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Antillia (or Antilia) is a phantom island that was reputed, during the 15th-century age of exploration, to lie in the Atlantic Ocean, far to the west of Portugal and Spain. The island also went by the name of Isle of Seven Cities (''Ilha das Sete Cidades'' in Portuguese, ''Isla de las Siete Ciudades'' in Spanish). It originates from an old Iberian legend, set during the Muslim conquest of Hispania c. 714. Seeking to flee from the Muslim conquerors, seven Christian Visigothic bishops embarked with their flocks on ships and set sail westwards into the Atlantic Ocean, eventually landing on an island (''Antilha'') where they founded seven settlements. The island makes its first explicit appearance as a large rectangular island in the 1424 portolan chart of Zuane Pizzigano. Thereafter, it routinely appeared in most nautical charts of the 15th century. After 1492, when the north Atlantic Ocean began to be routinely sailed, and became more accurately mapped, depictions of Antillia gradually disappeared. It nonetheless lent its name to the Spanish Antilles. The routine appearance of such a large "Antillia" in 15th-century nautical charts has led to speculation that it might represent the American landmass, and has fueled many theories of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. == Legend == Stories of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, legendary and otherwise, have been reported since classical antiquity.〔Beazley (1897-1906, 1899:(p.lxxii ))〕 Utopian tales of the Fortunate Islands (or Isles of the Blest) were sung by poets like Homer and Horace. Plato articulated the dystopian legend of Atlantis. Ancient writers like Plutarch, Strabo, and, more explicitly, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, testified to the existence of the Canary Islands. The names of some real islands re-emerged as distinct mythical islands with associated legends, e.g. ''capraria'' (the island of goats) and ''canaria'' (the island of dogs) are often found on maps separately from the Canary Islands (e.g. Pizzigani brothers, 1367) The Middle Ages saw the emergence of Christian versions of these tales. Notable among these are the Irish ''immrama'', such as the immram of Ui Corra, or the sea voyages of the 6th-century Irish missionaries Saint Brendan and Saint Malo. These are the source for several legendary Atlantic islands such as Saint Brendan's Island and the Island of Ima.〔O'Curry (1861: (p.289ff )); Beazley (1897, vol.1, (p.230ff )); Babcock (1922: Ch. 3)〕 The sagas of Norse seafarers to Greenland and Vinland, notably the Grœnlendinga saga and the saga of Erik the Red, have also been influential. Norse encounters with North American indigenous peoples seem to have filtered into Irish ''immrama''.〔Fridtjof Nansen (1911: vol.2, (p.9 ))〕 The peoples of the Iberian peninsula, who were closest to the real Atlantic islands of the Canaries, Madeira and Azores, and whose seafarers and fishermen may have seen and even visited them,〔Both Plutarch (''Life of Sertorius'') and Pliny the Elder reported that fishermen from Gades (Cadiz) routinely visited Atlantic islands to the southwest.〕 articulated their own tales. Medieval Andalusian Arabs related stories of Atlantic island encounters in the legend (told by al-Masudi) of the 9th-century navigator Khashkhash of Cordoba 〔Beazley (1897: vol.1, (p.465 ))〕 and the 12th-century story (told by al-Idrisi) of the eight ''Maghurin'' (Wanderers) of Lisbon.〔Beazley (1906: vol. 3, (p.532 )). Cortesão (1970: p.8)〕 Given the tendency of the legends of different seafarers – Greek, Norse, Irish, Arab and Iberian – to cross-fertilize and influence each other,〔Nansen (1911: vol. 2, (p.54 ))〕 the exact source of some legendary Atlantic islands – such as the mythical islands of Brasil〔Alexander von Humboldt (1837) ''Examen critique'', Vol. 2, (p.216ff. ); See also Babckock (1922: Ch.4)〕 and the Isle of Mam〔Babcock (1922: (Ch.6 ))〕 – are impossible to disentangle. It is from Christian Iberia that the legend of ''Antillia'' emerged. According to the legend, in c. 714, during the Muslim conquest of Hispania, seven Christian bishops of Visigothic Hispania, led by the Bishop of Porto, embarked with their parishioners on ships and set sail westward into the Atlantic Ocean to escape the Arab conquerors. They stumbled upon an island and decided to settle there, burning their ships to permanently sever their link〔For this often-emulated trope, see ''Aeneid'' V, influenced by the tradition that Alexander the Great burned his ships on the Aegean shore and influencing the reference made by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar in 1546 to Hernàn Cortés burning his ships on the Mexican coast. The Moorish commander Tariq ibn Ziyad also ordered his ships to be burned.