Piri Reis map - wikipedia Piri Reis map Surviving fragment of the Piri Reis map showing the Central and South American coast. The appended notes say `` the map of the western lands drawn by Columbus '' The Piri Reis map is a world map compiled in 1513 from military intelligence by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis ( pronounced ( piɾi ɾeis ) ). Approximately one third of the map survives ; it shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy. Various Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands, are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan. The map 's historical importance lies in its demonstration of the extent of global exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, and in its claim to have used a map of Christopher Columbus, otherwise lost, as a source. Piri also stated that he had used ten Arab sources and four Indian maps sourced from the Portuguese. More recently, the map has been the focus of pseudohistoric claims for the pre-modern exploration of the Antarctic coast. Contents 1 Description 2 History 3 Analysis 3.1 The Antarctic coast 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links Description The map is the extant western third of a world map drawn on gazelle skin parchment, with dimensions variously reported as 90 cm × 63 cm, 86 cm × 60 cm, 90 cm × 65 cm, 85 cm × 60 cm, 87 cm × 63 cm, and 86 cm × 62 cm. These discrepancies are largely due to the damaged corner. The surviving portion primarily details the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America. The map was signed by Piri Reis, an Ottoman - Turkish admiral, geographer and cartographer, and dated to the month of Muharram in the Islamic year 919 AH, equivalent to 1513 AD. It was presented to Ottoman Sultan Selim I in 1517. In the map 's legend, Piri inscribed that the map was based on about twenty charts and mappae mundi. According to Piri, these maps included eight Ptolemaic maps, an Arabic map of India, four newly drawn Portuguese maps from Sindh, and a map by Christopher Columbus of the western lands. From Inscription 6 on the map : From eight Jaferyas of that kind and one Arabic map of Hind ( India ), and from four newly drawn Portuguese maps which show the countries of Sind ( now in modern day Pakistan ), Hind and Çin ( China ) geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by Qulūnbū ( Columbus ) in the western region, I have extracted it. By reducing all these maps to one scale this final form was arrived at, so that this map of these lands is regarded by seamen as accurate and as reliable as the accuracy and reliability of the Seven Seas on the aforesaid maps. '' There is some scholarly debate over whether the 20 charts and mappae mundi in Piri 's inscriptions includes the eight Ptolemaic maps, the four Portuguese maps, the Arabic map and the Columbus map. From one perspective, the number of charts and mappae mundi used by Piri equals 20, while in the other, it could mean a total of 34. Some have claimed that the source maps were found in the ancient Library of Alexandria, based on Piri 's allusions to Alexander the Great, the founder of Alexandria, Ptolemy I, who ruled Alexandria in the 4th century BC, and Claudius Ptolemy, the Greek geographer and cartographer who lived in Alexandria during the 2nd century AD. Gregory McIntosh states `` Arab writers often confused Claudius Ptolemy, the geographer of the second century C.E., with Ptolemy I, one of Alexander 's generals... Piri Reis has undoubtedly made the same error, resulting in his believing the charts and maps were from the time of Ptolemy I instead of Claudius Ptolemy. '' History The map was discovered serendipitously on 9 October 1929, through the philological work of the German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann ( 1866 -- 1937 ). He had been commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Education to catalogue the Topkapı Palace library 's non-Islamic items. At Deissmann 's request to search the palace for old maps and charts, the director Halil Edhem ( 1861 -- 1938 ) managed to find some disregarded bundles of material, which he handed over to