page_title: Fra Mauro map
section_title: Indian Ocean
hierarchical_section_title: Fra Mauro map / Indian Ocean
context_page_description: The Fra Mauro map is a map of the world made around 1450 by the Italian cartographer Fra Mauro, which is “considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography." It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame that measures over two by two meters. It includes Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic. It is oriented with south at the top.
  The Fra Mauro world map is a major cartographical work. It took several years to complete and was very expensive to produce. The map contains hundreds of detailed illustrations and more than 3000 descriptive texts. It was the most detailed and accurate representation of the world that had been produced up until that time. As such, the Fra Mauro map is considered one of the most important works in the history of cartography. It marks the end of Bible-based geography in Europe and the beginning of embracing a more scientific way of making maps, placing accuracy ahead of religious or traditional beliefs.
  The maker of the map, Fra Mauro, was a Camaldolese monk from the island of Murano near Venice. He was employed as an accountant and professional cartographer.
context_section_description: The Indian Ocean is accurately depicted as connected to the Pacific. Several groups of smaller islands such as the Andamans and the Maldives are shown. Fra Mauro puts the following inscription by the southern tip of Africa, which he names the "Cape of Diab", describing the exploration by a ship from the east around 1420:
  "Around 1420 a ship, or junk, from India crossed the Sea of India  towards the Island of Men and the Island of Women, off Cape Diab, between the Green Islands and the shadows. It sailed for 40 days in a south-westerly direction  without ever finding anything other than wind and water. According to these people themselves, the ship  went some 2,000 miles ahead until - once favourable conditions came to an end - it turned round and sailed back to Cape Diab in 70 days".
  "The ships called junks (lit. "Zonchi") that navigate these seas carry four masts or more, some of which can be raised or lowered, and have 40 to 60 cabins for the merchants and only one tiller. They can navigate without a compass, because they have an astrologer, who stands on the side and, with an astrolabe in hand, gives orders to the navigator". (Text from the Fra Mauro map, 09-P25.)
  Fra Mauro explained that he obtained the information from "a trustworthy source", who traveled with the expedition, possibly the Venetian explorer Niccolò de' Conti, who happened to be in Calicut, India, at the time the expedition left:
  "What is more, I have spoken  with a person worthy of trust, who says that  he sailed in an Indian ship caught in the fury  of a tempest  for 40 days out in the Sea of India, beyond the Cape of Soffala and the Green Islands towards west-southwest; and according to the astrologers who act as their guides, they had advanced almost 2,000 miles. Thus one can believe and confirm  what is said by both these and those, and that they had therefore sailed 4,000 miles".
  Fra Mauro also comments that the account of the expedition, together with the relation by Strabo of the travels of Eudoxus of Cyzicus from Arabia to Gibraltar through the southern ocean in antiquity, led him to believe that the Indian Ocean was not a closed sea and that Africa could be circumnavigated by her southern end (Text from Fra Mauro map, 11, G2). This knowledge, together with the map depiction of the African continent, probably encouraged the Portuguese to intensify their ultimately successful effort to round the tip of Africa.
caption: Detail of the Fra Mauro map describing the construction of the junks that navigate in the Indian Ocean
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "26"}