〕 to their now Muslim-dominated former homeland. The bishops erected seven settlements (the "Seven Cities") on the island. In one reading (from Grazioso Benincasa), the seven cities are named Aira, Antuab, Ansalli, Ansesseli, Ansodi, Ansolli and Con.〔Cortesão (1954 (1975): (p.140 ))〕 The legend, in this form, is told in various places. The principal source is an inscription on Martin Behaim's 1492 Nuremberg globe which reads (in English translation): The legend is also found inscribed in the 1507/08 map of Johannes Ruysch, which reads (in English): Ruysch's inscription is reproduced almost verbatim in the ''Libro'' of Spanish historian Pedro de Medina (1548).〔Pedro de Medina (1548 (1595 ed.), (p.119 )). Curiously, Pedro de Medina says the inscription comes from a "very old" nautical map made by "Tolomeo" at the direction of "Papa Urbano." Presumably he means a map based on (rather than by) Ptolemy. The last pope by that name was Pope Urban VI (r.1378-1389). If Medina has not mistaken his popes, and if there was such a map, then that map would contain the oldest reference to Antillia on record.〕 Medina gives the island's dimensions as 87 leagues in length and 28 in width, with "many good ports and rivers", and says it is situated on the latitude of the Straits of Gibraltar, that sailors have seen it from a distance, but disappears when they approach it.〔Medina (p.119)〕 The adjustment to the 714 date and the burning of the ships is due to Ferdinand Columbus (1539), who also reports an alleged encounter with the islanders by a Portuguese ship in the time of Henry the Navigator (c. 1430s-1440s).〔Ferdinand Columbus, ''Historia del Almirante'' (1539: ch. 8 (p.45 )).〕 António Galvão (1563) reports that a 1447 Portuguese ship stumbled on the island, and met its (Portuguese-speaking) inhabitants, who reported they had fled there in the "time of Roderic" and asked whether the Moors still dominated Hispania.〔António Galvão (1563: (p.72 ))〕 More elaborate versions of this story have been told in more modern times.〔A rather fancified version of the tale is told in Higginson (1883:(p.93 )), who relates that news of the island's existence was first brought to Europe by an eloping pair of lovers who fled the island.〕 Yet another variant of the tale is told in Manuel de Faria e Sousa (1628), of Sacaru, a Visigothic governor of Mérida. Besieged by the Muslim armies and finding his situation hopeless, Sacaru negotiated capitulation, and proceeded, with all who wished to follow him, to embark on a fleet for exile in the Canary islands. Faria e Sousa notes they may not have reached their destination, but may have ended up instead on an Atlantic Ocean island "populated by Portuguese, that has seven cities...which some imagine to be that one which can be seen from Madeira, but when they wish to reach it, disappears".〔Faria e Sousa, 1628 (1677 ed., http://books.google.com/books?id=b3S-505H8JsC&pg=PA136#v=onepage&q&f=false p.129-30)〕 The island is mentioned in a royal letter of King Afonso V of Portugal (dated 10 November 1475), where he grants the knight Fernão Teles "the Seven Cities and any other populated islands" he might find in the western Atlantic Ocean.〔Cortesão (1954 (1975) p. (p.124-5 ). A similar grant might have been made earlier in 1473 to Infanta D. Brites, of "an island, that appeared beyond the island of Santiago", but was not found when it was sought." ibid.〕 It is mentioned again in a royal letter (dated 24 July 1486), issued by King John II of Portugal at the request of Fernão Dulmo authorizing him to search for and "discover the island of Seven Cities".〔Cortesão (1954 (1975) p. 125)〕 Already by the 1490s, there are rumors that silver can be found in the island's sands.〔In the Paris map ("Columbus Map") of c. 1500 (La Ronciere, 1924), the inscription by Antillia reads: ''Hec Septem Civitatum insula vocatur, nunc Portugallensium colonia efecta, ut Gromite citantur Hispanorum, in qua reperiri inter arenas argentum perhibetur.'' ("Here is the island called of the Seven Cities, a colony inhabited by Portuguese, according to some Spanish sailors, in the sands of which silver can be found.")〕 In the 16th century, the legend gave rise to the independent Spanish legends of the Seven Cities of Gold, reputed by mercenary conquistadors to be fabulously wealthy and located somewhere on the mainland of America. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Antillia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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