Hubbry Logo
Piri Reis mapPiri Reis mapMain
Open search
Piri Reis map
Community hub
Piri Reis map
logo
8 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Piri Reis map
Piri Reis map
Piri Reis map
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia

Torn piece of map with Arabic text
Surviving fragment of the Piri Reis map

The Piri Reis map is a world map compiled in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. Approximately one third of the map survives, housed in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. After the empire's 1517 conquest of Egypt, Piri Reis presented the 1513 world map to Ottoman Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520). It is unknown how Selim used the map, if at all, as it vanished from history until its rediscovery centuries later. When rediscovered in 1929, the remaining fragment garnered international attention as it includes a partial copy of an otherwise lost map by Christopher Columbus.

The map is a portolan chart with compass roses and a windrose network for navigation, rather than lines of longitude and latitude. It contains extensive notes primarily in Ottoman Turkish. The depiction of South America is detailed and accurate for its time. The northwestern coast combines features of Central America and Cuba into a single body of land. Scholars attribute the peculiar arrangement of the Caribbean to a now-lost map from Columbus that merged Cuba into the Asian mainland and Hispaniola with Marco Polo's description of Japan. This reflects Columbus's erroneous claim that he had found a route to Asia. The southern coast of the Atlantic Ocean is most likely a version of Terra Australis.

The map is visually distinct from European portolan charts, influenced by the Islamic miniature tradition. It was unusual in the Islamic cartographic tradition for incorporating many non-Muslim sources. Historian Karen Pinto has described the positive portrayal of legendary creatures from the edge of the known world in the Americas as breaking away from the medieval Islamic idea of an impassable "Encircling Ocean" surrounding the Old World.[1]

There are conflicting interpretations of the map. Scholarly debate exists over the specific sources used in the map's creation and the number of source maps.[2] Many areas on the map have not been conclusively identified with real or mythical places.[3] Some authors have noted visual similarities to parts of the Americas not officially discovered by 1513, but there is no textual or historical evidence that the map represents land south of present-day Cananéia.[4] A disproven 20th-century hypothesis identified the southern landmass with an ice-free Antarctic coast.[5]

History

[edit]
The palace atop a hill with the Bosporus in the foreground
The Topkapı Palace where the map was discovered, viewed from the Bosporus

Much of Piri Reis's biography is known only from his cartographic works, including his two world maps and the Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of Maritime Matters)[6] completed in 1521.[7] He sailed with his uncle Kemal Reis[8] as a Barbary pirate until Kemal Reis received an official position in the Ottoman Navy in 1495.[9] In one naval battle, Piri Reis and his uncle captured a Spaniard who had participated in Columbus's voyages,[10] and who likely possessed an early map of the Americas that Piri Reis would use as a source.[11][a] When his uncle died in 1511, Piri Reis temporarily retired to Gallipoli and began composing his first world map.[12] The finished manuscript was dated to the month of Muharram in the Islamic year 919 AH, equivalent to 1513 AD.[13] Piri Reis returned to the navy and played a role in the 1517 conquest of Egypt. After the Ottoman victory,[14] Piri Reis presented the 1513 world map to Ottoman Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520).[b][15] It is unknown how Selim used the map, if at all, as it vanished from history until its rediscovery centuries later.[16]

Scholars unearthed a fragment of the map in late 1929.[17] During the conversion of the Topkapı Palace into a museum, the Director of National Museums Dr. Halil Edhem Eldem invited German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann to tour its library.[18][19] Deissmann persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to fund a project to preserve ancient manuscripts from the palace library.[20] Halil Edhem gave Deissmann unprecedented access to the library's collection of non-Islamic items.[c] Deissmann confirmed the collection to have been the vast private library of Mehmed II (r. 1444–1481) and—based on Mehmed II's interest in geography—asked Halil Edhem to search for potentially overlooked maps. Halil Edhem found a disregarded bundle of material containing an unusual parchment map.[21] They showed the parchment to orientalist Paul E. Kahle, who identified it as a creation of Piri Reis citing a source map from Colombus's voyages to the Americas.[22] Kahle, and later scholars analyzing the map, found evidence for an early origin in the voyages of Columbus.[23] The discovery of a surviving piece of an otherwise lost map of Christopher Columbus received international media attention.[21] Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, took an interest in the map and initiated projects to publish facsimiles and conduct research.[24]

Description

[edit]
An outline with inscriptions translated into English, full translated text is available in the External links section of this page.
Translated map[d]

Kept in the Topkapı Palace Museum,[25] the map is the remaining western third of a world map drawn on gazelle-skin parchment approximately 87 cm × 63 cm.[e] The surviving portion shows the Atlantic Ocean with the coasts of Europe, Africa, and South America.[26] The map is a portolan chart with compass roses from which lines of bearing radiate.[27] Designed for navigation by dead reckoning,[28] portolan charts use a windrose network rather than a longitude and latitude grid.[27] There are extensive notes within the map.[11] Written with the Arabic alphabet, the inscriptions are in Ottoman Turkish except for the colophon.[29] The colophon is written in Arabic using a different handwriting from the other inscriptions. It was likely handwritten by Piri Reis, rather than assigned to a calligrapher.[30]

Places

[edit]

The remaining third of the map focuses on the Atlantic and the Americas.[31] In the top left corner, the Caribbean is arranged unlike modern or contemporary maps.[32] The large island oriented vertically is labeled Hispaniola, and the western coast includes elements of Cuba and Central America.[33][34] Inscriptions on South America and the Southern Continent cite recent Portuguese voyages.[35] The distance between Brazil and Africa is roughly correct,[36] and the Atlantic islands are drawn consistent with European portolan charts.[37]

Many places on the map have been identified as phantom islands or have not been identified conclusively. İle Verde (Green Island) north of Hispaniola could refer to many islands.[38][f] The large island in the Atlantic, İzle de Vaka (Ox island), corresponds to no known real or fictional island.[39] Both an Atlantic island and the mainland of the Americas are referred to as the legendary Antilia.[40][g]

Sources

[edit]

According to the map's legend,[41] it was based on:

There is some scholarly debate over the various sources.[44] In the modern sense, mappae mundi refer to medieval Christian schematic maps of the world. In the fifteenth century, the term was also literally used to describe world maps, and it is possible the source maps fit in that broader definition.[45] The Jaferiyes are seen by scholars as a corruption of the Arabic Jughrafiya, most often taken to mean the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy.[46] Ptolemy's book was widely printed during the sixteenth century, accompanied by maps from Nicolaus Germanus and Maximus Planudes.[47] The Jaferiyes may also refer to the largely symbolic world maps of medieval Islamic cartography.[46] Descended from classical scholarship,[48] these treatises sometimes used the loanword jughrafiya in their titles.[31] The Arabic and the four Portuguese source maps have not been conclusively identified but have been associated with several notable maps of the period. Finally, there is debate on the total number of source documents. Some scholars interpret the "20 charts and mappae mundi" in the inscriptions as including the other maps, and others interpret them to mean a total of 30 or 34.[49]

Analysis

[edit]
Piri Reis map laid over the Cantino Planisphere, comparison in caption.
The Piri Reis map's coastlines (outlined in black) are laid over the 1502 Cantino Planisphere, an earlier portolan world map. They show similarities and increased detail on Piri Reis' South American coast. The peculiar configuration of the Caribbean is usually attributed to the usage of an early map from Columbus, now lost.[50]

Compared to the Islamic cartography of the era, the map shows an atypical knowledge of foreign discoveries.[51] During the Age of Discovery, European voyages expanded the known world and disrupted the traditional conception of an "inhabited quarter" of the world comparable to the Greek ecumene.[52] The attitudes towards the Age of Discovery within the Ottoman Empire ranged from passive indifference to the outright rejection of foreign influence.[53]