Deissmann. Realizing that the map might be a unique find, Deissmann showed it to the orientalist Paul Kahle, who identified it as a map drawn by Piri Reis. The discovery caused an international sensation, as it represented the only then known copy of a world map of Christopher Columbus ( 1451 -- 1506 ), and was the only 16th - century map that showed South America in its proper longitudinal position in relation to Africa. Geographers had spent several centuries unsuccessfully searching for a `` lost map of Columbus '' that was supposedly drawn while he was in the West Indies. After reading about the map 's discovery in The Illustrated London News, United States Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson contacted the United States Ambassador to Turkey Charles H. Sherrill and requested that an investigation be launched to find the Columbus source map, which he believed may have been in Turkey. In turn, the Turkish government complied with Stimson 's request, but they were unsuccessful in locating any of the source maps. The Piri Reis map is currently located in the Library of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, but is not usually on display to the public. The map was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 10 million lira banknote of 1999 - 2005 and of the new 10 lira banknote of 2005 - 2009. Analysis The map is a portolan chart, as shown by the four compass roses ( two large and two small ) from which lines of bearing radiate. Some analyses assert that the map is an azimuthal equidistant projection centered on Cairo, but a 1998 analysis by Steven Dutch of the University of Wisconsin Green Bay shows a better fit with a point near the intersection of the present - day prime meridian and the equator. There are extensive notes in Ottoman Turkish around the edges of the map, as well as some interior detail which is mostly inaccurate and fanciful. The Iberian peninsula and the coast of Africa are rendered accurately ; as for the Americas, the northern portion of the South American coast is also fairly accurate and positioned correctly with respect to Africa. Much of the Caribbean is also mapped fairly accurately and appears to reflect Columbus 's maps of the area. The area representing North America bears almost no resemblance to its real coastline ( which is unsurprising, since at this time, it was still almost totally unexplored ) except for one projection which might be Newfoundland ; an island labelled `` Antilia '' may actually be Nova Scotia, since it has a note attached which refers to the legendary voyages of Saint Brendan. There is some suggestion that this area may represent the Asian coast. Island groups in the east Atlantic are accurately placed, but are depicted out of scale. Although there are frequent claims for the extreme accuracy of this chart, McIntosh, in comparing the Piri Reis map 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. The Antarctic coast There are two major discrepancies from known coastlines : the North American coast mentioned above, and the southern portion of the South American coast. On the Piri Reis map, the latter is shown bending off sharply to the east starting around present - day Rio de Janeiro. A more popular interpretation of this territory has been to identify this section with the Queen Maud Land coast of Antarctica. This claim is generally traced to Arlington H. Mallery, a civil engineer and amateur archaeologist who was a supporter of pre-Columbian trans - oceanic contact hypotheses. Though his assertions were not well received by scholars, they were revived in Charles Hapgood 's 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. This book proposed a theory of global exploration by a pre-classical undiscovered civilization based on his analysis of this and other ancient and late - medieval maps. More notoriously, these claims were repeated in Erich von Däniken 's Chariots of the Gods ( which attributed the knowledge of the coast to extraterrestrials ) and Gavin Menzies 's 1421 : The Year China Discovered the World ( which attributed it to supposed Chinese voyages ), both of which were roundly denounced