Piri Reis (Tokoh Geografi Ottoman) 1465-1553
Biografi Piri Reis
Ahmed Muhiddin Piri born between 1465 and 1470. He
died in 1553- Hajji Ahmed Muhiddin Piri,
Ahmed ibn-i el-Hac Mehmed El Karamani; Reis was a Turkish military rank akin to that of captain) was an Ottomanadmiral, geographer and cartographer .[1]
He is primarily known today for
his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-ı
Bahriye (Book of
Navigation), a book that contains detailed information on navigation, as
well as very accurate charts (for its time) describing the important ports and cities of the Mediterranean Sea. He gained fame as a
cartographer when a small part of his
first world map (prepared in 1513)
was discovered in 1929 at the Topkapı
Palace in Istanbul. His world map is
the oldest known Turkish atlas showing the New World, and one of the
oldest maps of America still in existence anywhere (the oldest known map of
America that is still in existence is the map drawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500). Piri Reis' map is
centered on the Sahara at the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer.[2]
In 1528 Piri Reis drew a second
world map, of which a small fragment (showing Greenland and North America from Labrador and Newfoundland in the north to Florida, Cuba, Dominican Republic,
Jamaica and parts of Central
America in the south) still
survives. According to his imprinting text, he had drawn his maps using about
twenty foreign charts and mappae mundi (Arab, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese,
Indian and Greek) including one of Christopher
Columbus.[3]
Biography Piri Reis (Figures Geography
Ottoman) - Piri Reis (full name Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Hadji Mehmed, Reis /
Rais is Turkey's captain) is a geographer Ottoman Kaptan-i Derya, and
cartographer born between 1465 and 1470 and died in 1554 or 1555. He is
primarily known today for his maps and charts collected in the Book, I Bahriye
(Book of Navigation), a book that contains detailed information on navigation
as well as highly accurate for the time charts illustrate important port cities
and the Mediterranean Sea. He gained fame as a cartographer when a small part
of his first world map (prepared in 1513) was discovered in 1929 at the Topkapi
Palace in Istanbul. His world map is the oldest known Turkish atlas showing the
New World, and one of the oldest maps of America still exist in the world. (Map
America's oldest extant is the map drawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500, which is
stored in the Naval Museum (Museo Naval) of Madrid, Spain.) Map of Piri Reis'
centered in the Sahara at the Tropic of Cancer latitude.
In 1528 Piri Reis drew a second world map,
where a small fragment showing Greenland
and North America from Labradordan Newfoundland in the north to Florida, Cuba
and parts of Central America in the south. According to the text printing, he
has drawn a map that uses about twenty foreign charts and mappa mundi (Arabic,
Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and Greek) includes one of Christopher
Columbus.
Little is known about the identity of Piri
Reis. Even the name roughly translated means "sea captain" His origin
is debatable, with sources refer to him as a Christian, perhaps Greece., Greek,
Jewish, or ethnic Turks. Piri Muhiddin Hadji Ahmed was born either in Gallipoli
European part of the Ottoman Empire or in Karaman, central Anatolia, but the
exact date of his birth is unknown. He is the son of Hadji Mehmed Piri, brother
Admiral Kemal Reis and started to engage in piracy when he was young, in 1481,
following his uncle Kemal Reis, a pirate and famous sailors time later became
famous admiral of the Ottoman fleet. During the Ottoman period were at war,
together with his uncle, he took part in many sea fights against Spain, Genoa
and Venice, including the First Battle of Lepanto (Battle Zonchio) in 1499 and
the Second Battle of Lepanto (Battle MODON) in 1500. When his uncle Kemal Reis
sank in 1511 when his ship was damaged by the storm, Piri returned to Gallipoli
where he began work learn about navigation.
At 1516 he was again at sea as a ship's
captain in the Ottoman fleet. He took part in the 1516-17 campaign against
Egypt. In 1522 he participated in the siege of Rhodes to the Knights of St John
which ended with the surrender of the island to the Ottomans on December 25,
1522 and the permanent departure of the Knights of Rhodes on 1 January 1523. In
1524 he became captain of the ship that took a tragic Wazir Pargal? Ibrahim
Pasha to Egypt.
