(An intermittent series introducing well known maps)
Ponce de Leon is the 1st European to find Florida.
Henry VIII is King of England. He is married to Catherine of Aragon (wife #1)
Vasco Nunez de Balboa spots the Pacific Ocean
Niccolò Machiavelli writes The Prince.
Albrecht Durer , Raphael , Leonardo da Vinci , and Titian are painting.
Nicolaus Copernicus is writing.
Michelangelo has just finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Martin Waldseemüller is creating a map.
Martin Luther is teaching at the University of Wittenberg.
Piri Reis’ first world map is published.
On October 9, 1929, Gustav A. Deissmann while cataloging non-Arabic materials for the Turkish Ministry of Education, was given some old bundles of maps that has been hidden away in Topkapi Palace. Assisted by another scholar, Deissmann realized he had found a fragment of a 1513 world map by Haci Ahmed Muhiddin Piri who is better known as Piri Reis. A life-long sailor in the Ottoman Empire, Piri Reis rose to become Commander of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean and Admiral of the Fleet in Egypt. He studied navigation and created maps & charts. His best known work is the Kitāb-ı Baḥrīye (Book of the Sea) which consists of 434 pages with 290 maps and describes islands & ports in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1525, a revised edition of Kitāb-ı Baḥrīye was given to Sulieman I.
It is clear that the Piri Reis map was originally much larger. Drawn on gazelle skin, it is estimated that only about a third of the original map has survived. Due to a damaged corner, the official fragment size varies, but it is approximately 90 cm x 63 cm (35 in x 24 in). The map is a portolan chart with 4 wind roses and associated rhumb lines. Geographically, this map piece shows Western Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, South America, some of North America and the Caribbean Sea. It also portrays South America longitudinally correct in relation to Africa and is the only 16th century map to do so.
In 1513, maps of the Old World were fairly accurate. Maps of the New World however, were in a state of flux with new information being added as ships returned home. European explorers were very protective of their map knowledge and were not inclined to share. While some areas are depicted correctly on the Piri Reis map, the coast of North America and the southern coast of South America are not. The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 between Spain and Portugal, split the new world between the two nations. It gave the lion’s share to Spain, with only the eastern part of South America to the Portuguese. South America has an unusually curved shaped. Cape Horn had not been discovered. Several controversial theories abound for this odd shape. One suggests that the odd curve to South America was an early depiction of Antarctica. Or was it a political attempt to give the Portuguese more land than granted by the treaty?
The Piri Reis map fragment is covered in notes and Reis’ comments. Fortunately, he wrote the sources of his information on the undamaged part of the map in Central & South America. He states that he used about 20 references to draw his map: eight Ptolemaic maps, an Arabic map of India, four new Portuguese maps from Sindh (on the Indian Ocean) and Christopher Columbus’ map of Western Lands. Columbus’ missing world map was suppose to have been drawn while he was in the West Indies. So where did Piri Reis get his copy and what happened to it? In 1929, an exhaustive search for the cited source maps was carried out, but none have been found to date.
The map was given to Selim I in 1517. Currently it is part of the archives of the Topkapi Palace Library and is not on display. And to this day, it is still shrouded in mystery and controversy.