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Piri Reis
Ottoman admiral and cartographer (c. 1470–1553) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Piri Reis (Turkish: Pîrî Reis; born Muhiddin Piri; c. 1470–1553) was an Ottoman cartographer, admiral, navigator, and corsair. He is best known for his 1513 world map and his nautical atlas, the Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of the Sea). His maps combined classical sources, his own seafaring knowledge, and information from recent European discoveries. The 1513 world map drew international attention when rediscovered centuries later during renovations to the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul because it includes details from a now-lost map by Christopher Columbus.
Likely born around 1470 in Gelibolu (Gallipoli), Piri Reis sailed from an early age with his uncle, the corsair Kemal Reis, and fought in the western Mediterranean. The two were brought into the Ottoman Navy, where Piri Reis attained the rank of reis (captain) and fought in the Ottoman–Venetian wars. After his uncle died in 1510 or 1511, Piri Reis returned to Gelibolu where he began his cartographic work, creating the 1513 world map and likely drafting charts and notes that would later form the basis of the Kitab-ı Bahriye. After serving in the 1517 Ottoman conquest of Egypt, he presented the world map to Sultan Selim I. He later completed two versions of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, both dedicated to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent—the second, more elaborate version prepared at the request of Grand Vizier Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha by 1526. His final surviving work is a fragment of a 1528 world map.
Piri Reis became the grand admiral of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean in 1546 and recaptured Aden from the Portuguese two years later. His fleet conducted campaigns in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, but a 1552 expedition against Portuguese-controlled Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf ended in retreat and led to his execution in Cairo in 1553.[a]
During his lifetime, Piri Reis' cartography received little appreciation, but many copies of the Kitab-ı Bahriye were produced after his death. The 1929 rediscovery of his first world map increased interest in his work and made his career a point of national pride for Turkey. Although the map has been the subject of fringe theories based on the disproven hypothesis that the map depicted an ice-free Antarctica, studies have shown no significant similarities between the map and Antarctica's subglacial coast. Nevertheless, this speculation has increased interest in Piri Reis' cartography.
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Early life and piracy
What historians know about Piri Reis' early life comes almost entirely from his own writing in a few surviving works of cartography.[2] He was likely born between 1465 and 1470 in Gelibolu, also known as Gallipoli, which was a major naval base for the Ottoman Empire.[3] Born Muhiddin Piri, he later earned the rank Reis, equivalent to a captain in the Ottoman Navy.[4] Piri Reis wrote that his father's name was Hacı Mehmed.[5][6] His uncle Kemal Reis was a notable corsair,[7] a type of pirate acting with state approval, often along religious lines in the Mediterranean.[8]
Piri Reis began sailing aboard his uncle's ship around 1481 as a child, and his first recorded naval combat experience came fighting alongside his uncle in the Western Mediterranean. From the 8th to 15th centuries, Catholic monarchs in the Iberian Peninsula expanded south at the expense of Muslim-ruled al-Andalus, in campaigns known as the Reconquista. When Catholic forces reached the Emirate of Granada, its Muslim rulers asked for assistance from the Ottoman Empire, one of the largest Muslim powers in the Mediterranean, spanning Anatolia and much of the Balkans in Eastern Europe. With Sultan Bayezid II's approval, Kemal Reis sailed to the Western Mediterranean with his nephew.[9]
As a teenager, Piri Reis helped his uncle bombard the Catholic forces that were laying siege to Málaga in 1487.[10] Despite the corsairs' assistance, Málaga fell by the end of 1487 and Granada by 1492.[11] After the Spanish monarchy expelled Spain's Jewish population in 1492, Sultan Bayezid II instructed Kemal Reis to aid religious refugees.[12] Piri Reis transported Muslims and Jews from Catholic Spain to North Africa.[13]
Barbary corsairs led by Kemal Reis continued to threaten European maritime traffic after the Fall of Granada.[14] Piri Reis wrote, "We sailed on the Mediterranean and fought the enemies of our religion mercilessly."[13] During the winters, he and his uncle took shelter in harbors on the Barbary Coast in North Africa, including Béjaïa in modern-day Algeria.[15][16] For six summers from 1488 to 1493, they conducted raids along the coasts of Spain, Southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily.[17]
Naval career and cartography
Sultan Bayezid II recruited Barbary and Aegean corsairs into the Ottoman Navy, including Piri Reis, who sailed first under his uncle, and later under Hayreddin Barbarossa.[18][19] Kemal Reis was imprisoned for piracy in 1495, but rather than being sentenced, he was given an official position.[20] As Piri Reis later documented in the Kitab-ı Bahriye, Kemal and Piri advocated taking the Venetian coastal fortresses of the Peloponnese and the small but strategically valuable island of Rhodes:[21]
Venice has two eyes: Her left eye is the [harbor] fortress of Modon. Her right eye is that of Corfu.