Piri Reis synthesizes traditional worldviews with discoveries by undermining their newness, using rhetorical strategies to reframe European discoveries as the rediscovery of ancient knowledge.[54] He invokes Dhu al-Qarnayn—believed to be a reference to Alexander the Great from the Quran—in his inscriptions regarding Columbus.[15] According to the Quran and Turkish literary tradition, Alexander traveled to every corner of the world, thereby defining its limits.[55] A marginal inscription describes world maps as "charts drawn in the days of Alexander".[41] Another inscription mentions that a "book fell into the hands" of Columbus describing lands "at the end of the Western Sea".[56] In the 1526 version of Piri Reis' atlas, the Kitab-ı Bahriye, he explicitly credits European discoveries to lost works created during legendary voyages of Alexander.[h]

Compared to earlier portolan charts, the map shows gradual improvement.[29] Portuguese source maps would have been similar to surviving maps like the 1502 Cantino Planisphere.[57] Compared to the planisphere and the earlier map of Juan de la Cosa (1500): the Atlantic Ocean is accurate, South America is highly detailed, and the Caribbean is strangely organized.[58][59] As a part of the expanding cartography of the sixteenth century, the map was soon surpassed.[60][61] Piri Reis's own 1528 map included a more detailed and accurate version of the New World.[62] Despite recent claims of an anomalous level of accuracy,[i] Gregory McIntosh, in comparing it to several other portolan-style maps of the era, found that:

The Piri Reis map is not the most accurate map of the sixteenth century, as has been claimed, there being many, many world maps produced in the remaining eighty-seven years of that century that far surpass it in accuracy. The Ribeiro maps of the 1520s and 1530s, the Ortelius map of 1570, and the Wright-Molyneux map of 1599 ('the best map of the sixteenth century') are only a few better-known examples.[60]

Iconography

[edit]
Geometric world map with Arabic text. The ocean encircles the rounded continents. Coast lines are largely straight lines including perfect circles and 90 degree angles
Schematic map
A world map shows the Old World continents encircled by an ocean, encircled by a shore. Recently-discovered lands in the Atlantic are drawn as a narrow island.
Mimetic map
Two sixteenth-century manuscripts of Zakariya al-Qazwini's The Wonders of Creation: One provides a traditional schematic map of the "inhabited quarter" of the world surrounded by ocean. The other provides a more mimetic world map that incorporates recent discoveries.[j]

Piri Reis's inclusion of many foreign accounts was atypical within the Ottoman Empire.[63] After the conquest of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II began a project of creating copies of traditional Islamic maps in the Book of Roads and Kingdoms tradition.[k] Piri Reis adapted the elements of iconography from the traditional maps—which illustrated well-known routes, cities, and peoples—to the portolan portrayals of newly discovered coasts.[64]

Piri Reis provides an unusual etymology of "Ocean" as coming from "Ovo Sano", or "sound egg".[65] The accepted etymology comes from the world-encircling river, Oceanus. Historian Svat Soucek has described the egg etymology as naive.[66] Historian Karen Pinto has proposed that the egg etymology is better understood in the context of traditional attitudes towards the deep seas in Islamic culture.[67] Typical medieval world maps followed a standardized and schematic design, with a disc-shaped "inhabited quarter" of the world separated from Mount Qaf by an impassable Encircling Ocean.[68] Pinto observed that Piri Reis had reconciled the discovery of new land beyond the sea with this existing model, by framing the Old World—ocean included—as a giant lake surrounded by the shores of the New World. The Ottoman miniatures that illuminate the map can be further interpreted in the context of new possibilities and the changing cultural landscape.[69]

A closeup of the map shows a monkey holding a fruit, sitting atop mountains near a headless man holding what appear to be flowers.
Along the map's Western edge, a headless Blemmye (left, holding flowers) converses peacefully with a monkey (right, holding fruit).

The Western fringe of the map is populated by a variety of strange monsters from medieval mappaemundi and bestiaries.[70] Among the mountains in South America, a headless man is depicted interacting with a monkey. The headless men, known as Blemmyes, were portrayed in medieval maps and books as threatening. In Islamic culture, monkeys were considered ill omens.[71][72] The caption states that despite the monsters' appearance, they "are harmless souls,"[73] which contrasts with previous depictions of both the headless men and the edge of the known world.[64] Pinto characterized the map's monsters as, "a distinct break with earlier, and in fact, co-terminus manuscript traditions, which enforce and reinforce the notion that the Encircling Ocean is full of scary beasts and therefore should not be crossed."[74] In addition to the Blemmye, several other creatures from Natural History by Pliny the Elder inhabit the Americas.[l] The dog-faced man shown dancing with a monkey is one of the cynocephaly; a monoceros and yale are shown on the South American coast; and a bonnacon is shown on the Southern Continent.[75] Other creatures likely originate in Arabic and Persian bestiaries.[76] The multi-horned beast on the bottom edge of the map may represent the legendary shadhavar, said to emit music as wind blows through its hollow horns.[77]

Caribbean

[edit]
Side by side outlines of the map's depiction of the Caribbean and the Behaim globe's depiction of Asia's east coast show different coastlines but a similar arrangement of land masses.
Comparison of Piri Reis's organization of the Caribbean (left) to the 1492 Martin Behaim globe's configuration of Asia (right)

The Caribbean islands and the coastline in the Northwest corner of the map are widely believed to be based on a lost map drawn by Christopher Columbus, or under his supervision. The western coast on the map combines features of Central America and Cuba, reflecting Columbus's claim that Cuba was part of an Asian mainland.[78] During the 1494 exploration of Cuba, Columbus was so adamant that he had found Asia,[m] that he had a notary board each of his ships anchored off the coast. Columbus compelled his men to swear that Cuba was a part of Asia and agree to never contradict this interpretation "under a penalty of 10,000 maravedis and the cutting out of the tongue".[79][n] The mainland in the extreme northwest is labeled with place-names from Columbus's voyages along the coasts of Cuba. For example, a stretch of coast is labelled Ornofay, as recorded by Columbus but depicted on no other maps.[o]

Peculiar features of the Caribbean can be attributed to Columbus. Notably, a massive Hispaniola is oriented north to south.[80] Columbus traveled West with a chart from Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli that—west of the Canary Islands—showed open ocean, mythical Antilia, and Cipangu (Marco Polo's Japan) between Europe and Asia.[81] The general position and shape of Hispaniola are similar to contemporary maps of Cipangu.[80] On 26 December 1492, the day after Columbus landed at La Navidad on the northern coast of Hispaniola, he wrote in his diary of "Cipango, which [the native people] call Cibao" on "the island of Española".[82] The absence of the island's distinctive Gulf of Gonâve is more evidence of a Columbian origin because he did not explore Hispaniola's western shore.[83] According to Gregory McIntosh, the most clearly matching coastlines are around Cabo Falso in Pedernales. The island near Cabo Falso is labelled with a Turkish translation of Alto Velo Island, explored and named by Columbus on his second voyage in August 1494.[84] The peninsulas protruding from Puerto Rico are not present in reality but are also depicted on the map of Juan de la Cosa, who sailed with Columbus.[85] İle Bele near Puerto Rico is possibly Vieques, named Gratiosa, or Graceful, by Columbus.[86]

There is disagreement on how much of the map draws from Columbus. Kahle and most later scholars attributed everything north and west of the phantom island Antilia to this source.[87] Soucek expressed doubts about Kahle's claim,[88] which included some of the South American coast.[31] McIntosh found that Cuba, Central America, The Bahamas, and Hispaniola could be clearly attributed to an early map from Columbus,[35] but not the Lesser Antilles, especially the Virgin Islands which are duplicated on the map.[89]

Southern Continent

[edit]
A vintage world map with a southern hemisphere dominated by a massive landmass not resembling Antarctica in any way.
Terra Australis, or the Southern Land, is depicted on Petrus Plancius's Orbis Terrarum of 1594 as a massive continent, spanning much of the southern hemisphere. Places discovered but little understood are depicted as the Northern edge of Terra Australis, including Tierra del Fuego south of the Americas and New Guinea.