In 1547, had risen to the rank of Piri
Reis (admiral) as commander of the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean and
admiral of the fleet in Egypt, headquartered at Suez. On February 26, 1548 he
recaptured Aden from the Portuguese, followed in 1552 by the capture of Muscat,
which Portugal had occupied since 1507, and the important island of Kish.
Turning further east, Piri Reis captured the island of Hormuz in the Strait of
Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. When the Portuguese turned their
attention to the Persian Gulf, Piri Reis occupied the Qatar peninsula and the
island of Bahrain to deprive the Portuguese of suitable bases on the Arabian
coast.
He then returned to Egypt, an old man
approaching the age of 90. When he refused to support the Ottoman governor of
Basra, Kubad Pasha, in another campaign against the Portuguese in the northern
Persian Gulf, Piri Reis was publicly beheaded in 1554 or 1555. Several warships
and Turkish Navy submarine has named Piri Reis.
Piri Reis is the author Bahriye Kitab-i
one of the most famous books of modern pre navigation including map of the
world. Although he was not an explorer and never sailed into the Atlantic, with
a harness, according to printing, from about twenty maps Arabic, Spanish,
Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and Greek older, he managed to give a comprehensive
overview of the known world of his time, including the beach recently explored
from both the Atlantic Africa and the Americas (printed "land and islands
is taken from the map of Columbus"). In the text it also provides a source
of "map drawn in the time of Alexander the Great", but most likely he
has one puzzled ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy 2nd century AD with the same
name Gen. Alexander (from six centuries before) because it is the same map with
the map of de reproduction Johannes famous Stobnicza Ptolemy, printed in 1512
the ancient books. has been translated in Turkish after the personal orders of
Mehmed II a few decades earlier. Columbus origin from the Atlantic maps
contained confirmed by mistake (such as Columbus belief 'that Cuba is a
continental peninsula) because at the time the script is generated, the
Spaniards had for two years in Mexico. In addition to maps, the book also
contains detailed information on the major ports, bays, bays, headlands,
peninsula, islands, straits and ideal shelters of the Mediterranean Sea, as
well as techniques of navigation and navigation-related information astronomy,
together with information about the local people of each country and the city
and curious aspects of their culture. There are thirty legend around the map of
the world, 29 in Turkey and one in Arabic, the latter is giving the date as
Muharrem month of 919 AH (according to the spring 1513 AD) but most studies
identify the date as 1521. It is more likely that this revised in 1524-5 with
additional information and better graphics created in order to be presented as
a gift to Suleiman I. The revised edition has a total of 434 pages containing 290
questions.
Kitab-i Bahriye has two main sections, the
first section dedicated to information about the type of storm, a technique
using a compass, portolan charts with detailed information about the port and
beaches, methods of finding direction using the stars, the main characteristics
of the oceans and the land around them , Special emphasis is given to the
discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus and those of Vasco da Gama
and other Portuguese sailors on their way to India and the rest of Asia.
The second section is entirely composed of
portolan charts and cruise guides. Each topic contains a map of an island or
beach. In the first book (1521), this section has a total of 132 portolan
charts, while the second book (1525) has a total of 210 portolan charts. The
second section begins with a description of the Dardanelles Strait and
continues with the islands and coastline of the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea,
Adriatic Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ligurian Sea, the French Riviera, the
Balearic Islands, the coast of Spain, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Canary
Islands, the coast of North Africa, Egypt and Nile, the Levant and the
coastline of Anatolia. This section also contains descriptions and images of
famous monuments and buildings in each city, as well as biographical
information about the Piri Reis who also explains the reason why he preferred
to collect the chart in the book, not a single map image, which will not be
able to contain so much information and detail.
