...that in maps made under Muslim rule, north was drawn pointing downwards?
 

...that a sumptuous atlas recently bought by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, shows us how people saw the world a thousand years ago?
 
 

...that travellers’ stories of sailors being chased by a giant bird on a tropical island helped inspire classic books like the One Thousand and One Nights?
 

• Find out about the oldest-surviving detailed map showing the Americas, drawn by 16th-century Turkish naval captain Piri Re’is
   

• Explore a large-scale reproduction of the global map drawn by Moroccan scholar Al-Idrisi, who created it centuries before Marco Polo or Columbus explored the world. Do you think it appears to be upside-down?
   

• See a model of the biggest wooden ship ever built, by Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He, who led seven voyages of discovery in the 15th century
   

• Meet Abbas ibn Firnas, who in the 9th century flew using a glider, and hear stories of other pioneering inventors and explorers of Muslim civilisation
   

• See, suspended above you, a reproduction of the wooden glider using which Abbas ibn Firnas took his pioneering 9th-century flight, according to legend
   

• Discover the names of the huge number of scholars of all faiths who worked together during Muslim civilisation to advance knowledge and improve the societies around them
   

• Investigate a large interactive map displayed on a touch-screen computer that shows the places all over Muslim civilisation where important discoveries and inventions developed
   

• Hear about Ibn Battuta, who left home in 1325 to perform a pilgrimage to Mecca, and returned three decades later having explored the limits of Muslim lands
   

• Find out about the discoveries in geology and geography made by scholars like Al-Biruni, who predicted the circumference of the earth and studied the tides in India and wrote 200 books
   

• Discover the colourful story of Kamal al-Din al-Farisi’s quest to unlock the mystery of the rainbow.