The Southern Continent stretching across the Atlantic Ocean is most likely Terra Australis. Some authors have claimed that it depicts areas of South America not officially discovered in 1513, and a popular but disproven hypothesis alleges it to be Antarctica.[90] Maps of the period generally depicted this theoretical southern continent, in various configurations.[91] This land was posited by Roman geographer Ptolemy as a counterbalance to the extensive land areas in the known world.[p]

As explorers charted the Southern Hemisphere, it pushed back the potential bounds of Terra Australis.[92] Discoveries, like Tierra del Fuego and New Holland,[93] were initially mapped as the northern edge of the unknown southern land. As these areas were mapped, Terra Australis shrank, grew vague, and became a fantastical locale invoked in literature, notably Gulliver's Travels and Gabriel de Foigny's La Terre Australe Connue.[94] Belief in the Southern Continent was abandoned after the second voyage of James Cook in the 1770s showed that if it existed, it was much smaller than imagined previously. The first confirmed landing on Antarctica was only during the First Russian Antarctic Expedition in 1820, and the coastline of Queen Maud Land did not see significant exploration before Norwegian expeditions began in 1891.[95]

South American claims

[edit]

The southernmost conclusively identified feature on the map is a stretch of Brazilian coastline including Cabo Frio (Kav Friyo on the map), possibly the earliest depiction of Rio de Janeiro, and likely the area around Cananéia, labeled Katino on the map.[96] Information about this area is attributed to recent Portuguese voyages,[97] and the southernmost point depicted on contemporary Portuguese maps was Cananéia as described by Amerigo Vespucci, at 25 degrees south.[96] Beyond this point, the coast curves sharply east. Some modern writers have interpreted this coastline as the coast of South America, either drawn along the map's edge or distorted to push it East of the line of demarcation. Cartographic historian Svat Soucek noted that the parchment curves by South America, and that "it was not unusual for cartographers to adjust the orientation of a coastline to fit the surface available".[7] Italian art historian and graphic designer Diego Cuoghi said that "Piri Reis often mentions Portuguese maps in his notes, and of course Portuguese would have preferred the coast south of Brazil to bend sharply to the right".[91] This identification relies on perceived visual similarities between the map and modern maps of the Río de la Plata, San Matías Gulf, Valdés Peninsula, and Strait of Magellan's Atlantic opening.[98] Aside from the subjective comparisons, there is no historical evidence that Piri Reis could have known of these places and no textual evidence in the map.[29] In particular, the large snakes like those of the Boidae family mentioned on the map,[99] are not found that far south in Patagonia.[100]

Antarctic claims

[edit]
A topographic map of a hypothetical ice free Antarctica.
The expected topography of Antarctica using modern data and accounting for isostatic rebound shows no similarities with the Piri Reis map.

The Antarctic claim originates with Captain Arlington H. Mallery,[101] a civil engineer and amateur archaeologist who was a supporter of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact hypotheses. Mallery used a grid system to reposition the coordinates on the map and claimed the accuracy of these reconstructed maps to be comparable to modern maps.[102][q] Mallery's ideas were exposed to a wider audience when Georgetown University broadcast a discussion between Mallery, director of the Weston Observatory Daniel Lineham, and director of the Georgetown University Observatory Francis Heyden in 1956.[103][104] Inspired by Mallery, historian Charles Hapgood, in his 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, proposed a theory of global exploration by a pre-classical undiscovered civilization based on his analysis of Renaissance and late-medieval maps.[105] Hapgood's book was met with skepticism due to its lack of evidence and reliance on polar shift.[106][r] Hapgood acknowledged that his theory disregarded the text and some of the placement of land masses on the map. For example, he designated an island to be one-half of Cuba—claiming it was "wrongly labeled Espaniola" or Hispaniola—and remarked that, "nothing could better illustrate how ignorant Piri Re'is was of his own map."[107]

Hapgood, and his graduate students who aided with the research, were influential in spreading the idea that the Piri Reis map shows Antarctica as it looked during the Neolithic, without glacial ice.[108] Two letters reproduced in Hapgood's book express optimism about this hypothesis based on the 1949 Norwegian-British-Swedish Seismic Survey of Queen Maud Land.[s] According to geologist Paul Heinrich, this mistakenly conflates the topography of Antarctica below the ice with a hypothetical ice-free Antarctica. It does not take into account post-glacial rebound, where land rises after massive ice sheets melt away. Additionally, the 1949 survey could not measure even one percent of the area drawn in the Piri Reis map. Subsequent studies with access to more data have shown no significant similarities to Antarctica's coast beneath the ice or a projected Antarctic coastline without ice.[109]

Hapgood mistakenly believed that Antarctica had been free of ice in 17,000 BC and partially ice-free as late as 4,000 BC.[110] This erroneous date range could have put the mapping of Antarctica contemporary with many known prehistoric societies. More recent ice core data shows that Antarctica was last free of ice over ten million years ago.[111] Writers like Erich von Daniken,[112] Donald Keyhoe,[108] and Graham Hancock[113] have uncritically repeated Hapgood's claims as proof of ancient astronauts, flying saucers, and a lost civilization comparable to Atlantis, respectively.[5]

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]