A century after the death of Piri and in
the second half of the 17th century produced a third version of his book which
left the second version of the text is affected while the cartographical enrich
the text. It includes additional maps new massively mostly copies Italy (from
Battista Agnese and Jacopo Gastaldi) and the Netherlands (Abraham Ortelius)
works of the previous century. This map is much more accurate and describe the
Black Sea that is not comprised in the original.
A copy of the Kitab-i Bahriye found in
many libraries and museums around the world. Copies of the first edition (1521)
are found in the Topkapi Palace, Nuruosmaniye Library and Süleymaniye Library
in Istanbul, Bologna University Library, the National Library of Vienna,
Dresden State Library, the National Library of France in Paris, the British
Museum in London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Walters Art Museum in
Baltimore. Copies of the second edition (1525) was found in the Topkapi Palace,
which Köprülüzade Fazil Ahmed Pasa Library, Süleymaniye Library and the National
Library of France.
Biography Piri Reis (Figures Geography Ottoman) - Piri Reis (full name
Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Hadji Mehmed, Reis / Rais is Turkey's captain) is a
geographer Ottoman Kaptan-i Derya, and cartographer born between 1465 and 1470
and died in 1554 or 1555. He is primarily known today for his maps and charts
collected in the Book, I Bahriye (Book of Navigation), a book that contains
detailed information on navigation as well as highly accurate for the time
charts illustrate important port cities and the Mediterranean Sea. He gained
fame as a cartographer when a small part of his first world map (prepared in
1513) was discovered in 1929 at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. His world map
is the oldest known Turkish atlas showing the New World, and one of the oldest
maps of America still exist in the world. (Map America's oldest extant is the
map drawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500, which is stored in the Naval Museum
(Museo Naval) of Madrid, Spain.) Map of Piri Reis' centered in the Sahara at
the Tropic of Cancer latitude.
In 1528 Piri Reis drew a second world map,
where a small fragment showing Greenland and North America from
Labradordan Newfoundland in the north to Florida, Cuba and parts of Central
America in the south. According to the text printing, he has drawn a map that
uses about twenty foreign charts and mappa mundi (Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese,
Chinese, Indian and Greek) includes one of Christopher Columbus.
Little is known about the identity of Piri Reis. Even the name roughly
translated means "sea captain" His origin is debatable, with sources
refer to him as a Christian, perhaps Greece., Greek, Jewish, or ethnic Turks.
Piri Muhiddin Hadji Ahmed was born either in Gallipoli European part of the
Ottoman Empire or in Karaman, central Anatolia, but the exact date of his birth
is unknown. He is the son of Hadji Mehmed Piri, brother Admiral Kemal Reis and
started to engage in piracy when he was young, in 1481, following his uncle
Kemal Reis, a pirate and famous sailors time later became famous admiral of the
Ottoman fleet. During the Ottoman period were at war, together with his uncle,
he took part in many sea fights against Spain, Genoa and Venice, including the
First Battle of Lepanto (Battle Zonchio) in 1499 and the Second Battle of
Lepanto (Battle MODON) in 1500. When his uncle Kemal Reis sank in 1511 when his
ship was damaged by the storm, Piri returned to Gallipoli where he began work
learn about navigation.
At 1516 he was again at sea as a ship's captain in the Ottoman fleet. He
took part in the 1516-17 campaign against Egypt. In 1522 he participated in the
siege of Rhodes to the Knights of St John which ended with the surrender of the
island to the Ottomans on December 25, 1522 and the permanent departure of the
Knights of Rhodes on 1 January 1523. In 1524 he became captain of the ship that
took a tragic Wazir Pargal? Ibrahim Pasha to Egypt.
In 1547, had risen to the rank of Piri Reis (admiral) as commander of
the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean and admiral of the fleet in Egypt,
headquartered at Suez. On February 26, 1548 he recaptured Aden from the
Portuguese, followed in 1552 by the capture of Muscat, which Portugal had
occupied since 1507, and the important island of Kish. Turning further east,
Piri Reis captured the island of Hormuz in the Strait of Hormuz, at the
entrance to the Persian Gulf. When the Portuguese turned their attention to the
Persian Gulf, Piri Reis occupied the Qatar peninsula and the island of Bahrain
to deprive the Portuguese of suitable bases on the Arabian coast.