— Kemal Reis, quoted by Piri Reis, Kitab-ı Bahriye[22]
Piri Reis fought in the Ottoman–Venetian wars as a captain under the command of Kemal Reis.[23] Like other Ottoman captains, he operated a galley, a shallow oar-driven warship well-suited to the Mediterranean coasts.[24] During the 1499 Battle of Zonchio (the First Battle of Lepanto), Piri Reis sailed in a fleet of about 270 ships that broke through the Venetian fleet to enter the Gulf of Corinth, forcing the governor to surrender.[25] Kemal Reis led the Ottomans to victory in the 1500 Battle of Modon (the Second Battle of Lepanto), and the following year in battles to retake Modon and capture Navarino.[26] After these victories, the Ottoman Navy began to consolidate control over the Eastern Mediterranean.[27]
Piri and Kemal returned to the Western Mediterranean, raiding the coasts of Spain and nearby islands.[28] In a naval battle near Valencia, Spain, they captured a Spaniard who said he had sailed with Columbus,[29] and likely possessed an early map of the Americas that Piri Reis would later use as a source for his maps.[30] In 1502, they returned to Constantinople before resuming conflict with Venice.[31]
After Kemal Reis died in a shipwreck in 1510 or 1511, Piri Reis returned to Gelibolu to work on his navigational studies.[32][b] There, he completed the world map for which he is best known today. Dated to March 1513 AD (Muharram 919 AH), the manuscript depicted the recently explored shores of the Americas and Africa.[36] Although he had never sailed the Atlantic, Piri Reis compiled over twenty maps of Arab, Spanish, Portuguese, Indian, and older Greek origins into a comprehensive representation of the known world of his era.[37] By 1513, Piri Reis was sailing for the Ottomans under Hayreddin Barbarossa along the North African coast.[38]
During the 1516–1517 Ottoman conquest of Egypt, Piri Reis commanded the Ottoman fleet that blockaded Alexandria.[39][40] After the Ottoman victory,[39] Piri Reis presented the 1513 world map to Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520).[41] How Selim used the map is unknown; it vanished from history until its rediscovery centuries later.[42] Venetian documents report that Piri Reis left the Ottoman Navy in 1518 to engage in piracy again.[43]
By 1522, Piri Reis rejoined the navy and took part in Suleiman the Magnificent's Siege of Rhodes, which he had advocated for.[44] His first version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye—a nautical atlas gifted and dedicated to Suleiman—included advice on conquering the island.[45] Located just 20 km (12 mi) off the coast of Anatolia, Rhodes had a secure harbor that could threaten maritime communication between the empire's capital and Mediterranean ports.[46] Controlled by the Knights of St. John, the island provided shelter to Christian pirates.[47] During the siege, the Knights' ten-ship fleet remained in the harbor rather than confront the larger Ottoman force.[48] The Ottoman Navy conducted an amphibious operation, transporting many troops to the small island.[48] The Knights of St. John surrendered in December 1522 and relocated to Malta.[49][50] The second version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, completed after the conquest, discusses the siege only in practical terms of acquiring drinking water from Karabağ in Bodrum.[51]
Suleiman's reign was the beginning of a shift towards power concentrating in a group of viziers, advisers, governors, and royal family members, and Suleiman's childhood friend Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha rose to become the Ottoman grand vizier, or chief minister.[52] When putting down Hain Ahmed Pasha's 1524 rebellion in Egypt, Ibrahim rode aboard the navy's flagship, commanded by Piri Reis.[53][18] The longer second version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye resulted from a conversation with the grand vizier.[54] Piri Reis said they discussed cartography after Ibrahim asked him about the maps and charts used aboard the ship.[55] Ibrahim commissioned Piri Reis to create an expanded version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye.[56] He finished and presented it to the sultan by 1526. In later centuries, many copies were made of both versions of the book.[57] Piri Reis completed a second world map in 1528 or 1529.[58] According to Sevim Tekeli, the changes from the first world map demonstrate that Piri Reis was actively following European voyages of discovery.[59]
