[LeifCarrotson]

This image helped me understand it:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Orthogra...

It's a hemisphere centered on Jerusalem, with North to the left. "ROMA" is across the Med to the left of the labyrinth just below center. At top right, it's easy to identify the Persian gulf and Red Sea; it appears that Somalia is disconnected from the African continent and infested with Dracones. At bottom left are the British isles, you can see "LONDONIA" just up the Thames, across the English channel from the Seine which flows from the cathedral representing Paris.

The circular outside edge represents the oceans, compressed to a narrow band of shoreline - the Atlantic at the bottom, Arctic at the left, Pacific at top, Indian at the right. There's some discussion as to whether the round world was assumed to be spherical or disc-shaped, with most historians assuming that it was believed to be spherical and that the oceans were simply connected on the 'back' of the map (where the Americas would be).

It's an interesting projection, expanding some areas to give detail based on religious importance and familiarity more than absolute geographical size.

[hencq]

An absolutely terrific book about (among other things) this is The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin. He goes into a lot of detail on how map making in Europe for the longest time was driven, as you say, more by religious importance than anything else. Interestingly when Europeans did get more serious about accurate maps this was for a large part driven by the search for the fabled Prester John, a Christian king thought to be ruling in India or Africa.