judge and the chief official of the lord of the manor, was appointed in place of a sheriff; the importance of the hundred courts declined from the 17th century, most of their powers were extinguished with the establishment of county courts in 1867. The remaining duty of the inhabitants of a hundred to make good damages caused by riot was ended by the Riot Act 1886, when the cost was transferred to the county police rate
Igneous rock
Igneous rock, or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava; the magma can be crust. The melting is caused by one or more of three processes: an increase in temperature, a decrease in pressure, or a change in composition. Solidification into rock occurs either below the surface as intrusive rocks or on the surface as extrusive rocks. Igneous rock may form with crystallization to form granular, crystalline rocks, or without crystallization to form natural glasses. Igneous rocks occur in a wide range of geological settings: shields, orogens, large igneous provinces, extended crust and oceanic crust. Igneous and metamorphic rocks make up 90–95% of the top 16 km of the Earth's crust by volume. Igneous rocks form about 15% of the Earth's current land surface. Most of the Earth's oceanic crust is made of igneous rock. Igneous rocks are geologically important because: their minerals and global chemistry give information about the composition of the mantle, from which some igneous rocks are extracted, the temperature and pressure conditions that allowed this extraction, and/or of other pre-existing rock that melted.
In terms of modes of occurrence, igneous rocks can be either extrusive. Intrusive igneous rocks make up the majority of igneous rocks and are formed from magma that cools and solidifies within the crust of a planet, surrounded by pre-existing rock; the mineral grains in such rocks can be identified with the naked eye. Intrusive rocks can be classified according to the shape and size of the intrusive body and its relation to the other formations into which it intrudes. Typical intrusive formations are batholiths, laccoliths and dikes; when the magma solidifies within the earth's crust, it cools forming coarse textured rocks, such as granite, gabbro, or diorite. The central cores of major mountain ranges consist of intrusive igneous rocks granite; when exposed by erosion, these cores may occupy huge areas of the Earth's surface. Intrusive igneous rocks that form at depth within the crust are termed plutonic rocks and are coarse-grained. Intrusive igneous rocks that form near the surface are termed subvolcanic or hypabyssal rocks and they are medium-grained.
Hypabyssal rocks are less common than plutonic or volcanic rocks and form dikes, laccoliths, lopoliths, or phacoliths. Extrusive igneous rocks known as volcanic rocks, are formed at the crust's surface as a result of the partial melting of rocks within the mantle and crust. Extrusive solidify quicker than intrusive igneous rocks, they are formed by the cooling of molten magma on the earth's surface. The magma, brought to the surface through fissures or volcanic eruptions, solidifies at a faster rate. Hence such rocks are smooth and fine-grained. Basalt is lava plateaus; some kinds of basalt solidify to form long polygonal columns. The Giant's Causeway in Antrim, Northern Ireland is an example; the molten rock, with or without suspended crystals and gas bubbles, is called magma. It rises; when magma reaches the surface from beneath water or air, it is called lava. Eruptions of volcanoes into air are termed subaerial, whereas those occurring underneath the ocean are termed submarine. Black smokers and mid-ocean ridge basalt are examples of submarine volcanic activity.
The volume of extrusive rock erupted annually by volcanoes varies with plate tectonic setting. Extrusive rock is produced in the following proportions: divergent boundary: 73% convergent boundary: 15% hotspot: 12%. Magma that erupts from a volcano behaves according to its viscosity, determined by temperature, crystal content and the amount of silica. High-temperature magma, most of, basaltic in composition, behaves in a manner similar to thick oil and, as it cools, treacle. Long, thin basalt flows with pahoehoe surfaces are common. Intermediate composition magma, such as andesite, tends to form cinder cones of intermingled ash and lava, may have a viscosity similar to thick, cold molasses or rubber when erupted. Felsic magma, such as rhyolite, is erupted at low temperature and is up to 10,000 times as viscous as basalt. Volcanoes with rhyolitic magma erupt explosively, rhyolitic lava flows are of limited extent and have steep margins, because the magma is so viscous. Felsic and intermediate magmas that erupt do so violently, with explosions driven by the release of dissolved gases—typically water vapour, but carbon dioxide.
