The Piri Reis Map of 1513

2. Description of the Map

2 Description of the Map The Piri Reis map of 1513was discovered in 1929 by Bey Halil Ethem, director general of the Topkapi Seraiin Istanbul, when that palace was being converted to a museum of antiquities.1 He showed the map to Prof. Adolf Deissmann, who was then researching Greek and Latin manuscripts in the Serai Library. Deissmann, in turn, showed it to Dr. Paul Kahle, a noted German Orientalist who had previously published an incomplete transcription and translation of the earlier version of the Kitab-i Bahriye.2 Kahle studied the document and presented his initial findings at the Eighteenth International Congress of Orientalists in Leiden on 9 September i93i.3 Several published articles and a book by Kahle soon followed.4 The map itself is actually only the surviving western portion (about one8 third) of a larger world map, the remainder having been lost. The surviving portion, measuring about 90 cm X 65 cm, depicts the Atlantic Ocean with its islands and coasts and has many ships, animals, people, and inscriptions.5 The inscriptions are written in the Arabic script. The language of the inscriptions (with one exception) is Ottoman-Turkish. On the right side of the map are clearly shown the coastlines of the Brittany Peninsula of France, the Iberian Peninsula, the bulge of West Africa, the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde Islands.6 On the left side of the map are shown the coastline and bulge of South America, the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, and what appears to be a confused depiction of Hispaniola , Cuba, the Bahamas, and Central America in the extreme northwest corner of the map. At the bottom of the map is a large continental landmass connected to South America. Presumably, the missing eastern portion of the map extended from Africa and Europe to China and the east coast of Asia. The omission of the British Isles, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland from the surviving portion of the map and the blank strip along the top edge of the map where another vellum piece was attached indicate that the vellum containing these northern regions has also been lost. The map is a portoían-style map. Portolan charts began as mariners' sea charts of the coastal regions of the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Seas during the thirteenth century, developing first among the Venetians and the Genoese and then among the Catalonians and Majorcans.7 In the fourteenth century, they were extended to include the European coasts of the Atlantic.As new geographical information about Africa and later Asia and the New World was introduced onto the portolan chart, its basic pattern was expanded and applied to world maps to become what will be termed "portolan-style" or "extended portolan" charts and maps. The "extended portolan-style" maps of the sixteenth century were made in the style of traditional portolan charts, that is, compass roses, rhumb lines, etc., but they depicted areas outside the customary Mediterranean region. Examples of portolan-style world maps are the Juan de la Cosa map of 1500, the Cantino map of 1502, the Ribero world maps of the 15205, and the Piri Reis map of 1513. Portolan charts of the Mediterranean region and portolan-style world maps continued to be made until the seventeenth century.8 Portolan charts are a type of sea chart designed to be of practical use to mariners by detailing coastal geography and sailing directions. They are characterized by an intersecting network of rhumb lines extending from a circular pattern of compass roses (also known as windroses). They lack indications of latitude and longitude, although the equator, the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn , and the Arctic and Antarctic Circles were often shown as the maps were Description of the Map f 9 expanded to include tropical and arctic regions. The origin of the portolan chart is unknown. One theory is that they evolved from (or in conjunction with) the portolan, which gave sailing directions and coastal descriptions, along with bearings based on magnetic north, regardless of the variation of the compass. Portolan charts, unlike the earlier circular mappaemundi and schematic maps of the Middle Ages, are rectangular and usually oriented with north at the top, indicative of the nautical origin of the charts from the use of the magnetic compass. The lines radiating out from the compass roses are16 or 32 in number, denoting the different winds and compass directions...