South Over North

There is also the idea, in classical cosmology — which is Indo-European as well as Chinese — that in the Chinese cosmology the south is yang, which is over, and the north is yin, which is under. It is the same in the Indic cultures — the Dravidian culture and the Indic cultures: the word for south in Sanskrit relates to over or above, and the word for north to under. And classically maps generally put the south on the top. One will notice that al-Idrīsī's map puts Africa on the top and Europe on the bottom. There was a switch, with the European cartographers, when they kind of realised that there were some philosophical implications here — being under, or inferior, as opposed to being over and superior — and they literally switched the maps around. But the book that a lot of European cartography was based upon was the Book of Roger, which was done by al-Idrīsī for the Sicilian king, Roger of Sicily, and he had his maps with the south on the top.

This is related to facing the east in the morning. The back is called the gharb, the unknown, which is the west. The east is called the mashriq, facing the radiance of the sun. The south is called the right — yamīn means the right, and Yemen is also the southernmost place in the Arabian Peninsula. And shamāl, north, is from shimāl, which means left. So north is considered the left in relation to the human body — this is in terms of cosmology — and so the north would be under the south. And the Muslims traditionally did their astrolabes with the south as the top: the projection was from the south, looking up to the sky.