Explosively erupted pyroclastic material is called tephra and includes tuff and ignimbrite. Fine volcanic ash is erupted and forms ash tuff deposits, which ca
Precambrian
The Precambrian is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the Phanerozoic eon, named after Cambria, the Latinised name for Wales, where rocks from this age were first studied; the Precambrian accounts for 88% of the Earth's geologic time. The Precambrian is an informal unit of geologic time, subdivided into three eons of the geologic time scale, it spans from the formation of Earth about 4.6 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, about 541 million years ago, when hard-shelled creatures first appeared in abundance. Little is known about the Precambrian, despite it making up seven-eighths of the Earth's history, what is known has been discovered from the 1960s onwards; the Precambrian fossil record is poorer than that of the succeeding Phanerozoic, fossils from the Precambrian are of limited biostratigraphic use. This is because many Precambrian rocks have been metamorphosed, obscuring their origins, while others have been destroyed by erosion, or remain buried beneath Phanerozoic strata.
It is thought that the Earth coalesced from material in orbit around the Sun at 4,543 Ma, may have been struck by a large planetesimal shortly after it formed, splitting off material that formed the Moon. A stable crust was in place by 4,433 Ma, since zircon crystals from Western Australia have been dated at 4,404 ± 8 Ma; the term "Precambrian" is recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy as the only "supereon" in geologic time. "Precambrian" is still used by geologists and paleontologists for general discussions not requiring the more specific eon names. As of 2010, the United States Geological Survey considers the term informal, lacking a stratigraphic rank. A specific date for the origin of life has not been determined. Carbon found in 3.8 billion-year-old rocks from islands off western Greenland may be of organic origin. Well-preserved microscopic fossils of bacteria older than 3.46 billion years have been found in Western Australia. Probable fossils 100 million years older have been found in the same area.
However, there is evidence. There is a solid record of bacterial life throughout the remainder of the Precambrian. Excluding a few contested reports of much older forms from North America and India, the first complex multicellular life forms seem to have appeared at 1500 Ma, in the Mesoproterozoic era of the Proterozoic eon. Fossil evidence from the Ediacaran period of such complex life comes from the Lantian formation, at least 580 million years ago. A diverse collection of soft-bodied forms is found in a variety of locations worldwide and date to between 635 and 542 Ma; these are referred to as Vendian biota. Hard-shelled creatures appeared toward the end of that time span, marking the beginning of the Phanerozoic eon. By the middle of the following Cambrian period, a diverse fauna is recorded in the Burgess Shale, including some which may represent stem groups of modern taxa; the increase in diversity of lifeforms during the early Cambrian is called the Cambrian explosion of life. While land seems to have been devoid of plants and animals and other microbes formed prokaryotic mats that covered terrestrial areas.
Tracks from an animal with leg like appendages have been found in what was mud 551 million years ago. Evidence of the details of plate motions and other tectonic activity in the Precambrian has been poorly preserved, it is believed that small proto-continents existed prior to 4280 Ma, that most of the Earth's landmasses collected into a single supercontinent around 1130 Ma. The supercontinent, known as Rodinia, broke up around 750 Ma. A number of glacial periods have been identified going as far back as the Huronian epoch 2400–2100 Ma. One of the best studied is the Sturtian-Varangian glaciation, around 850–635 Ma, which may have brought glacial conditions all the way to the equator, resulting in a "Snowball Earth"; the atmosphere of the early Earth is not well understood. Most geologists believe it was composed of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, other inert gases, was lacking in free oxygen. There is, evidence that an oxygen-rich atmosphere existed since the early Archean. At present, it is still believed that molecular oxygen was not a significant fraction of Earth's atmosphere until after photosynthetic life forms evolved and began to produce it in large quantities as a byproduct of their metabolism.
This radical shift from a chemically inert to an oxidizing atmosphere caused an ecological crisis, sometimes called the oxygen catastrophe. At first, oxygen would have combined with other elements in Earth's crust iron, removing it from the atmosphere. After the supply of oxidizable surfaces ran out, oxygen would have begun to accumulate in the atmosphere, the modern high-oxygen atmosphere would have developed. Evidence for this lies in older rocks that contain massive banded iron formations that were laid down as iron oxides. A terminology has evolved covering the early years of the Earth's existence, as radiometric dating has allowed real dates to be assigned to specific formations and features; the Precambrian is divided into
Outer Hebrides
The Outer Hebrides known as the Western Isles, Innse Gall or the Long Isle or the Long Island, is an island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. The islands are geographically coextensive with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, they form part of the archipelago of the Hebrides, separated from the Scottish mainland and from the Inner Hebrides by the waters of the Minch, the Little Minch, the Sea of the Hebrides. Scottish Gaelic is the predominant spoken language, although in a few areas English speakers form a majority. Most of the islands have a bedrock formed from ancient metamorphic rocks and the climate is mild and oceanic; the 15 inhabited islands have a total population of 27,000 and there are more than 50 substantial uninhabited islands. From Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis is 210 kilometres. There are various important prehistoric structures, many of which pre-date the first written references to the islands by Roman and Greek authors.
