Linguistic Landscapes of Beirut

David Joseph Wrisley, an English professor at American University of Beirut has compiled a set of maps in an attempt to document the language diversity of Beirut. Arabic is the official language of Lebanon but a law determines "cases in which the French language may be used.” These maps show signs and are color coded by the language of each sign.

Unfortunately the color scheme does not lend itself well to seeing geographic patterns, if there are any. The French color is much too similar to some of the English colors. A trivariate color scheme like the map below might work better, though for dots I would go with stronger colors. Choose a primary color for each language and let them blend together where they mix.

If the point is that there is no pattern then his color scheme is as good as any. Here is an embedded version of the map. You can pan, zoom and click each point to see a picture of the sign. One final recommendation would be to allow the full screen option. The small map windows are tough to navigate.
Numerals used in signs, with only two choices, shows more of a pattern. Western Arabic numerals are in blue (0 1 2 3...) while Eastern Arabic or Arabic-Indic numerals are in orange (٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩)

Another interesting map is the vernacular map, showing the locations data collectors named when taking the pictures. This was done in response to some articles discussing Beirut's lack of addressing and how people navigate by informal landmarks, many of which no longer exist.

You can read more about the project and see more maps on Wrisley's project page.

Lady Anne Blunt in Northern Arabia

In March the Library of Congress posted a series of maps for Women's History Month on their geography and map blog. Their last post was a map showing the journeys of Lady Anne Blunt through northern Arabia.

Blunt was a British noblewoman who was famous for helping to save the purebred Arabian horse by buying and bringing horses to England. She was the first European woman to cross the Arabian desert in pursuit of these horses. As an interesting side note her mother, Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace is often regarded as the first computer programmer.

Blunt was not a cartographer but her place-specific descriptions of two journeys, in 1878 and 1879, allowed Edward Stanford, a London bookseller and mapmaker (creator of Stanfords Travel Guides) to create this remarkably detailed map.  It shows not just the physical geography of the land, but cultural features such as irrigation and grazing practices, tribal relations and pilgrimage routes.

Here are a couple more zoomed in views.

You can browse and/or download the entire map online at the Library of Congress.