Venice saw Piri Reis as an adversary and obstacle to their aims in the Middle East during the 1530s.[60] In 1532, he fought against Dalmatian pirates in the Adriatic.[61] One year later, he attacked the Venetian-held castle at Coron. He drove Venetian ships from the Eastern Mediterranean, capturing a Venetian galley in 1536.[60]
Grand Admiral of the Indian Ocean Fleet
After Sinan Reis, the Hind Kapudan-ı Derya or grand admiral of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean, died in 1546,[60] Piri Reis took his position as admiral of the Indian Ocean fleet, as well as admiral of the fleet in Egypt.[62] Portuguese ships had raided the Red Sea as far as Suez and had taken the port city of Aden in Yemen.[62] The Portuguese navy employed sailing ships capable of navigating in open seas, while the Ottoman Navy relied mainly on galleys, which were more effective along coasts. This limited Ottoman naval warfare to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and narrow straits around Arabia. The empire focused on using its navy to continue land-based expansion into new areas for tax revenue and agriculture.[63]
Using his fleet based out of Suez, Egypt, Piri Reis led campaigns in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.[13] On 26 February 1548, he recaptured Aden from the Portuguese.[62] Piri Reis subdued the local Bedouin rulers of Basra in 1547 and began building a Persian Gulf fleet.[64] The fleet conducted annual expeditions to expand the empire's territory in the Indian Ocean, and some local rulers began to ally with the Portuguese.[64]
The sultan instructed Piri Reis to take the Portuguese-controlled Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.[65] Taking Bahrain Island was a secondary objective.[66] In April 1552,[67] Piri Reis left Suez with 25 galleys, five ships, and 850 soldiers.[68] In August, the Ottoman fleet took Muscat after a one-month siege. When the Portuguese garrison surrendered, the Ottomans took them prisoner and forced them to work the oars on galleys in the fleet.[69] The Ottomans pillaged the area, destroyed fortifications, regrouped, and continued to Hormuz as a consolidated fleet.[70] The expedition cleared the coast of the Arabian Peninsula of Portuguese occupation,[71] and Portuguese forces prepared for the coming attack on Hormuz by evacuating most of the island. Wealthy residents of Hormuz took refuge on the nearby island of Qeshm, and the Portuguese soldiers and Hormuz royal family retreated to the fortress.[69]
Ottoman soldiers entered the city of Hormuz in September 1552, but could not take the fortress.[72][69] They besieged and bombarded it for several weeks, but Piri Reis grew concerned about the Portuguese fleet attacking them during the siege.[73] The Ottoman forces ran low on gunpowder, and Kubad Pasha, the governor of Basra, did not send supplies to the siege.[74] On 9 October 1552, the Ottomans retreated.[73][69] They sacked the city, looted Qeshm, and retreated into the gulf with over a million pieces of gold.[69] The fleet arrived at Basra by 1553.[75] A letter from the Portuguese governor inside the fortress, dated 31 October 1552, said that the walls had been near collapsing, but that the Ottomans had run low on "munitions, gunpowder, and other war materials", much of which they had lost when a galleon—a type of larger sailing ship—sank on the way to Hormuz.[76][77] The Portuguese governor of India, Afonso de Noronha, organized a fleet of 40 ships led by his nephew Antão de Noronha that reached Hormuz in November 1552.[78]