Citations

[edit]
  1. ^ Pinto 2012, pp. 80, 90.
  2. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 15–18.
  3. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 26, 30, 41, 100.
  4. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 37–38.
  5. ^ a b McIntosh 2000a, ch. 6.
  6. ^ Soucek 1992, pp. 266, 269.
  7. ^ a b Soucek 1992, p. 272.
  8. ^ İnan 1954, pp. 6–7.
  9. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 5.
  10. ^ Soucek 1992, pp. 267, 270, 271
  11. ^ a b Nebenzahl 1990, p. 62.
  12. ^ Soucek 1992, p. 267.
  13. ^
  14. ^ Tekeli 1985, pp. 675–676.
  15. ^ a b Casale 2019, p. 871.
  16. ^ Soucek 1992, p. 270.
  17. ^ Adıvar 1939, pp. 59–60, cited in Şengör 2004.
  18. ^ Gerber 2010, pp. 190–192.
  19. ^ Şengör 2004.
  20. ^ Gerber 2010, pp. 190–192.
  21. ^ a b Gerber 2010, p. 199.
  22. ^ Kahle 1933, pp. 621–624.
  23. ^
    • Kahle 1933, p. 624, "The startling reference to a map drawn by Columbus is fully confirmed by a critical examination of the northwestern part of Piri Reis' map ..."
    • McIntosh 2014, p. 367, "First, the map incorporates an early map by Christopher Columbus of his discoveries in the West Indies preserving for us Columbus's earliest geographical and cartographic ideas."
    • Soucek 1996, plate 7, "[...] it is based in part on a map produced by Christopher Columbus."
    • Gerber 2010, p. 199, "it provided the only known (partial) copy of Christopher Columbus' lost chart and, therefore, tangible evidence on how the latter visualised the earth geographically."
  24. ^ İnan 1954, p. 4.
  25. ^ Massetti & Veracini 2016, p. 41.
  26. ^ İnan 1954, pp. 26–27.
  27. ^ a b Dutch 2010.
  28. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 60–61.
  29. ^ a b c McIntosh 2000b.
  30. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 15.
  31. ^ a b c d Soucek 2013, p. 140.
  32. ^ Casale 2019, pp. 1–2.
  33. ^ Akçura 1935, foldout.
  34. ^ Soucek 1992, pp. 270–271.
  35. ^ a b McIntosh 2014, p. 372.
  36. ^ Yerci 1989, p. 155.
  37. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 26, 34.
  38. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 100.
  39. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 30–31.
  40. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 70–75.
  41. ^ a b Akçura 1935, § VI.
  42. ^ a b McIntosh 2000a, p. 17.
  43. ^ Kahle 1933, p. 624.
  44. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 15–18.
  45. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 18.
  46. ^ a b Pinto 2012, pp. 72–77.
  47. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 17–18.
  48. ^ Massetti & Veracini 2016, p. 44.
  49. ^
  50. ^ Gaspar 2015.
  51. ^ Soucek 1994, p. 123.
  52. ^ Casale 2019, pp. 863, 866.
  53. ^ Soucek 1994, pp. 123–131.
  54. ^ Casale 2019, p. 876.
  55. ^ Casale 2019, pp. 864, 897.
  56. ^ Akçura 1935, § V.
  57. ^ McIntosh 2014, p. 368.
  58. ^ İnan 1954, pp. 35, 38.
  59. ^ Soucek 1996, pp. 58, 73–74.
  60. ^ a b McIntosh 2000a, p. 59.
  61. ^ Soucek 1996, p. 73.
  62. ^ İnan 1954, pp. 43–44.
  63. ^ Soucek 1994, pp. 129–130.
  64. ^ a b Pinto 2012.
  65. ^ Akçura 1935, § XXII.
  66. ^ Soucek 1996, p. 60.
  67. ^ Pinto 2012, pp. 89–90.
  68. ^ Casale 2019, pp. 866, 888.
  69. ^ Pinto 2012, pp. 90–94.
  70. ^ Massetti & Veracini 2016, pp. 47–48.
  71. ^ Pinto 2012, pp. 65, 79.
  72. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 40–42.
  73. ^ Akçura 1935, § XXIV.
  74. ^ Pinto 2012, p. 80.
  75. ^ McIntosh 2014, pp. 370–372.
  76. ^ Massetti & Veracini 2016, p. 48.
  77. ^ Massetti & Veracini 2016, pp. 49–51.
  78. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 114.
  79. ^ Kahle 1933, p. 632
  80. ^ a b Gaspar 2015, pp. 2–3.
  81. ^ Morison 1971, pp. 98–101.
  82. ^
  83. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 95.
  84. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 95–96.
  85. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 76, 77, 86.
  86. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 80.
  87. ^
  88. ^ Soucek 1992, p. 271.
  89. ^ McIntosh 2000a, pp. 134–139.
  90. ^ McIntosh 2000b, p. 21.
  91. ^ a b Cuoghi 2002.
  92. ^ Ramsay 1972, ch.2.
  93. ^
  94. ^ Ramsay 1972, p. 44.
  95. ^
  96. ^ a b McIntosh 2000a, pp. 36–38.
  97. ^ Akçura 1935, § VIII.
  98. ^
  99. ^ Akçura 1935, § X.
  100. ^ Massetti & Veracini 2016, p. 51.
  101. ^ Jolly 1986, p. 33.
  102. ^
  103. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 53.
  104. ^ Hapgood 1966, Foreword.
  105. ^
  106. ^ McIntosh 2000a, p. 62.
  107. ^ Hapgood 1966, p. 49.
  108. ^ a b McIntosh 2000a, p. 58.
  109. ^
  110. ^ Hapgood 1966, p. 177.
  111. ^ Heinrich 2001.
  112. ^
  113. ^ Fagan 2006, p. 35.

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Piri Reis map

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
The Piri Reis map is a surviving fragment of a created in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer , whose full name was Haci Ahmed Muhiddin Piri. It depicts the Atlantic Ocean, the western coasts of and , , parts of , and the in a portolan style, featuring wind roses and rhumb lines for navigation. Compiled from approximately 20 diverse sources, including Ptolemaic maps, Portuguese charts from recent explorations, an Arabic map of India, and a map attributed to , the map reflects Piri Reis's expertise as a lifelong sailor who rose to command the Ottoman fleet in the and later served as admiral in . Piri Reis, an Ottoman corsair turned naval leader, drew the map amid the empire's expanding maritime interests during the early , drawing on both Islamic cartographic traditions and captured European materials to produce one of the era's most detailed representations of the . The surviving portion, measuring about 90 by 63 centimeters and made on skin, was presented to Sultan in 1517 following the Ottoman conquest of , underscoring its role in imperial documentation and diplomacy. Rediscovered on October 9, 1929, by German scholar Gustav Deissmann during renovations at Istanbul's Topkapi , the map has since been housed in the palace's collections as a key artifact of Renaissance-era global knowledge exchange. In cartographic history, the Piri Reis map stands out for its relative longitudinal accuracy in positioning against , achieved decades before many European maps matched this precision, and for bridging Ottoman and Western navigational advancements during the Age of Discoveries. Accompanied by annotations in explaining its sources and the lands depicted, it highlights Piri Reis's methodological approach, blending empirical observation from his voyages with inherited geographical lore. While the full original map is lost—likely destroyed or deteriorated over time—the remnant's artistic quality, including intricate illustrations of ships and sea monsters, contributes to its enduring fame as a testament to 16th-century intercultural cartography.

History and Provenance

Creation and Original Context

, born around 1465–1470 in Gallipoli, was an Ottoman admiral, navigator, and cartographer who rose through the naval ranks under the tutelage of his uncle , participating in Mediterranean campaigns against European powers from the late . His expertise in seamanship and geography positioned him as a key figure in the Ottoman Empire's maritime expansion, culminating in his command of fleets against Portuguese forces in the and during the 1540s. was executed in 1553 or 1554 in on orders from , amid accusations of strategic failures during a naval expedition. The was compiled in 1513 in Gallipoli, a major Ottoman naval base, at a time when the empire sought to integrate recent European explorations of the —initiated by Columbus in 1492—into its own geopolitical and commercial strategies, particularly to safeguard routes. synthesized information from over 20 diverse source maps, including ancient Ptolemaic charts, Portuguese navigational maps of and the , an of , and a now-lost by from his 1498 voyage, which had been acquired by uncle from a captured Spanish ship off in 1501. This eclectic compilation underscores the Ottoman access to captured intelligence and the cartographer's methodical approach to reconciling disparate scales and projections. In 1517, shortly after the Ottoman conquest of , presented the map to Sultan in as a prestigious gift, symbolizing the empire's growing awareness and strategic interest in transatlantic discoveries amid its rivalry with Iberian powers. The map's colophon, inscribed directly on the made from gazelle skin, details the sources and compilation techniques employed. Complementing this, 's Kitab-i Bahriye (Book of Navigation), first completed in 1521 and revised in 1526, provides further explanations of maritime sources and methods, with several partial manuscripts surviving to document his cartographic principles.

Rediscovery and Preservation

The Piri Reis map vanished from historical records sometime after the , following its to Ottoman Sultan Selim I in 1517, and remained lost for over four centuries. It was rediscovered on October 9, 1929, by German Gustav Deissmann while cataloging items in the library in . Only approximately one-third of the original map survives today, consisting of a fragment focused on the Atlantic region that measures 90 cm by 63 cm and is mounted on gazelle skin parchment. The fragment has been housed in the Topkapı Palace Museum since its rediscovery, as the palace collections were formalized into a public institution in the 1920s and 1930s. In 2017, UNESCO inscribed the map in its Memory of the World International Register, recognizing its significance as a unique 16th-century cartographic artifact. Preservation efforts have addressed various challenges posed by the map's age and fragility, including damage from handling and environmental factors. In the 20th century, scholars such as Afet İnan conducted detailed studies, creating tracings and reproductions to facilitate analysis without further risking the original. These efforts, including periodic exhibitions and conservation treatments, have ensured the fragment's ongoing protection in controlled museum conditions.

