Ottoman
The Chart of Piri Reis
An Ottoman admiral draws the new ocean, 1513 CE
919 AH / 1513 CE
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
Gallipoli (Gelibolu), on the Dardanelles
40.4108, 26.6708 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
Piri Reis (rahimahu Allah, c. 1465-1553) was an Ottoman sea-captain, fleet commander and cartographer, nephew of the famous corsair-admiral Kemal Reis, who spent his life in the wars and voyages of the Mediterranean. In the spring of 1513, at Gallipoli (Gelibolu) on the Dardanelles, he drew a great map of the world on gazelle parchment and signed it there in the month of Muharram, 919 AH. Only about a third of it survives, the western fragment now kept in the library of the Topkapi Palace, where it was rediscovered in 1929; it shows the coasts of the Atlantic, of Iberia and West Africa and, across the ocean, the newly-encountered lands of the Americas, and is among the earliest surviving maps to set them down. In more than two dozen notes written in his own hand around the margins, Piri Reis explained that he had compiled the chart from some twenty older maps, Portuguese charts taken in sea-battles, four recent Portuguese maps of the Indies, older Arab charts and a map drawn by Columbus that had come into Ottoman hands when his uncle Kemal Reis captured a Spaniard who had sailed with Columbus, combining them all into a single picture of the world's oceans. The map is a portolan sea-chart in form, its surface laced with the radiating rose-lines of the compass and crowded with coastal place-names, drawings of ships and lands, and notes on the peoples and produce of distant shores. Piri Reis later drew a second world map (1528) and, after the enthronement of Sultan Suleyman, composed the Kitab-i Bahriye, the Book of the Sea, a detailed pilot's guide to the harbours, currents, fresh-water sources and dangers of the Mediterranean, its chapters beginning at the Dardanelles and running counter-clockwise around the inner sea, each with its own chart; it is one of the great navigational works of the age. He rose to command the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and was executed in old age after a failed campaign at the Persian Gulf. This scene depicts the moment of the chart's making: the admiral bent over his worktable in a dockyard workshop at Gallipoli, the parchment and his instruments before him and the harbour of the fleet seen through the window. In keeping with the project's ethics the figure is anonymous, his face turned to his work.
What you see
A great sea-chart of gazelle parchment is spread across a worktable, its faint coastlines and place-names traced in a fine hand; this is the chart being drawn, not a finished framed map on a wall.
Brass dividers, a hinged compass, a ringed armillary sphere and a hanging lamp are set about the table, with rolled charts stacked on the floor; the tools of a working pilot, not a scholar's library alone.
The chart is laced with the radiating rose-lines of the compass that fan out across the parchment, the rhumb-line web of a portolan sea-chart meant to be read by a seaman steering between coasts.
The workshop is a timber-beamed room of heavy columns and shelves of books and scrolls; through a wide window a tall sailing ship rides at anchor and, across the water, a domed mosque and minarets crown a waterfront city.
The harbour beyond the window opens onto a narrow strait that joins two seas, the Dardanelles gateway between the Aegean and the Sea of Marmara, the dockyard country of the Ottoman fleet in the age of Sultan Selim.
This is Piri Reis (rahimahu Allah), an Ottoman sea-captain and admiral who in 1513 drew a map of the world's oceans, among the earliest to set down the newly-encountered Americas, compiled from many older charts including, he wrote, one drawn by Columbus himself.
His marginal notes, in elegant Ottoman Turkish, say the map was gathered from some twenty charts, Portuguese, Arab and others, and that the lands across the western ocean were taken from a chart that came from Columbus; the surviving fragment is now kept in the Topkapi Palace.
Further reading & cross-references
The Piri Reis map of 1513 (surviving fragment, Topkapi Palace Library): The primary object. Used for the chart's form and content, its compass-roses and coastlines, and its marginal notes. The fragment is signed at Gallipoli, Muharram 919 AH. Confidence high.
Marginal notes of the Piri Reis map (in his own hand): His own legends explaining the source charts (Portuguese, Arab, and a Columbus map taken from a captured Spaniard) and the lands across the western ocean. Confidence high.
Piri Reis, Kitab-i Bahriye (Book of the Sea, c. 1521, enlarged c. 1526): His portolan atlas of the Mediterranean; used for his standing as a pilot and cartographer and for the dockyard-workshop context. Confidence high.
Histories of Ottoman cartography and seafaring: Modern scholarship on his life, the compilation of the map and its place in the early mapping of the Americas. Used to keep claims sober and to avoid pseudohistorical readings of the fragment. Confidence high.
The Ottoman dockyard at Gallipoli (material context): The naval port on the Dardanelles, where the map was drawn, constrains the setting; the specific workshop interior is a representative reconstruction.
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