Piri Reis was executed following his retreat at Hormuz.[13] After the expedition's failure, Kubad Pasha denied Piri Reis rowers for his galleys.[65][69] Historian Svat Soucek suggested that hostility between the two men "may have been at the root" of Piri Reis' decision to return to Egypt quickly and the "accusatory report the Pasha probably sent to Constantinople."[74] Leaving most of the fleet behind, Piri Reis returned with only two ships in late 1553.[1][69] The gold he brought back to Egypt played a role in his death sentence. Ottoman histories criticize Piri Reis for looting Qeshm. Some even allege that he accepted bribery.[79] Those allegations were unlikely, as a delegation from Hormuz traveled to Constantinople to demand compensation, but they may have been believed at the time of his execution.[80] Venetian diplomats in Constantinople sent a letter dated 15 November 1553 stating that Piri Reis had been replaced by the captain Seydi Ali Reis and "charged with having raised the siege of the fortress of Hormuz because of bribery".[1] For sacking the city instead of maintaining the siege, the sultan had him beheaded in Cairo.[1] The exact date of his execution is unknown.[1][c]
Soon after his death, Piri Reis' fleet in Basra was destroyed by the Portuguese. Seydi Ali Reis attempted to return the fleet to Suez, but the Portuguese intercepted them. The Ottoman ships were captured, destroyed, or swept out to sea.[82]
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Works
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Three of Piri Reis' cartographic works survive to the present day.[83] Fragments of his 1513 world map and his 1528 world map are held in the Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul.[84][85] Copies of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, a navigational atlas, are kept in libraries and museums around the world, although Piri Reis' original manuscripts are lost.[86]
Across his works, Piri Reis engaged with the European Age of Discovery.[87] His first world map incorporated many non-Muslim sources, unusual for Islamic cartography of the period, and it famously cites a now-lost map by Christopher Columbus.[88] The second edition of the Kitab-ı Bahriye incorporated information from recent Portuguese and Spanish voyages, including Vasco da Gama's discovery of a sea route to India,[56] and his 1528 world map cited recent Portuguese voyages to Labrador and Newfoundland.[89]
All of his surviving maps are portolan charts, late medieval nautical maps with compass roses from which lines of bearing radiate. Widely produced and used by European navigators,[90] they were designed for navigation by dead reckoning, a method where a ship's location is estimated from direction, speed, and elapsed time.[91] Portolan charts employ a windrose network matching the directions of a compass rather than a longitude and latitude grid.[92] Piri Reis' maps employed standard portolan symbols to indicate hazards, such as dots for shallow water and sand banks, and crosses for rocks and reefs.[93][94]
Piri Reis' works also reveal his attitude toward European discoveries.[95] In the 1513 world map and the Kitab-ı Bahriye preface, he rhetorically undermines the significance of European discoveries by reframing them as the rediscovery of ancient knowledge. He invokes Alexander the Great when explaining Columbus' discoveries.[96] According to the Quran and Turkish literary tradition, Dhu al-Qarnayn—believed to be a Quranic reference to Alexander the Great—traveled to every corner of the world, thereby defining its limits.[97] Marginal inscriptions on the world map mention "charts drawn in the days of Alexander" and a book that "fell into the hands" of Columbus describing lands "at the end of the Western Sea".[98][99] In the 1526 version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, he explicitly credits European discoveries to lost works created during the legendary voyages of Alexander:[100]
My friend, the Franks both read and write everything there is to know about the science of the sea. But do not suppose that they invented such knowledge on their own; and if you wish, I will explain why. During his time, the famous ruler Alexander traveled over all the seas, and whatever he saw and whatever he heard he had recorded, item by item, by a competent person.