The Western Isles became part of the Norse kingdom of the Suðreyjar, which lasted for over 400 years until sovereignty was transferred to Scotland by the Treaty of Perth in 1266. Control of the islands was held by clan chiefs, principal of whom were the MacLeods, MacDonalds and MacNeils; the Highland Clearances of the 19th century had a devastating effect on many communities and it is only in recent years that population levels have ceased to decline. Much of the land is now under local control and commercial activity is based on tourism, crofting and weaving. Sea transport is crucial and a variety of ferry services operate between the islands and to mainland Scotland. Modern navigation systems now minimise the dangers but in the past the stormy seas have claimed many ships. Religion and sport are important aspects of local culture, there are numerous designated conservation areas to protect the natural environment; the islands form an archipelago whose major islands are Lewis and Harris, North Uist, South Uist, Barra.
Lewis and Harris has an area of 217,898 hectares and is the largest island in Scotland and the third largest in the British Isles, after Great Britain and Ireland. It incorporates Lewis in the north and Harris in the south, both of which are referred to as individual islands, although they are connected by land; the island does not have a single name in either English or Gaelic, is referred to as "Lewis and Harris", "Lewis with Harris", "Harris with Lewis" etc. The largest islands are indented by arms of the sea such as Loch Ròg, Loch Seaforth and Loch nam Madadh. There are more than 7,500 freshwater lochs in the Outer Hebrides, about 24% of the total for the whole of Scotland. North and South Uist and Lewis in particular have landscapes with a high percentage of fresh water and a maze and complexity of loch shapes. Harris has innumerable small lochans. Loch Langavat on Lewis is 11 kilometres long, has several large islands in its midst, including Eilean Mòr. Although Loch Suaineabhal has only 25% of Loch Langavat's surface area, it has a mean depth of 33 metres and is the most voluminous on the island.
Of Loch Sgadabhagh on North Uist it has been said that "there is no other loch in Britain which approaches Loch Scadavay in irregularity and complexity of outline." Loch Bì is South Uist's largest loch and at 8 kilometres long it all but cuts the island in two. Much of the western coastline of the islands is a fertile low-lying dune pastureland. Lewis is comparatively flat, consists of treeless moors of blanket peat; the highest eminence is Mealisval at 574 m in the south west. Most of Harris is mountainous, with large areas of exposed rock and Clisham, the archipelago's only Corbett, reaches 799 m in height. North and South Uist and Benbecula have sandy beaches and wide cultivated areas of machair to the west and uninhabited mountainous areas to the east; the highest peak here is Beinn Mhòr at 620 metres. The Uists and their immediate outliers have a combined area of 74,540 hectares; this includes the Uists themselves and the islands linked to them by causeways and bridges. Barra is 5,875 hectares in extent and has a rugged interior, surrounded by machair and extensive beaches.
The scenic qualities of the islands are reflected in the fact that three of Scotland's forty national scenic areas are located here. The national scenic areas are defined so as to identify areas of exceptional scenery and to ensure its protection from inappropriate development, are considered to represent the type of scenic beauty "popularly associated with Scotland and for which it is renowned"; the three NSA within the Outer Hebridies are: South Lewis and North Uist National Scenic Area covers the mountainous south west of Lewis, all of Harris, the Sound of Harris and the northern part of North Uist. An area of the south west coast of South Uist is designated as the South Uist Machair National Scenic Area; the archipelago of St Kilda is listed as an NSA, alongside many other conservation designations. Much of the archipelago is a protected habitat, including both the islands and the surrounding waters. There are 53 Sites of Special Scientific Interest of which the largest are Loch an Duin, North Uist and North Harris.