Physical Description and Features

Material and Construction

The Piri Reis map is constructed on parchment made from gazelle skin, valued in Ottoman cartography for its durability, smooth finish, and suitability for intricate drawings and annotations. The surviving fragment measures approximately 90 cm by 63 cm and represents about one-third of the original larger world map, with the remainder lost to time. This portion shows evident wear, including creases and abrasions consistent with repeated handling and folding for practical use as a seafaring chart. Production techniques involve black ink for outlines and textual notes, supplemented by watercolor washes in red, blue, and green to depict landforms, seas, and ships, using a total of nine colors of ink alongside selective application of gold leaf for highlighting key elements like compass roses. The map integrates portolan-style rhumb lines—grids of 32 directional lines emanating from multiple wind roses—to aid navigation by enabling angular measurements for sailing routes, a method borrowed from Mediterranean traditions and refined in Ottoman practice. Islamic decorative motifs, such as arabesque patterns and mythical creatures, adorn the edges, merging utilitarian with artistic characteristic of the .

Layout and Scale

The Piri Reis map employs a portolan-style projection typical of late medieval and early modern nautical charts, characterized by a network of rhumb lines radiating from four principal compass roses positioned strategically across the surviving fragment, creating a web-like structure that emphasizes coastal routes over precise inland geography. These lines, numbering in the dozens, emanate from the compass roses to facilitate navigation by compass directions. The projection is centered on the Atlantic Ocean, reflecting the map's focus on maritime exploration and routes connecting the Old and New Worlds, with minimal distortion in directional accuracy for sailing purposes but inherent inaccuracies in distance and shape due to the plane chart method. The map is oriented with south at the top, a convention common in Islamic cartography of the period that aligns with the directional emphasis toward Mecca and facilitates depiction of southern explorations. This orientation spans from the Iberian Peninsula and northwestern Africa in the upper sections to the Caribbean islands and northeastern South American coastlines in the lower portions, encompassing approximately one-third of the original world map's extent. The coverage extends westward across the Atlantic to include early Portuguese and Spanish discoveries, providing a transitional view between medieval worldviews and emerging global understandings. Scale is indicated by two lozenges serving as scale bars, allowing for detailed rendering of shorelines while permitting artistic distortions that elongate or compress landmasses to fit the parchment and enhance visual clarity. Such distortions prioritize navigational utility over geometric precision, with the New World regions depicted at a relatively larger scale compared to Europe and Africa, emphasizing the novelty of transatlantic findings. The map's layout divides into distinct sections: the eastern edge features the coasts of Europe and Africa, transitioning rightward to the Americas, while peripheral areas incorporate mythical or speculative elements to fill unknown spaces beyond verified explorations.

Sources and Compilation

Cartographic Influences

The Piri Reis map of 1513 was compiled from approximately 20 diverse cartographic sources, as detailed in the map's colophon inscription, which emphasizes a synthesis of ancient and contemporary knowledge to achieve a unified scale. These sources encompassed classical Greco-Roman traditions adapted through Islamic scholarship, recent European explorations, and Arab navigational expertise, reflecting Piri Reis's effort to reconcile disparate projections and details into a coherent world view. Among the most prominent influences were eight Ja'fariya maps, rooted in Ptolemy's Geographia (2nd century CE), which provided a foundational framework for the inhabited world based on latitude and longitude coordinates; these had been transmitted and refined in the Islamic world since the 9th century. Four Portuguese charts, including exemplars like the 1502 Cantino planisphere, contributed precise outlines of the Indian Ocean, India, China, and notably the South American coastline, drawn using advanced mathematical methods that enhanced accuracy in long-distance navigation. A single Arabic map of India supplied eastern regional details, likely drawing from navigational treatises by figures such as Ahmad ibn Mājid (d. ca. 1500), whose works on Indian Ocean routes informed Ottoman mariners. Of particular significance was a map attributed to Christopher Columbus, dated around 1498, which offered early depictions of the West Indies and Caribbean islands based on his voyages. This compilation integrated pre-Columbian Islamic and Arab cartographic traditions—exemplified by al-Idrisi's 12th-century world map, which synthesized Ptolemaic data with empirical observations—with post-1492 European discoveries, allowing Piri Reis to extend known geography westward while maintaining eastern fidelity. Evidence of this synthesis appears in the map's South American contours, which closely mirror Portuguese delineations of the Brazilian bulge, and in the refined Mediterranean coastlines, where Ottoman Turkish portolan influences add local depth to classical bases. Although the colophon highlights foreign sources to underscore the map's scholarly rigor, certain annotations omit explicit credits for indigenous Ottoman contributions, potentially to accentuate the empire's innovative role in global cartography.

Textual Annotations

The Piri Reis map is inscribed with numerous textual annotations in Ottoman Turkish, rendered in Arabic script, which serve as explanatory notes, navigational aids, and credits to the cartographer's sources. These inscriptions, totaling around 30 principal legends and over 40 place names, offer insights into Piri Reis's compilation process and the maritime knowledge of the era. One Arabic-script colophon identifies the mapmaker and dates the work to Muharram 919 AH (1513 CE). A prominent annotation credits the depiction of the western regions to a map drawn by Christopher Columbus, stating that this portion derives from Columbus's chart of the "shores of Antilia," discovered in 896 AH (1492 CE). This note details Columbus's voyages, including encounters with naked inhabitants armed with fishbone-tipped arrows, cannibals, large snakes, and resources like gold and pearls, obtained through a Spanish onboard pilot captured by the Ottomans. Piri Reis further lists his 20 source maps in a key inscription, comprising eight Ja'fariyya (Islamic) charts, an Arab map of India, four recent Portuguese nautical charts, a mappamundi from the time of Alexander, and the Columbus map itself, reflecting influences from Ptolemaic and contemporary European cartography. The annotations incorporate sea lore and warnings for mariners, such as the tale of Saint Brendan mistaking a great fish for an island in the North Atlantic and igniting a fire on its back, causing it to submerge. Warnings highlight perils like venomous snakes on Caribbean islands that deterred Columbus from landing and desolation along southern coasts that discouraged Portuguese exploration. Descriptions of islands, winds, and distances feature prominently, including notes on the parrot-filled Virgin Islands, the beast-inhabited Antilia, and variations in day length in Patagonia—shorter days in winter and longer in summer—drawn from Portuguese sources. These provide practical sailing information, such as wind patterns and estimated distances between landmarks. Mythical elements are explained in several inscriptions, such as the Blemmyes—headless beings with faces on their chests, described as harmless and seven spans tall—and a monoceros (unicorn-like creature) resembling a bull with a single horn. These annotations blend empirical observation with legendary motifs from Islamic and European traditions, illustrating the map's role in preserving diverse cultural narratives.

Iconography and Artistic Elements

Symbolic Representations

The Piri Reis map incorporates various zoomorphic figures as symbolic representations of navigational hazards and the perils of unexplored seas, drawing from medieval European and Arabic traditions. In the north-central Atlantic, a prominent illustration shows a massive whale carrying two humans who have lit a fire on its back, evoking the legend of St. Brendan from the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis and symbolizing the deceptive dangers of marine encounters. Further south, near Patagonia, a giant terrestrial snake is depicted, likely inspired by reports of New World boas or mythical drakes from al-Qazwīnī’s ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt (Marvels of Things Created), representing formidable threats to land and sea travelers. Hybrid creatures on the map further emphasize themes of the exotic and hazardous unknown, blending folklore with emerging knowledge of distant lands. Dog-headed men (cynocephali) and headless men (blemmyes) appear along South American coasts, sourced from medieval mappaemundi and Arabic cosmographies like al-Qazwīnī’s work, where such beings denote monstrous inhabitants of remote regions. Mythical ungulates, including the monoceros (unicorn) and shādawār (a horned beast from Persian lore), are illustrated in similar areas, symbolizing the blend of wonder and peril in uncharted territories. Although explicit mermaids are absent, these hybrid forms collectively warn of deceptive and deadly sea life, reflecting late medieval iconography of the maritime world’s mysteries. Compass roses on the map fuse European and Islamic iconography, featuring wind deities in a stylized floral pattern typical of Ottoman art while adopting the practical rhumb-line structure of portolan charts. These roses, positioned at intervals including the mid-Atlantic, include human-like wind heads symbolizing directional winds, aiding sailors in plotting courses across oceans. Rhumb lines radiate from these roses, providing a brief navigational overlay to the symbolic elements. Mythical islands like Satanic Isle (Satanazes) and Antilia appear in the western Atlantic, embodying legendary perils and lost realms derived from earlier European sources such as Toscanelli’s map. Satanazes, portrayed as a large, ominous landmass, symbolizes diabolical dangers and unnavigable voids, cautioning against ventures into phantom territories. These motifs, absent of realistic detail, heighten the map’s role as both guide and moral allegory for the era’s explorers.