— Piri Reis, Kitab-ı Bahriye (1526)[101]
Piri Reis map of 1513
The Piri Reis map of 1513 is a world map compiled from a range of contemporary and classical sources.[102] Roughly one third of the map survives,[103] housed in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul.[104] The finished manuscript was dated to the Islamic year 919 AH, equivalent to 1513 AD.[105] After the empire's conquest of Egypt, Piri Reis presented the 1513 world map to Sultan Selim I, and the map vanished from history until rediscovered centuries later.[106][42]
When rediscovered in 1929,[107] the remaining fragment attracted international attention for including a partial copy of an otherwise lost map by Christopher Columbus.[108][d] The map's longest inscription tells the story of Columbus' discovery of the Americas and states that Piri Reis and his uncle captured a Spaniard who had sailed with Columbus. The inscription credits part of the map's depiction of the Americas to a prisoner who said that he received a map from Columbus.[113] Scholarly analysis of the placenames, knowledge of the Americas, and cartographic misconceptions indicates that Piri Reis likely did use a map composed during one of Columbus' early voyages to the Americas.[114] For example, on the mainland in the northwest, a stretch of coast is labelled Ornofay, a term recorded by Columbus but not found on other maps.[115][e]
The map contains extensive notes primarily in Ottoman Turkish.[118] The colophon in Arabic is written in a different handwriting,[119] likely that of Piri Reis himself.[120] The depiction of South America is detailed and accurate for its time.[121][122] The northwestern coast combines features of Central America and Cuba into a single body of land. Scholars attribute this peculiar arrangement of the Caribbean to a now-lost map from Columbus that merged Cuba into the Asian mainland and Hispaniola with Marco Polo's description of Japan.[123][124]
This reflects Columbus's erroneous claim that he had found a new route to Asia.[125] During the 1494 exploration of Cuba, Columbus was so adamant that he had found Asia,[f] that he had a notary board each of his ships anchored off the coast. Columbus compelled his men to swear that Cuba was a part of Asia and agree to never contradict this interpretation "under a penalty of 10,000 maravedis and the cutting out of the tongue".[128] Historian Joaquim Gaspar has suggested that both Columbus's notary stunt and his creation of a map with Hispaniola rotated to match Japan were an attempt to motivate his own men with the unattainable promise of wealth upon reaching India. Gaspar points out the difficulty in navigating the Caribbean by compass using a map with a second north and Cuba unfolded into a North–South coast,[129] McIntosh suggests the possibility of an unofficial map for navigation, and an official map presented as evidence of his continued claims of having discovered a route to Asia.[130]
The southernmost conclusively identified feature on the map is a stretch of Brazilian coastline including Cabo Frio (Kav Friyo on the map), possibly the earliest depiction of Rio de Janeiro, and likely the area around Cananéia, labeled Katino on the map.[131] Beyond this point, the coast curves sharply east. Cartographic historian Svat Soucek has suggested this is the coast of South America, bent to fit the natural curve of the skin the map was drawn on.[132] However, there is no textual or historical evidence that the map represents land south of present-day Cananéia.[133] Most scholars interpret this southern coast as a version of Terra Australis, a southern landmass once hypothesized to balance the known land in the Northern Hemisphere.[134] A disproven 20th-century hypothesis identified the southern landmass with an ice-free Antarctic coast.[135] Antarctica was last free of ice over ten million years ago.[136] However, the inscription on the southern coast records that the Portuguese explored the area. According to the Portuguese sources, the land was hot and home to large snakes.[137]
The map is visually distinct from European portolan charts, influenced by the tradition of Islamic miniature painting.[138] Piri Reis adapted the elements of iconography from the traditional maps—which illustrated well-known routes, cities, and peoples—to the portolan portrayals of newly discovered coasts.[139] Historian Karen Pinto has described the positive portrayal of legendary creatures from the edge of the known world in the Americas as breaking away from the medieval Islamic idea of an impassable "Encircling Ocean" surrounding the Old World.[140] Scholarly debate continues over some of the map's sources and the identification of certain geographic features.[141]
Kitab-ı Bahriye
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The Kitab-ı Bahriye (Ottoman Turkish: كتاب بحرية), or Book of the Sea, is a navigational atlas.[56][g] Piri Reis compiled navigational charts and notes into the most detailed portolan atlas of the sixteenth century.[57][143] The Kitab-ı Bahriye combines information from a range of sources and Piri Reis' personal experience. The coast of North Africa relies little on outside sources.[144]