He then returned to Egypt, an old man approaching the age of 90. When he
refused to support the Ottoman governor of Basra, Kubad Pasha, in another
campaign against the Portuguese in the northern Persian Gulf, Piri Reis was
publicly beheaded in 1554 or 1555. Several warships and Turkish Navy submarine
has named Piri Reis.
Piri Reis is the author Bahriye Kitab-i one of the most famous books of
modern pre navigation including map of the world. Although he was not an
explorer and never sailed into the Atlantic, with a harness, according to
printing, from about twenty maps Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian
and Greek older, he managed to give a comprehensive overview of the known world
of his time, including the beach recently explored from both the Atlantic
Africa and the Americas (printed "land and islands is taken from the map
of Columbus"). In the text it also provides a source of "map drawn in
the time of Alexander the Great", but most likely he has one puzzled
ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy 2nd century AD with the same name Gen.
Alexander (from six centuries before) because it is the same map with the map
of de reproduction Johannes famous Stobnicza Ptolemy, printed in 1512 the
ancient books. has been translated in Turkish after the personal orders of
Mehmed II a few decades earlier. Columbus origin from the Atlantic maps
contained confirmed by mistake (such as Columbus belief 'that Cuba is a
continental peninsula) because at the time the script is generated, the
Spaniards had for two years in Mexico. In addition to maps, the book also
contains detailed information on the major ports, bays, bays, headlands,
peninsula, islands, straits and ideal shelters of the Mediterranean Sea, as
well as techniques of navigation and navigation-related information astronomy,
together with information about the local people of each country and the city
and curious aspects of their culture. There are thirty legend around the map of
the world, 29 in Turkey and one in Arabic, the latter is giving the date as
Muharrem month of 919 AH (according to the spring 1513 AD) but most studies
identify the date as 1521. It is more likely that this revised in 1524-5 with
additional information and better graphics created in order to be presented as
a gift to Suleiman I. The revised edition has a total of 434 pages containing
290 questions.
Kitab-i Bahriye has two main sections, the first section dedicated to
information about the type of storm, a technique using a compass, portolan
charts with detailed information about the port and beaches, methods of finding
direction using the stars, the main characteristics of the oceans and the land
around them , Special emphasis is given to the discovery of the New World by
Christopher Columbus and those of Vasco da Gama and other Portuguese sailors on
their way to India and the rest of Asia.
The second section is entirely composed of portolan charts and cruise
guides. Each topic contains a map of an island or beach. In the first book
(1521), this section has a total of 132 portolan charts, while the second book
(1525) has a total of 210 portolan charts. The second section begins with a
description of the Dardanelles Strait and continues with the islands and coastline
of the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea, Adriatic Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ligurian
Sea, the French Riviera, the Balearic Islands, the coast of Spain, the Strait
of Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the coast of North Africa, Egypt and Nile,
the Levant and the coastline of Anatolia. This section also contains
descriptions and images of famous monuments and buildings in each city, as well
as biographical information about the Piri Reis who also explains the reason
why he preferred to collect the chart in the book, not a single map image,
which will not be able to contain so much information and detail.
A century after the death of Piri and in the second half of the 17th
century produced a third version of his book which left the second version of
the text is affected while the cartographical enrich the text. It includes
additional maps new massively mostly copies Italy (from Battista Agnese and
Jacopo Gastaldi) and the Netherlands (Abraham Ortelius) works of the previous
century. This map is much more accurate and describe the Black Sea that is not
comprised in the original.
A copy of the Kitab-i Bahriye found in many libraries and museums around
the world. Copies of the first edition (1521) are found in the Topkapi Palace,
Nuruosmaniye Library and Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, Bologna University
Library, the National Library of Vienna, Dresden State Library, the National
Library of France in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Bodleian Library
in Oxford and Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Copies of the second edition
(1525) are found in the Topkapi Palace, which Köprülüzade Fazil Ahmed Pasa
Library, Süleymaniye Library and the National Library of France.