Stylistic Techniques

The Piri Reis map demonstrates a fusion of Ottoman artistic traditions and European cartographic methods, executed primarily in black on gazelle skin parchment with watercolor paints to enhance visual distinction between geographic features. Seas are rendered in ink to evoke water bodies, lands in to represent terrain, and mountains in red or pinkish tones using short, slanting lines known as hachures to convey elevation and relief. These color choices not only aid in but also reflect the map's as both a practical tool and an aesthetic object. Topographic details are conveyed through hachures, where parallel or radiating lines in rose or pinkish ink simulate rocky outcrops and mountain profiles, providing a sense of three-dimensionality without modern shading techniques. Biomes and environmental contexts are illustrated with stylized trees—depicted as simple, schematic forms—and animals, such as birds and fantastical creatures, as well as real regional fauna including lions, camels, and ostriches depicted in the African region, to symbolize regional and rather than literal accuracy. These decorative motifs integrate seamlessly with the map's functional layout, enhancing its narrative quality while adhering to conventions of Islamic cartography. Symbolic monsters appear briefly as part of this decoration, underscoring the blend of utility and artistry. Place names and annotations are inscribed in flowing calligraphic script using Ottoman Turkish in Arabic letters, characterized by elegant curves and flourishes that prioritize legibility for sailors. This script bears clear influences from Persian miniature painting, evident in the intricate detailing of figures and landscapes that echo the stylized compositions of illuminated manuscripts like the Bagdat 334. The overall asymmetrical composition scatters these elements across the surface, eschewing balanced symmetry in favor of navigational utility—compass roses and rhumb lines dominate to facilitate practical use at sea over purely artistic harmony.

Depiction of Known Regions

European and African Coasts

The Piri Reis map provides a detailed and relatively accurate representation of the Iberian Peninsula, prominently featuring the Strait of Gibraltar and the city of , derived directly from Portuguese nautical charts captured or acquired by Ottoman forces. These elements are rendered with precision typical of early 16th-century portolan charts, showcasing the peninsula's western and southern coastlines from the Gulf of Cádiz northward to Galicia, including key landmarks that served as departure points for Atlantic voyages. The overall portolan projection employed here facilitates a practical, navigation-oriented layout for these familiar European shores. Extending westward across the Atlantic approaches, the map delineates the northwest African coast from Morocco southward to the Cape Verde Islands, incorporating established trade routes and prominent ports such as those near Tangier and along the Saharan littoral. This segment reflects Portuguese exploratory efforts in the region, with place-names adapted into Ottoman Turkish, emphasizing commercial hubs vital for the trans-Saharan and maritime trade networks linking Europe, Africa, and beyond. The coastal outline maintains accuracy within approximately one degree, underscoring the reliability of the sourced Iberian In the eastern portions, the map incorporates extensions into the , drawing on Ottoman naval reconnaissance and intelligence gathered from admiralty operations in the western Mediterranean and North African waters. These depictions integrate local knowledge of coastal fortifications, anchorages, and sailing conditions, blending seamlessly with the Atlantic-facing regions to form a cohesive baseline of Old World geography. Navigational annotations on the map highlight critical oceanic features, including prevailing winds and currents that assist in Atlantic crossings, such as the northeasterly trade winds originating near the Cape Verde Islands. Two 32-point wind roses and an extensive rhumb line network further illustrate these elements, providing mariners with directional guidance derived from Portuguese and Mediterranean sailing practices.

Caribbean Islands and Coastlines

The Piri Reis map portrays the Caribbean islands with a mix of accuracy and distortion reflective of early 16th-century European explorations, drawing primarily from Spanish sources that captured post-Columbus discoveries. Cuba appears as a large landmass extending southward, treated not as an isolated island but as a promontory or cape connected to a continental mainland, aligning with Christopher Columbus's persistent belief that it formed part of Asia's eastern edge. This depiction includes recognizable coastal features such as Guantánamo Bay, labeled "Porta ghande," and places like Orofay and Santa Maria along its southern shore, derived from Columbus's voyages between 1492 and 1504. Hispaniola, labeled "Elcezire Izle despanya" (the Island of Spain), is shown rotated approximately 90 degrees clockwise, exaggerating features like the Puerto Plata harbor while minimizing Samaná Bay, and incorporating indigenous toponyms such as "Paksin vidad" for the site of Columbus's Navidad settlement. Puerto Rico is rendered as an elongated east-west rectangle with protruding peninsulas, annotated with names like "Sanjuwan" (San Juan Bautista) and "San Dani," alongside a duplicated representation of the Virgin Islands that suggests compilation from multiple charts. The map's treatment of the Florida peninsula reflects the nascent knowledge from Spanish expeditions in the early 1500s, presenting it as an island-like extension or detached landmass, unlabeled, derived from composite early exploratory charts including those informed by Juan Ponce de León's 1513 voyage along its eastern coast. This portrayal captures the peninsula's outline with reasonable fidelity for the era, including hints of its northward projection, though integrated into a broader, ambiguous western coastline that blends with unidentified terrains. Coastal details across the emphasize navigational hazards and resources, with notations of bays, reefs, shoals, and sandbanks—such as those near and the Bahamas—preserved from -era portolan charts to aid seafaring. Annotations highlight the region's allure and perils, including references to abundant gold deposits encountered during early voyages to and nearby areas, where indigenous peoples were said to possess "no end of gold ore" in riverbeds and streams. Warnings of cannibalistic inhabitants appear in associated inscriptions, alluding to Carib raiders in the who were reported to consume human flesh, a motif drawn from 's accounts of encounters with warring island groups during his second and third voyages. These elements underscore the map's role as a practical tool for Ottoman navigators, synthesizing 1500s exploratory data up to around 1511 while perpetuating European misconceptions about the islands' geography.

Analysis of the Americas

Central and South American Features

The Piri Reis map portrays the eastern coast of South America with notable accuracy for 1513, extending from Cape São Roque in northeastern southward to the Rio de la Plata estuary, closely aligning with the route documented in Amerigo Vespucci's third voyage of 1501–1502, during which he explored and named features along the Brazilian littoral under Portuguese auspices. This delineation draws from contemporary Portuguese nautical charts, emphasizing the "northeast elbow" of Brazil and major river mouths, though with some southward exaggeration beyond known explorations. In the central region, the map distorts the Central American isthmus into a peninsula-like protrusion, merging elements of the Yucatán Peninsula, Cuba, and the Honduran-Panamanian coast, derived primarily from 's fourth voyage (1502–1504), where he surveyed the area believing it to be part of Asia. This configuration reflects Columbus's now-lost chart, which explicitly credits as a source, resulting in a compressed representation that links the isthmus directly to the Caribbean island chains depicted to the north. Inland areas are sketched with rivers flowing eastward, such as the Paraná (labeled as "Parana"), and mountain ranges suggestive of the , denoting a vast, unexplored southern expanse based on early Portuguese reports. Annotations highlight native inhabitants as unclothed peoples living "like animals" without organized religion, easily proselytized by Spanish missionaries, and engaged in trade of gold from interior mountains and pearls from coastal waters, while emphasizing economic resources like brazilwood—a red dyewood harvested in abundance along the Brazilian coast and loaded onto returning vessels for European dye production.