by both scholars and debunkers of fringe works. A more sober analysis of these claims was published by Gregory McIntosh, a historian of cartography, who examined the map in depth in his book The Piri Reis Map of 1513 ( Athens and London : University of Georgia Press, 2000 ). He was able to find sources for much of the map in Columbus 's writings. Certain peculiarities ( such as the appearance of the Virgin Islands in two locations ) he attributed to the use of multiple maps as sources ; others ( such as the errors in North American geography ) he traced to the continued confusion of the area with East Asia. As far as the accuracy of depiction of the supposed Antarctic coast is concerned, there are two conspicuous errors. First, it is shown hundreds of kilometres north of its proper location ; second, the Drake Passage is completely missing, with the Antarctic Peninsula presumably conflated with the Western Patagonian coast. The identification of this area of the map with the frigid Antarctic coast is also difficult to reconcile with the notes on the map which describe the region as having a warm climate. Maps of the period generally depicted a large continent named Terra Australis Incognita of highly variable shape and extent. This land was posited by Ptolemy as a counterbalance to the extensive continental areas in the northern hemisphere ; due to a lack of exploration and various misunderstandings, its existence was not fully abandoned until circumnavigation of the area during 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 not until 1820, and the coastline of Queen Maud Land did not see significant exploration before Norwegian expeditions began in 1891. In 1513, Cape Horn had not yet been discovered, and indeed Ferdinand Magellan 's voyage of circumnavigation was not to set sail for another six years. It is unclear whether the mapmaker saw South America itself as part of the unknown southern lands ( as shown in the Atlas Miller ), or whether ( as Dutch thought ) he drew what was then known of the coast with substantial distortion, but in any case, serious scholarship holds that there is no reason to believe that the map is the product of genuine knowledge of the Antarctic coast. See also Geography in medieval Islam Ancient world maps World map Waldseemüller map Johannes Schöner globes, made in 1515 and 1520. Also shows a Southern Continent at the South Pole. Notes Jump up ^ To The End of the Earth, Jeremy Harwood, Struik Publishers, 2007, ISBN 978 - 1 - 77007 - 608 - 2, p. 69 Jump up ^ Nebenzahl 1990, p. 63. Jump up ^ Soucek, Svat ( 1995 ), `` Piri Re'is '', in Bosworth, C.E. ; van Donzel, E. ; Heinrichs, W.P. ; et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 8, Leiden : Brill Publishers, p. 308, ISBN 90 - 04 - 09834 - 8. ^ Jump up to : Kahle 1933, p. 621. Jump up ^ Mollat du Jourdin, La Roncière & le R. Dethan 1984, p. 218. Jump up ^ Portinaro & Knirsch 1987, p. 47. Jump up ^ Tekeli 1985, p. 676. Jump up ^ Babinger, Franz ( 1936 ), `` Piri Re'is '', in Houtsma, M. Th., Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 3, Leiden : Brill Publishers, pp. 1070 -- 1071. Jump up ^ Deissmann 1933, p. 111. Jump up ^ Van de Waal 1969, p. 82. Jump up ^ Smithsonian Institution 1966, p. 104. Jump up ^ Stiebing 1984, pp. 1 -- 2. ^ Jump up to : Hapgood 1966, p. 1. Jump up ^ From the preface of Piri 's Kitab - ı Bahriye ( 1521 ), as translated in Kahle 1933 : `` This poor man ( Piri Reis ) had previously constructed a map which, in comparison with maps hitherto known, displayed many more ( and ) different details, ( and ) in which he had included even the newly published maps of the Indian and Chinese Oceans which at that time were totally unknown in the country of Rūm ( the Ottoman Empire ) ; and he had presented it in Cairo to the Turkish Sultan Selim I, who graciously accepted it. '' Jump up ^ Hapgood 1966, p. 2. ^ Jump up to : Kahle 1933, p. 624. Jump up ^ Inscription 6 on the map reads : `` In this age, no one has seen a map like this. The hand of this poor man ( Piri Reis ) has drawn it and completed it from about twenty charts and mappaemundi. These are charts drawn in the days of Iskender