Piri Reis maps
In 1513 Piri Reis presented his famous map of the New World to the Sultan, giving the Ottomans, well before many European rulers, an accurate description of the American discoveries as well as details about the circumnavigation of Africa.
The famous
(Piri Reis's) map of America, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any
kind, was made in Islanbul in the early 16th Century. It focuses on the western
coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of
Antarctica. Piri Reis could not have acquired his information on this latter
region from contemporary explorers because Antarctica remained undiscovered
until 1818 CE, more than 300 years after he drew the map."
"The
ice-free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map is a colossal puzzle because
the geological evidence confirms that the very latest date that it could have
been surveyed and charted in an ice-free condition is 4000 BCE".,"It is not possible to
pinpoint the earliest date that such a task could have been accomplished, but
it seems that the Queen Maud Land littoral may have remained in a stable,
unglaciated condition for at least 9,000 years before the spreading ice-cap
swallowed it entirely. There is no civilization known to history that had the capacity
or need to survey that coastline in the relevant period, i.e. between 13,000
BCE and 4000 BCE."
Piri Reis
maps the World
The Turkish
navy are famous for their endless battles fought for Islam, from around the
late eleventh century to the twentieth, from the most further western parts of
the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and the Straight of Hormuz. There is, however, another aspect
of Turkish naval activity, that is their contribution to the wider subject of
geography and nautical science. This aspect, however, like much else of Islamic
science has been completely set aside. Hess puts it that European historians
were only preoccupied with the identification of their own history. They first
unravelled `the dramatic story of the oceanic voyages,' their discoveries, and
their commercial and colonial empires, and only stopped to consider how Muslim
actions influenced the course of European history.
Once such
questions were answered, the study of Islamic history became the task of small,
specialized disciplines, such as Oriental studies, which occupied a position in
the periphery of the Western historical profession. And the successful
imperial expansion of Western states in Islamic territories during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hess adds, `confirmed for most
Europeans the idea that the history of Islam, let alone the deeds of Ottoman
sultans, had little influence on the expansion of the West.' Although Hess observes one or two
improvements by the time he was writing, the picture was still the same as
nearly a decade later after him, Brice and Imber in a note addressed to the
Geographical Journal, observed that although European charts of the
Mediterraneen have received much focus, none has seriously considered similar
Turkish maps. Even worse, European scholars have dismissed Turkish works as
being of Italian origin imported into the Ottoman Empire, or the work of
Italian renegades, which Brice and Imber went on to demonstrate was without any
foundation of veracity.
Turkish
nautical science was much in advance of its time, though. Hess notes that in
1517 Piri Reis presented his famous map of the New World to the Sultan, giving
the Ottomans, well before many European rulers, an accurate description of the
American discoveries as well as details about the circumnavigation of Africa.
Salman Reis, a year later, added more onto that. Goodrich, in a pioneering
work, also went a long way to correct the overall impression, giving excellent
accounts of the Ottoman descriptions of the New World as it was then being
discovered in all its strangeness, variety and richness.
Piri Reis -
the Naval Commander
Piri Reis
was born towards 1465 in Gallipoli. He began his maritime life under the
command of his, then, illustrious uncle, Kemal Reis toward the end of the
fifteenth and early centuries.
He fought
many naval battles alongside his uncle, and later also served under Khair eddin
Barbarossa. Eventually, he led the Ottoman fleet fighting the Portuguese in the
Red Sea and Indian Ocean. In between his wars, he retired to Gallipoli to
devise a first World map, in 1513, then his two versions of Kitab I-Bahriye
(1521 and 1526), and then his second World Map in 1528-29. Mystery surrounds
his long silence from between 1528, when he made the second of the two maps,
and his re-appearing in the mid 16th as a captain of the Ottoman fleet in the
Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Piri Reis was executed by the Ottoman Sultan
for losing a critical naval battle. His mysterious end and his adventurous life
will be the subject of another article.