Inland and Topographical Details

The Piri Reis map's depiction of the interior of the , particularly , reveals a blend of direct observations from recent explorations and secondhand reports, with topographical elements rendered in a stylized manner typical of early 16th-century portolan charts. Inland features are sparsely detailed, emphasizing major natural landmarks over comprehensive , which underscores the nascent European understanding of the continent's interior at the time. A key inland element is the representation of a prominent mountain chain in the western portion of the South American landmass, depicted using hachuring to suggest elevated, rugged terrain. Scholars, including Paul Kahle, have interpreted this as an early cartographic allusion to the range, based on its position and scale relative to the , likely derived from voyage accounts that mentioned high mountains observed from afar. This feature highlights Piri Reis's synthesis of European sources, as no Ottoman explorer had ventured there by 1513. Rivers form another significant topographical detail, with several waterways shown originating from the base of the mountains and flowing eastward toward the Atlantic coast. The largest of these, a broad river extending deep inland, is widely regarded by historians as a depiction of the , reflecting hearsay from Spanish and Portuguese navigators who had encountered its mouth during expeditions in the preceding two decades. Smaller rivers nearby are similarly interpreted as precursors to the and Rio de la Plata systems, illustrating the map's reliance on fragmented exploratory data rather than systematic surveys. Settlements in the interior are marked sparingly, using simple icons such as tents or huts to denote indigenous villages, which appear clustered near rivers and mountains. These symbols convey a rudimentary sense of human habitation, drawn from traveler narratives describing native communities in the Amazonian and Andean regions, without specific names or extensive detail. Fauna illustrations add a layer of ethnographic insight, with a horned creature portrayed near the mountains, tentatively identified by Kahle as a llama—an animal native to the Andes and unknown in the Old World until Spanish conquests. This depiction, possibly labeled in annotations as akin to the "sheep of Peru" from colonial reports, exemplifies how Piri Reis incorporated exotic elements from sources like Columbus's maps to evoke the unfamiliar wildlife of the New World interior.

The Southern Landmass Debate

Interpretations as South America

The southern landmass depicted on the Piri Reis map of 1513 is widely interpreted by scholars as an extension of the eastern coastline of , reflecting the limited but growing European knowledge of the region at the time. This interpretation aligns the map's contours with early Portuguese explorations, particularly the voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500, which marked the initial European sighting of Brazil and provided foundational sketches of its northeastern coast. Subsequent Portuguese maps, including those derived from expeditions by Amerigo Vespucci between 1501 and 1502, contributed to the delineation of the Brazilian bulge and the southward trajectory, with the Piri Reis contours showing a recognizable match to these sources despite distortions typical of portolan-style charting. Specific place names inscribed along the southern portion of the landmass further support this identification, correlating with Portuguese designations for regions in what is now including the pampas. These names, rendered in Ottoman Turkish script adapted from Portuguese originals, underscore the map's reliance on captured or traded charts from the early 16th century, emphasizing conceptual rather than precise geographical detail. Scholarly analysis, initiated following the 1929 rediscovery of the map at Topkapı Palace by Gustav Deissmann, has consistently viewed the southern landmass as a distorted portrayal of and rather than any speculative polar territory. In the Turkish historian Afet İnan, in her seminal work The Oldest Map of America, argued that the extension represents an exaggerated southward projection based on incomplete voyages, with the landmass curving eastward in a manner echoing Ptolemaic influences blended with New World data. This consensus, reinforced by later examinations such as Gregory C. McIntosh's 2000 study, highlights how Piri Reis synthesized 20 sources—including four recent Portuguese maps—to create a remarkably accurate yet imperfect outline of the continent's eastern edge, without venturing into uncharted western expanses. The map's omission of the Pacific coast provides key evidence for this South American interpretation, confirming the cartographer's access to only Atlantic-facing explorations and underscoring the era's incomplete understanding of the New World's full extent. Piri Reis himself noted in annotations that his sources ended abruptly southward, aligning with the exploratory limits post-Cabral and pre-Magellan. Vespucci's reports, circulated in Europe by 1507, likely influenced these sources indirectly, providing descriptive latitude estimates that shaped the map's southern taper.

Claims of Antarctic Mapping

In 1956, U.S. Navy cartographer Arlington H. Mallery proposed that the southern landmass on the depicted an ice-free Antarctic coastline, drawing parallels to seismic profiles obtained by the U.S. Navy during the 1949 Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, which revealed subglacial topography consistent with an unfrozen continental edge. This hypothesis gained further prominence through the work of historian Charles Hapgood, who in his 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age argued that the map's southern features originated from ancient sources dating to approximately 4,000 BCE, predating the last major Ice Age and implying knowledge of an ice-free Antarctica preserved through successive cartographic transmissions. Hapgood's analysis included detailed overlays showing that the map's contours aligned closely with the Queen Maud Land region of Antarctica, with discrepancies estimated at no more than 20 miles when compared to modern surveys, suggesting the original cartographers had access to precise coastal outlines from a pre-Ice Age era. These ideas were popularized in the 1970s by author , who in works like * (1968) incorporated Hapgood's findings to support ancient astronaut theories, positing that extraterrestrial visitors provided the advanced geographical knowledge reflected in the map's Antarctic depiction.

Modern Scientific Assessments

Modern scientific assessments of the Piri Reis map have largely debunked extraordinary claims of ancient advanced knowledge, emphasizing its roots in 16th-century cartographic synthesis from contemporary and medieval sources. In his 2000 study, Gregory C. McIntosh analyzed the map's southern section, concluding it represents a composite depiction incorporating the northern coast of South America with mythical lands such as Java and the legendary Isla de los Gigantes, rather than any pre-ice age Antarctic outline. McIntosh's examination highlights how Piri Reis integrated fragmented European portolan charts and Islamic world maps, resulting in an imaginative extension of known geography southward to fit prevailing beliefs in a continuous southern continent. Scholars in the 1980s, including analyses of the map's geometric properties, attributed the apparent "fit" of the southern landmass to Antarctica to projection distortions inherent in early modern mapping techniques. These distortions, common in portolan-style charts that prioritized navigational utility over spherical accuracy, elongated South American coastlines and created illusory extensions that mimic Antarctic contours when rotated or scaled incorrectly. Such evaluations, building on critiques of Charles Hapgood's 1966 hypothesis of ancient origins, demonstrate that the map's features align with post-Columbian explorations rather than lost civilizations. Paleoclimate evidence further refutes claims of pre-16th-century Antarctic mapping, as radiocarbon dating and ice core analyses confirm that the continent has been continuously ice-covered since approximately 34 million years ago, long predating human navigational capabilities. Recent discoveries of ancient ice in East Antarctica's Allan Hills region, containing air bubbles from this era, provide direct proxies for atmospheric conditions and underscore the impossibility of ice-free coastal surveys in human history. Cartographic reviews in the 2020s reaffirm the map as a product of 16th-century synthesis without reliance on advanced ancient technology. A 2022 study employing modern planimetric accuracy methods evaluated the map's European and Mediterranean sections, finding positional errors consistent with the era's source materials and compilation techniques, while the American depictions reflect early Spanish and Portuguese voyages. More recent analyses, such as a 2024 study on the map's rhetorical dimensions, further contextualize it within intercultural exchanges of the era. These analyses prioritize the map's historical context, attributing its precision in known regions to Piri Reis's access to up-to-date admiralty charts, thus dispelling notions of anomalous knowledge.