dhu - l Karnian ( Alexander the Great ), which the inhabited quarter of the world. The Arabs name these charts Jaferya. '' Translation from McIntosh 2000, p. 15. Jump up ^ In this case, the Seven Seas are the Chinese Sea, the Indian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, the Western Sea ( Atlantic Ocean ), the Red Sea and the East African Sea ( sea surrounding the East African island of Zanzibar ), as identified by Piri in Kitab - ı Bahriye ( 1521 ). Kahle 1933, p. 624. Jump up ^ Translation from McIntosh 2000, pp. 15, 17. ^ Jump up to : McIntosh 2000, p. 18 Jump up ^ Afetinan & Yolaç 1954, pp. 24, 31. Jump up ^ Kahle 1956, p. 106. Jump up ^ Tekeli 1985, p. 677. Jump up ^ Afetinan 1987, p. 27. Jump up ^ Yerci 1989, p. 154. Jump up ^ Atil, Esin ( 1987 ), The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, New York : Harry N. Abrams, Inc., p. 81. Jump up ^ Flem - Ath, Rand ; Wilson, Colin ( 2000 ), The Atlantis Blueprint, Little, Brown and Company, p. 18. Jump up ^ McIntosh 2000, p. 17 Jump up ^ A. Gerber, Deissmann the Philologist, Berlin, 2010, 198 - 201. Jump up ^ G.A. Deissmann, Forschungen und Funde im Serai, Berlin, 1933, 111 - 122. Jump up ^ P. Lunde, ' Piri Reis and the Columbus Map ', Aramco World, 43, 3, 1992, 48 - 59 Jump up ^ Hapgood 1966, p. 211. Jump up ^ Hapgood 1966, pp. 1 -- 2. Jump up ^ Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Banknote Museum : 7. Emission Group - Ten Million Turkish Lira - I. Series. -- Retrieved on 20 April 2009. Jump up ^ Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Banknote Museum : 8. Emission Group - Ten New Turkish Lira - I. Series. Announcement on the Withdrawal of E8 New Turkish Lira Banknotes from Circulation, 8 May 2007. -- Retrieved on 20 April 2009. ^ Jump up to : Dutch, Steven. `` The Piri Reis Map ''. Retrieved 2013 - 08 - 16. Jump up ^ McIntosh 2000, p. 59. Jump up ^ U.S. Antarctic Program External Panel of the National Science Foundation. `` Antarctica -- Past and Present '' ( PDF ). Retrieved 6 February 2006. Jump up ^ Guy G. Guthridge. `` Nathaniel Brown Palmer, 1799 - 1877 ''. NASA, U.S. Government. Retrieved 6 February 2006. Jump up ^ http://xoomer.virgilio.it/dicuoghi/Piri_Reis/PiriReis_eng.htm Diego Cuoghi, Thorough article on Piri Reis and Oronteus maps refuting the Antarctica claims. References Afetinan, A. ; Yolaç, Leman ( trans. ) ( 1954 ), The Oldest Map of America, Drawn by Piri Reis, Ankara : Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, pp. 6 -- 15. Afetinan, A. ( 1987 ), Life and Works of Piri Reis : The Oldest Map of America ( 2nd ed. ), Ankara : Turkish Historical Society, OCLC 19674051. Hapgood, Charles H. ( 1966 ), Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings : Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, New York : Chilton Books, ISBN 0 - 8019 - 5089 - 9. Deissmann, Adolf ( 1933 ), Forschungen und Funde im Serai : Mit einem Verzeichnis der nichtislamischen Handscriften im Topkapu Serai in Istanbul, Berlin : Walter de Gruyter. Flem - Ath, Rand ; Wilson, Colin ( 2000 ), The Atlantis Blueprint, Great Britain : Little, Brown and Company, p. 18, ISBN 0 - 316 - 85313 - 5. Kahle, Paul E. ( October 1933 ), `` A Lost Map of Columbus '', Geographic Review, American Geographical Society, 23 ( 4 ) : 621 -- 638, JSTOR 209247, doi : 10.2307 / 209247. Kahle, Paul E. ( April 1956 ), `` Piri Re'is : The Turkish Sailor and Cartographer '', Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, 4 : 101 -- 111. McIntosh, Gregory C. ( 2000 ), The Piri Reis Map of 1513, Athens, Georgia : University of Georgia Press, ISBN 0 - 8203 - 2157 - 5. Mollat du Jourdin, Michel ; La Roncière, Monique ; le R. Dethan, L. ( trans. ) ( 1984 ), Sea Charts of the Early Explorers, Thirteenth to Seventeenth Century, New York : Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0 - 500 - 01337 - 3. Nebenzahl, Kenneth ( 1990 ), Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries, Chicago : Rand McNally, ISBN 0 - 528 - 83407 - X. Portinaro, Pierluigi ; Knirsch, Franco ( 1987 ), The Cartography of North America, 1500 -- 1800, New York : Facts on File, ISBN 0 - 8160 - 1586 - 4. Smithsonian Institution ( 1966 ), Art Treasures of Turkey, Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution, OCLC 1027066. Stiebing, William H., Jr. ( 1984 ), Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions and Other Popular Theories about Man 's Past, Amherst, New York : Prometheus Books, ISBN 0 - 87975 - 285 - 8. Tekeli, Sevim ( 1985 ), `` The Map of America by Piri Reis '', Erdem, 1 ( 3 ) : 673 -- 683. Van de Waal, E.H. ( 1969 ), `` Manuscript Maps in the Topkapǐ Saray Library, Istanbul '', Imago Mundi, 23 ( 1 ) : 81 -- 95, doi : 10.1080 / 03085696908592335. Yerci, M. ( 1989 ), `` The Accuracy of the First World Map Drawn by Piri Reis '', The Cartographic Journal, 26 ( 2 ) : 154 -- 155. External links Turkey in Maps : The Piri Reis margin notes, translation from The Oldest Map of America ( Afet Inan, Ankara, 1954 ). Charles Hapgood commentary on the Piri Reis map, photocopied from Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings Steven Dutch, University of Wisconsin : debunking Piri Reis pseudo-scholarship Sacred Text Archive : pseudo-scholarship about an Ice Age civilization, translation of the map commentary. `` Piri Reis and the Columbian Theory '' by Paul Lunde : ascii text from Aramco World Magazine ( Jan - Feb 1980 ). Citat : ``... There may, in fact, be an even simpler explanation of the presence of `` Antarctica '' on the Piri Reis map... '' Fingerprints of the Gods ( 2001 ) ascii text. Citat : ``... William Miller wrote :... The examinations that I have made of it show all sorts of errors that certainly falsify any claim of unusual accuracy for this map... '' The Mysterious Origins of Man : The Oronteus Finaeus Map of 1532, by Paul Heinrich : the Oronteus map and Creationism The Mysteries of the Piri Reis Map : by Diego Cuoghi. On the Piri Reis, Oronteus, and Philippe Buache maps ; comparison to other 16th - century maps of America and Asia, debunking the Antarctica claims. Ottoman - Turkish Historical Maps : includes a large ( 1 MB ) but low - resolution image of the Piri Reis map ( not as clear as Wikipedia 's image ) The Piri Reis Map by Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay Geography and cartography in medieval Islam Geographers 9th century Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al - Khwārizmī Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī Ya'qubi Sulaiman al - Tajir 10th century Ibn Khordadbeh Ahmad ibn Rustah Ahmad ibn Fadlan Abu Zayd al - Balkhi Abū Muhammad al - Hasan al - Hamdānī Al - Masudi Istakhri Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad Ibn Hawqal Ibn al - Faqih Al - Muqaddasi Al - Ramhormuzi 11th century Abū Rayḥān al - Bīrūnī Abu Saʿīd Gardēzī Al - Bakri Mahmud al - Kashgari Domiyat 12th century Al - Zuhri Muhammad al - Idrisi Abu'l Abbas al - Hijazi 13th century Ibn Jubayr Saadi Shirazi Yaqut al - Hamawi Ibn Said al - Maghribi Ibn al - Nafis 14th century Al - Dimashqi Abu'l - Fida Ibn al - Wardi Hamdollah Mostowfi Ibn Battuta Lin Nu 15th century Abd - al - Razzāq Samarqandī Ghiyāth al - dīn Naqqāsh Ahmad ibn Mājid Zheng He Ma Huan Fei Xin 16th century Sulaiman Al Mahri Piri Reis Mir Ahmed Nasrallah Thattvi Amīn Rāzī 17th century Evliya Çelebi Works Book of Roads and Kingdoms ( al - Bakrī ) Book of Roads and Kingdoms ( ibn Khordadbeh ) Tabula Rogeriana Kitab al - Rawd al - Mitar Mu'jam Al - Buldan Rihla The Meadows of Gold Piri Reis map Influences Geography ( Ptolemy ) Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piri_Reis_map&oldid=803077219 '' Categories : Historic maps of the world 1513 works Piri Reis Geographical works of medieval Islam Topkapı Palace Talk Contents About Wikipedia Azərbaycanca Български Català Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto فارسی Français Galego Հայերեն Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית Magyar Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Simple English سنڌي Svenska தமிழ் ไทย Türkçe Українська اردو Tiếng Việt 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 30 September 2017, at 09 : 01. 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Question: the explorer accurately mapped the coasts of europe and north africa
Answer: Piri Reis