Zakariya ibn Muhammad Qazwini, "The Wonders of Creation"

Zakariya al-Qazwini was a cartographer, cosmographer and encyclopedist who lived in Iran but claimed descent from one of the prophet Muhammad's close friends. He lived in Shiraz from 1203-1283. 

These days he is known almost exclusively because of a book called Ajāʾib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt, that is, Marvels of the Created World and Strange Things Existing. 

And mainly not because of the text, which nobody reads any more, but because of the many beautifully illuminated manuscript copies made over the centuries. There's a complete one here if you have an hour to kill.

The book includes a primer of Ptolemaic astronomy, with methods for predicting eclipses; a history of the world from the creation; a map of the known world with descriptions of the nations; and a bestiary which covers all the greatest hits of Persian and Mediterranean myth and folklore, many of which appeared in Pliny's Natural History.

Beasts.

Some charmers.

It really is astonishing to me how long people kept reprising Pliny's lies about headless men, dog-headed men and so on.

Here's a weird bit of Arab cosmology:

God created an angel who took [the earth] on his shoulders, and grasped it with his hands; the angel had as his support a rectangular rock of green hyacinth, itself borne upon a giant bull which rests upon a fish swimming in the water 

Ok.

The wonders go on and on.