Legacy and Cultural Impact

Influence on Later Cartography

Piri Reis expanded upon his 1513 world map through subsequent cartographic works, notably the 1521 and 1526 editions of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, a navigational atlas that integrated global discoveries into Ottoman maritime knowledge. The 1521 version featured 132 portolan-style charts detailing Mediterranean coasts, supplemented by descriptions of New World explorations drawn from Portuguese and Columbus's sources, while the 1526 revision, presented to Sultan Suleiman I, expanded to 210 charts with enhanced artistic elements and broader coverage of Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions. These works built directly on the 1513 map's framework, refining depictions of the Americas and European coasts to support Ottoman naval expansion. The Kitab-ı Bahriye profoundly influenced Ottoman atlases and 16th-century Turkish portolan charts, establishing a standardized tradition of precise coastal mapping for imperial navigation. Later Ottoman productions, such as the Walters Deniz Atlası (ca. 1560) and the Atlas-ı Hümayun (ca. 1570), adopted Piri Reis's portolan techniques and source integration, blending practical utility with decorative Islamic motifs to aid in Black Sea and Mediterranean operations. This lineage extended to anonymous Turkish portolans, like the Cod. turc. 431 chart, which echoed the Kitab-ı Bahriye's emphasis on harbor details and wind roses for seafaring accuracy. Over 45 manuscript copies of the atlas survive worldwide, underscoring its role in sustaining Ottoman cartographic expertise into the 18th century. By incorporating European discoveries into an Islamic framework, the Piri Reis maps facilitated the dissemination of New World knowledge to non-Western scholars, bridging Iberian explorations with Ottoman intellectual circles. Presented to sultans and Suleiman I, these works informed imperial policies on transatlantic trade and conquest, reaching audiences beyond Europe through Ottoman libraries and naval academies. The 1513 map's fragment, preserved in and discovered in 1929, prompted European facsimiles that further amplified its global reach, while its archival integrity has enabled modern GIS reconstructions for analyzing early modern projections and coastal accuracies. The Piri Reis map has fueled numerous pseudohistorical myths, particularly claims linking it to advanced ancient civilizations or lost technologies, such as , with proponents suggesting the map's southern landmass depicts an ice-free based on pre-Ice Age knowledge. These interpretations, popularized in Charles Hapgood's 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, posit that the map incorporates cartographic data from a forgotten global seafaring culture predating known history. However, scholarly analyses refute these ideas, attributing the map's features to contemporary 16th-century sources like Portuguese and Spanish charts, without evidence of ancient or extraterrestrial origins. Such myths persist in modern media, including 2025 YouTube videos claiming AI overlays "solve" the map's mysteries by aligning it with Antarctic topography or Atlantis remnants, often portraying distorted overlays as proof of hidden knowledge. These assertions have been debunked as misrepresentations, with AI analyses failing to account for the map's portolan style and reliance on error-prone contemporary data, leading to illusory matches rather than genuine revelations. Additional online claims suggest that one animal illustration on the map resembles a kangaroo, implying prior knowledge of Australian fauna. However, no kangaroo is depicted; kangaroos are native to Australia, which is not shown on the map. The illustrations in the African section include animals known to 16th-century Europeans, such as lions, camels, and ostriches. These claims are historically inaccurate and unsupported by expert sources. Academic debates center on the authenticity of the map's claimed sources, notably a lost map by , which Piri Reis explicitly referenced in marginal notes for depicting the Americas. Scholarly analyses, including comparisons of inscriptions with Columbus's works, support the use of a Columbus-derived chart, as evidenced by matches in geographical descriptions such as the portrayal of as an island and Hispaniola's features. In Turkey, the Piri Reis map holds cultural icon status, bolstered by UNESCO's declaration of 2013 as the "International Year of Piri Reis" to mark the 500th anniversary of its creation, which included global exhibitions and commemorations highlighting Ottoman cartographic achievements. This recognition, followed by the map's 2017 inscription on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, has spurred tourism to Istanbul's Topkapı Palace, where the original is housed, drawing visitors interested in its historical significance and replicas produced for educational displays across Turkish museums. Scholarly discussions reveal gaps in coverage of Piri Reis's 1528 world map, a fragmentary successor to the 1513 version, with comparative studies noting limited analysis of its design-types against contemporaneous charts like the Turin planisphere (c. 1523), potentially due to transcription challenges from Arabic sources or lost Spanish intermediaries. Recent 2025 podcasts, such as episodes of Cold Logic, revive Antarctic mapping claims by speculating on ancient origins but offer no new evidence, failing to advance beyond debunked theories and instead recycling Hapgood-era speculations without empirical support.

References

  1. https://u.osu.edu/wagner.19/maps-to-know/1513-piri-reis/
  2. https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/histfac/11/
  3. https://www.academia.edu/5173346/A_Tale_of_Two_Admirals_Columbus_and_the_Piri_Reis_Map_of_1513
  4. https://muslimheritage.com/piri-reis-16th-c-cartographer-navigator/
  5. https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199203/piri.reis.and.the.columbus.map.htm
  6. https://www.1001inventions.com/piri-reis-map/
  7. https://muslimheritage.com/piri-reis-and-his-place-in-ottoman-maritime-history/
  8. https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/piri-reis-world-map-1513
  9. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/piri-reis-world-map-on-display-at-topkapi-palace-169485
  10. https://nwcartographic.com/blogs/essays-articles/the-piri-reis-map
  11. https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/world-map-of-piri-reis-back-to-display-at-istanbuls-topkapi-palace/news
  12. https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=histfac
  13. https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/198001/piri.reis.and.the.hapgood.hypotheses.htm
  14. http://www.myoldmaps.com/renaissance-maps-1490-1800/322-piri-reis-chart-of-the/322-piri-res.pdf
  15. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286455909_The_Piri_Reis_Map_of_1513_Art_and_Literature_in_the_Service_of_Science
  16. https://www.academia.edu/35095227/Off_the_Edge_of_the_Map_The_Search_for_Portuguese_Influence_on_the_Piri_Reis_Map_of_1513
  17. https://www.badarchaeology.com/old-maps/the-piri-reis-map/
  18. https://sciencepress.mnhn.fr/sites/default/files/articles/pdf/az2016n1a3.pdf
  19. https://www.academia.edu/73693391/Piri_Reis_World_Map
  20. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304710450_The_zoomorphic_representations_of_the_Piri_Reis_map_1513
  21. https://media.unesco.org/sites/default/files/webform/mow001/turkey_world_map_piri_reis_en.pdf
  22. https://www.academia.edu/16266447/The_map_of_Piri_Reis_1513_and_the_Iberian_cartography_of_the_sixteenth_century_text_
  23. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288828431_A_Tale_of_Two_Admirals_Columbus_and_the_Piri_Reis_Map_of_1513
  24. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/21157
  25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46ng16
  26. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1961/november/charting-unknown-land-antarctic-continent
  27. https://www.ugapress.org/9780820321578/the-piri-reis-map-of-1513/
  28. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251105050716.htm
  29. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359236081_Evaluating_the_Planimetric_Accuracy_of_a_Historical_Map_Europe_and_the_Mediterranean_Sea_by_Piri_Reis_A_New_Method_and_Cartographic_Analysis
  30. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07350198.2024.2318063
  31. https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/oimp27.pdf
  32. https://www.iflscience.com/piri-reis-map-unraveling-the-myths-and-realities-of-an-ancient-chart-70015
  33. https://www.history.co.uk/articles/debunking-the-biggest-antarctica-conspiracy-theories
  34. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMRWT7bUmiY
  35. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture-and-art/ottoman-admiral-piri-reis-honored-by-unesco/194120
  36. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285586547_The_Piri_Reis_Map_of_1528_A_Comparative_Study_With_Other_Maps_of_the_Time
  37. https://art19.com/shows/cold-logic
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.