South Uist is considered the best place in the UK for the aquatic plant Slender Naiad, a European Protected S
Geography (Ptolemy)
The Geography known by its Latin names as the Geographia and the Cosmographia, is a gazetteer, an atlas, a treatise on cartography, compiling the geographical knowledge of the 2nd-century Roman Empire. Written by Claudius Ptolemy in Greek at Alexandria around AD 150, the work was a revision of a now-lost atlas by Marinus of Tyre using additional Roman and Persian gazetteers and new principles, its translation into Arabic in the 9th century and Latin in 1406 was influential on the geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of the medieval Caliphate and Renaissance Europe. Versions of Ptolemy's work in antiquity were proper atlases with attached maps, although some scholars believe that the references to maps in the text were additions. No Greek manuscript of the Geography survives from earlier than the 13th century. A letter written by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes records that he searched for one for Chora Monastery in the summer of 1295. In Europe, maps were sometimes redrawn using the coordinates provided by the text, as Planudes was forced to do.
Scribes and publishers could copy these new maps, as Athanasius did for the emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus. The three earliest surviving texts with maps are those from Constantinople based on Planudes's work; the first Latin translation of these texts was made in 1406 or 1407 by Jacobus Angelus in Florence, under the name Geographia Claudii Ptolemaei. It is not thought that his edition had maps, although Manuel Chrysoloras had given Palla Strozzi a Greek copy of Planudes's maps in Florence in 1397; the Geography consists of three sections, divided among 8 books. Book I is a treatise on cartography, describing the methods used to assemble and arrange Ptolemy's data. From Book II through the beginning of Book VII, a gazetteer provides longitude and latitude values for the world known to the ancient Romans; the rest of Book VII provides details on three projections to be used for the construction of a map of the world, varying in complexity and fidelity. Book VIII constitutes an atlas of regional maps.
The maps include a recapitulation of some of the values given earlier in the work, which were intended to be used as captions to clarify the map's contents and maintain their accuracy during copying. Maps based on scientific principles had been made in Europe since the time of Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC. Ptolemy improved the treatment of map projections, he provided instructions on. The gazetteer section of Ptolemy's work provided latitude and longitude coordinates for all the places and geographical features in the work. Latitude was expressed in degrees of arc from the equator, the same system, used now, though Ptolemy used fractions of a degree rather than minutes of arc, his Prime Meridian ran through the Fortunate Isles, the westernmost land recorded, at around the position of El Hierro in the Canary Islands. The maps spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Fortunate Isles in the Atlantic to China. Ptolemy was aware. Ptolemy's work included a single large and less detailed world map and separate and more detailed regional maps.
The first Greek manuscripts compiled after Maximus Planudes's rediscovery of the text had as many as 64 regional maps. The standard set in Western Europe came to be 26: 10 European maps, 4 African maps, 12 Asian maps; as early as the 1420s, these canonical maps were complemented by extra-Ptolemaic regional maps depicting, e.g. Scandinavia; the original treatise by Marinus of Tyre that formed the basis of Ptolemy's Geography has been lost. A world map based on Ptolemy was displayed in Augustodunum in late Roman times. Pappus, writing at Alexandria in the 4th century, produced a commentary on Ptolemy's Geography and used it as the basis of his Chorography of the Ecumene. Imperial writers and mathematicians, seem to have restricted themselves to commenting on Ptolemy's text, rather than improving upon it. Byzantine scholars continued these geographical traditions throughout the Medieval period. Whereas previous Greco-Roman geographers such as Strabo and Pliny the Elder demonstrated a reluctance to rely on the contemporary accounts of sailors and merchants who plied distant areas of the Indian Ocean and Ptolemy betray a much greater receptiveness to incorporating information received from them.
For instance, Grant Parker argues that it would be implausible for them to have constructed the Bay of Bengal as as they did without the accounts of sailors. When it comes to the account of the Golden Chersonese and the Magnus Sinus and Ptolemy relied on the testimony of a Greek sailor named Alexandros, who claimed to have visited a far eastern site called "Cattigara". Muslim cartographers were using Geography by the 9th century. At that time, in the court of the caliph al-Maʾmūm, al-Khwārazmī compiled his Book of the Depiction of the Earth which mimicked the Geography in providing the coordinates for 545 cities and regional maps of the Nile, the Island of the Jewel, the Sea of Darkness, the Sea of Azov. A 1037 copy of these are the
listen)) is the southern and more mountainous part of Lewis and Harris, the largest island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Although not an island itself, Harris is often referred to as the Isle of Harris, which is the former postal county and the current post town for Royal Mail postcodes starting HS3 or HS5; see HS postcode area.
Harris travel guide from Wikivoyage