There are two versions of the book,[56] both dedicated to Suleiman the Magnificent.[86] The first version was composed between 1511 and 1521.[145][h] The second, expanded version was commissioned by the Grand Vizier and completed in 1526.[56]
The main part of both versions is a nautical guide to the Mediterranean Sea. Separate chapters cover different locations with corresponding charts.[86] Piri Reis says he composed an atlas because any single map has limited space for written details, and some "knowledge cannot be known from maps; it must be explained."[86] There are 130 chapters in the first version and 210 in the second.[86] The chapters start at the Dardanelles and move counter-clockwise around the Mediterranean.[149] Each map has a compass rose indicating North for that page.[93][143] Scale is indicated only in the textual descriptions, not with scale bars.[143] Written when Ottoman sailors relied on oar-driven galleys, the Kitab-ı Bahriye reflects their needs and capabilities. It gives information on coastal waters, safe harbors, hazards, and sources of fresh water.[150]
The second version begins with a longer introduction written in verse.[56] This introduction offers information on storms, winds, navigating with a compass, navigating by the stars, reading nautical charts, and the oceans.[86] It offers the first detailed Ottoman description of the Indian Ocean,[56] and gives special attention to Hormuz Island at the strait leading into the Persian Gulf.[119]
The book achieved fame only after Piri Reis' death.[151] The known surviving manuscripts are all copies created beginning in the latter half of the sixteenth century.[142] At least some portion of the book has been translated into English, modern Turkish, Greek, French, German, and Italian.[152]
1528 world map
Piri Reis compiled a second world map in 1528.[153] Only the northwest corner of the map survives.[153] The parchment fragment is approximately 70 centimeters (28 in) square.[153] As with the 1513 map, the 1528 map has calligraphic inscriptions in Ottoman-Turkish written in the Arabic alphabet. The colophon is in Arabic, likely handwritten by Piri Reis himself.[154] According to the colophon, Piri Reis compiled the map in 1528 in Gelibolu.[154] However, he may not have completed it until 1529.[153]
The map includes one line of latitude, the Tropic of Cancer; it is slightly south of the correct position for Cuba and the Yucatan.[155] The scale bars indicate 80 km (50 mi) between the sections of the scales.[156]
Based on its depiction of newly explored regions like Greenland, Newfoundland, and Florida, the map likely relied on Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian maps from the 1520s.[153] Hispaniola and Cuba are much more accurate compared to the 1513 world map. Cuba, labeled "Isla di Vana", is now correctly positioned as an island in the Caribbean.[155][157] Unlike the 1513 map, unexplored regions are left blank.[158] Only the explored southern coasts of the Florida peninsula are on the map. The geography of Florida is left ambiguous as potentially an island or peninsula.[159] The Spanish Empire's master map, the Padrón Real, included this same ambiguity until 1520 and influenced Italian cartography, such as the Freducci map.[160]
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Legacy
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Piri Reis' cartography received limited appreciation during his lifetime. Historian Svat Soucek said that the works of Piri Reis "show that although the Ottoman Empire had the potential to participate in the discoveries, its ruling elite spurned the attempt to blaze a trail in this direction".[161] Ottoman historian Cengiz Orhonlu examined sixteenth-century Turkish authors who wrote about Piri Reis' execution. Orhonlu found that they criticized Piri Reis' performance during the Siege of Hormuz but did not discuss his maps or writing.[162] Piri Reis was not regarded especially highly as a seafarer by Turkish contemporaries; his reputation was overshadowed by his uncle Kemal Reis, and both were surpassed by later Ottoman sailors like the Barbarossas.[163] In the 21st century, Piri Reis is remembered as a cartographer more than a corsair or an admiral.[164]
The 1513 world map disappeared from the historical record until its rediscovery centuries later.[42] There is no evidence that either version of his atlas circulated outside the royal palace prior to 1550.[151] When copies were produced in later centuries, they were often created for their aesthetic value rather than practical navigation.[58] No Turkish school of cartography or navigation was established to build on his work.[165] Murat Reis the Elder's expedition to the Canary Islands and the 1586 Sack of Lanzarote were some of the few times when Piri Reis' Atlantic cartography was likely used by the Ottoman Navy.[166] The empire's navy—even during the Canary Islands expedition—remained largely composed of oar-driven galleys after the point where other naval powers were moving to sailing ships suited to the open oceans.[166] Ottoman scholar Kâtip Çelebi built on the Kitab-i Bahriye in his seventeenth-century work, Müntehab-ı Bahriyye,[167] but by the eighteenth century, major works of cartography from Western Europe were being translated into Turkish.[168]