The World
Maps
Piri Reis's
first World Map in 1513, of which only one fragment is left shows the Atlantic
with the adjacent coasts of Europe, Africa and the New World. The second World map from
1528-29, of which about one sixth has survived, covers the north western part
of the Atlantic, and the New World from Venezuela to New Found Land as well as
the southern tip of Greenland. The fragment of the first World map discovered
in 1929 at the Topkapi Museum palace, signed by Piri Reis, and dated Muharram
919 (9 March-7 April 1513) is only part of the world of the map which the
author handed over to the Sultan Selim in Cairo in the year 1517. The German
scholar, P. Kahle, had made a thorough analysis and description of it,
observing that Piri Reis was an excellent and reliable cartographer. Kahle also
points out that the whole picture of Columbus has been distorted, as nearly all
the important documents related to him, and in particular his ship's journal,
have been preserved not in their original but in abstracts and edited works,
mostly by Bishop Las Casas.
Long after
Kahle, in the mid 1960s, Hapgood returned to the subject of the Topkapi map,
but amazed by the richness of the map, and so convinced he was that Muslim
cartography was poor, he attributed it to an advanced civilization dating from
the ice age. Hapgood's position seems now to edge on the ridiculous, not just
for its exuberant assertions, and his stretching of evidence to beyond the
fictional, but also in view of recent works on the history of mapping. The recent
voluminous work by Harley and Woodward, by far the best on the subject, shows
in rich detail, the meritorious role of Muslim cartography and nautical
science.As for Kahle's original find, one regret he expresses, was that the
fragment found in the Topkapi Museum was only one from an original map, which
included the Seven seas, (Mediterranean, India, Persia, East Africa, the
Atlantic Ocean, and the Red Sea), that's the world in its vastness, and at a
very early date.
The search
for the other parts has remained fruitless.
Directions
at Sea: The Piri Reis Innovation
The Ottoman Turk Pîrî Reis is
truly a great figure in the history of cartography. Pîrî Reis has become well
known for his two world maps and for his portolan, the Kitab-i Bahriye. By
merging text and maps into one he tried to help sailors get where they want to
go safely; he improved maritime directions.
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Figure 1. Chios (Sakiz) Island, Kitab-i Bahriye,
Suleymaniye Library, Ayasofya, 2612.
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Our lives are filled with
directions of all sorts, including how to write this paper and both where and
when to submit it. Directions are generally very useful. Among the most common
visual directions nowadays are those we see as we speed along the highways.
They tell us how fast or slowly to go, which side of the road to drive on, and
how to get to where we want to go. On land, it used to be that we went slowly
enough to ask directions. We could even stop to ask someone for help or visit a
house to seek help. Nowadays life and directions are more complex, so we need
more help. In order to reach a particular place I find that I want both written
directions and a map. They complement each other.
In the open sea, on the other hand,
it is more difficult to see signposts like those on the road or to ask
directions even when sailing slowly, even when becalmed. At sea we need
something else. The development of useful help took a long time and is still
improving with newer technology such as Global Positioning System (GPS). Up
until about 1300 CE and the early Renaissance, sea captains relied largely on
memory, perhaps some personal notes, and practiced skill to get to where they
wanted to go. About that time the knowledge that was accumulated began to be
written down in portolans, that is, books of instructions on how to get from
one port to another port. Also at this time, almost miraculously, a new style
of chart or map appeared based on the use of the compass. The map might
accompany a portolan, though visually not, and has come to be called a
"portolan chart." These maps became ever more detailed and accurate,
giving additional information as it was reported to the mapmaker. The maps
improved much more after the development of printing as corrections were easier
to make without adding copiers' errors.
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Figure 2. Canakkale area, Kitab-i Bahriye,
Suleymaniye Library, Ayasofya, 2612.
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In 1584 Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer
published Die Spieghel der Zeevaeri in the Netherlands. It included not
only detailed instructions but also many coastal maps. This book is considered
"the first to contain charts and sailing directions in one book. It was
soon available in English and other languages. It was very popular, often
republished, and used a great deal for a long time.
