Orḥot ‘olam (Paths of the World)

Abraham Farissol

First Quarter of the 16th Century

Chapter 29

 

On the existence and nature of a great and awesome, holy world, which is situated beyond the equator, and whether it is possible that there is a settlement south of this equator, called zona tórrida (“the torrid zone”) in the Christian and Greek languages.

 

Most astronomers, natural philosophers, and cosmologists, especially Ptolemy in…

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Orḥot olam (Paths of the World) is a geographical treatise on all the lands of the Jewish diaspora, including the first mention of the New World in Hebrew, and accounts of the coasts of Africa, India, and the Far East. Written in northern Italy, possibly in Ferrara, it includes a diagram representing the sky over an island in the Antarctic Sea.

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