Page 81 - The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent

36. View of Çanakkale from the
Kitab-i Bahriye of Piri Reis transcribed
in 1525/1526 and dedicated to Sultan
Süleyman (Istanbul, Topkapi Sarayi
Müzesi, H. 642, fol. 44a)

tion of the ancient sources used by Piri Reis and his remark- cance the work is an important document of the development
able accuracy in representing areas thought to be unknown at of illustrated histories, showing the earliest example of the
the time he made the map. Questions have been raised about topographical and maritime atlas genres that were more fully
the depiction of Antarctica as a land mass without ice, a con- developed a generation later by Nasuh.
tinent not known even to exist before 1818; and the accurate Some figures, such as seated kings and roaming animals,
charting of other remote geographic regions, which required resemble those found in early sixteenth-century manuscripts
the use of special instruments, invented centuries later, to cal- produced in the nakka^hane, while others are related to the
culate the curvature of the earth. Speculations on how Piri strange creatures depicted in the fifteenth-century Mamluk or
Reis and the ancient cartographers whose works he consulted Akkoyunlu copies of the Acaib al-Mahlukat (Marvels of crea-
could describe areas not confirmed until the twentieth cen- tion) of el-Kazvini. The models for the ships, however, are
tury even led to such extreme theories as the one put forth not found in Ottoman or other Islamic manuscripts; these as
by Erich von Daniken in Chariots of the Gods, attributing the well as some architectural and figurai elements appear to
map to extraterrestrials. In addition to its cartographic signifi- have been derived from European illustrated maps or naval

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