In the 1520s, more than half a
century before Waghenaer, however, another mapmaker did the same thing, if not
in so detailed a fashion. It is that earlier book of the 1520s that I would
like to examine and, in doing so; add one more leaf to the laurel wreath of
fame on the brow of the already famous Ottoman cartographer, Pîrî Reis.
Pîrî Reis has become well known for
his two world maps and for his portolan, the Kitab-i
Bahriye. There is, however, an innovation of his within the Kitab-i Bahriye that to my knowledge no one has ever
fully explored for its useful creativity. The large-scale coastal maps of Pîrî
Reis illustrate what he says in his text, and his maps add additional
information to the text. The two elements go together. Waghenaer may have done
a much more thorough work and added aspects such as coastal profiles, but no
cartographer before Pîrî Reis had developed quite such a close
interrelationship between the two elements of text and maps.
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Figure 3. Sicily Island, Kitab-i Bahriye,
Suleymaniye Library, Ayasofya, 2612.
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In the second version of 1526 his
great Kitab-i Bahriye (A Book on Maritime Matters), there
are more than two hundred large-scale maps. To help get the attention of his
sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent (ruled 1520-66), Pîrî Reis made the maps
beautiful. More importantly for us today, he included information about
historical and personal events. Most importantly and the main purpose of the
book, however, was the large number of directions he wrote about safely getting
around the Aegean, Adriatic, and Mediterranean seas. The text is as practical
and rooted in reality as possible. The details are emphasized. During the
previous two centuries maps or "portolan charts" had been made to
help sailors cross the open seas of the Mediterranean, Aegean, Black seas, and
even to navigate the east coast of the Atlantic. Most sailors, however,
continued to use the safer routes along coasts and around islands. Pîrî Reis
wrote to help those sailors, both naval and commercial. In the Kitab-i Bahriye
he did not explain how to navigate the open seas across the Mediterranean or
even from island to island, nor did he consider the Black Sea, a sea that he
did not know. He tried to help the sailors in what they actually did in the
Mediterranean and the Aegean, that is, sailing short distances around an island
or a few miles along the coast, surviving the difficulties of winds, currents,
soundings, climate, and finding water to drink. As he explained in his
introduction, maps of large areas (by which he meant here the portolan charts)
cannot provide the details that are necessary near the coasts. Only through his
extensive text, with supplementary information on the detail maps, was this
possible. In his efforts to assist the sailor by providing even more
information he developed his innovation of linking the maps directly to the
text.
While today we are captured by the
maps, both by their beauty and because they are easier to comprehend than the
Ottoman text, they are actually both an aid to understanding the text and a
supplement to the text, the result being something no one had done before.
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Figure 4. Cairo map, Kitab-i Bahriye,
Istanbul University Library, T 6605.
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Pîrî Reis was an extraordinarily
able cartographer, somehow absorbing two types of mapmaking created in the
western Mediterranean and making them his own to the extent that he was able to
improve upon them. It would be nice to say that he began a school of Ottoman
cartography, but I do not know anyone anywhere who followed his path. His world
maps were buried in the palace, and the portolan that he made for mariners,
even though copied many times, like Gilbert and Sullivan admirals, seems never
to have gone to sea. It was not revised with the knowledge that later sailors
acquired either in his text or in his maps. This lack of change in Ottoman
mapmaking has a significance that we cannot explore here. In general historians
do not function well in the absence of evidence. One reason for this absence
may be that Pîrî was an Ottoman who as a cartographer was thoroughly
westernized, and his maps were too different from the cartography of the
Ottoman and Islamic World, therefore difficult to understand. The Western
cartographers, on the other hand, never saw his work and so did not learn from
his innovative coupling of text and maps.
Now in the 21st century, almost
five hundred years after Pîrî Reis completed his magnum opus; we can recognize
the novelty of what Pîrî Reis created in the Kitab-i
Bahriye. By merging text and maps into one he tried to help sailors get
where they want to go safely; he improved maritime directions. The Ottoman Turk
Pîrî Reis is truly a great figure in the history of cartography.
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