When Piri Reis' world map was unearthed in 1929, it received international media attention for containing the surviving piece of an otherwise lost map of Christopher Columbus.[108] Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, took an interest in the map and initiated projects to publish facsimiles and conduct research.[169] Discovered during Atatürk's reforms to modernize Turkey, the map was a point of national pride. Its rediscovery also sparked interest in the Kitab-ı Bahriye.[58][165] A facsimile of the book's second version was published by the Turkish Historical Society in 1935,[170] and a four-volume facsimile with photographic quality was published in 1988.[171] Several ships and submarines have been named after him, including the RV K. Piri Reis and TCG Pirireis.[172][173][174] The Piri Reis University for maritime studies was founded in 2008.[175] In the Turkish TV series Barbaros: Sword of the Mediterranean, he is portrayed by actor Emir Benderlioğlu.[176]
Piri Reis' 1513 world map is the subject of pseudoscientific claims and is sometimes invoked in broader pop culture as an unsolved mystery. Civil engineer Arlington Mallery, professor Charles Hapgood, and Hapgood's students developed the hypothesis that the 1513 world map contained cartographic information, notably from an ice-free Antarctic coast, that exceeded the map-making abilities of the sixteenth century. In his 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, Hapgood claims islands along the map's southern Atlantic shore depict what are now ice-covered mountains in Antarctica's Queen Maud Land region.[177] Hapgood's book was met with skepticism due to its lack of evidence and reliance on cataclysmic pole shift, the disproven geological hypothesis that the Earth's entire crust could shift around the planet.[178] According to geologist Paul Heinrich, the book also did not account for post-glacial rebound, the process where land rises after glacial ice melts and flows away. Additionally, the 1949 survey initially cited by Mallery could not measure even one percent of the area drawn in the Piri Reis map. Subsequent studies have shown no significant similarities to Antarctica's coast.[179] While the 1513 world map has been described by some authors as anomalous in its accuracy, it is no more precise than other sixteenth-century manuscript maps.[180] Hapgood's claims have been uncritically repeated by Erich von Däniken in support of ancient astronauts and by Graham Hancock in support of an advanced lost civilization.[181][182] The map and polar shift were key plot elements in Allan W. Eckert's science fiction novel The HAB Theory.[183] Historian Karen Pinto commented that popular speculation had contributed to Piri Reis becoming "more famous than the Sultan who hanged him."[184]
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Notes
- Sources give either 1510 or 1511 as the year Kemal Reis died.[33] Kemal Reis's last recorded activities were sailing to Egypt in 1510 with requested aid against Portuguese incursions.[34] The primary sources for the details of Kemal Reis' death are Venetian letters. Mamluk historian Ibn Iyas recorded that news of Kemal Reis death reached Cairo, Egypt, in February 1511.[35]
- There is disagreement on how much of the map draws from Columbus. Paul Kahle and most later scholars attributed everything north and west of the phantom island Antilia to this source.[109] Svat Soucek expressed doubts about Kahle's "supposed connection",[110] and commented that "as for the 'map made by Columbus', Piri Reis' own map shows that he must also have used other sources depicting South America (specifically, the eastern bulge of the continent, thus Brazil), which Columbus could not have known" about when the map would have been produced.[102] Researcher Gregory McIntosh found that Cuba, Central America, and Hispaniola could be clearly attributed to an early map from Columbus,[111] but not necessarily the Lesser Antilles. McIntosh noted that the duplication of some features like the Virgin Islands indicated an attempt to join a second map in that area.[112]
- Cathay was a historical name for China, and Marco Polo described Mangi as directly south of Cathay. Columbus identified the native placename, Mago, for a region on the southern side of Cuba as Marco Polo's Mangi.[126] He wrote of Cuba, "I thought it must be the mainland, the province of Cathay... . At length, after the proceeding of many leagues, and finding that nothing new presented itself, and that the coast was leading me northwards".[127]
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