Venice, as rendered by Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis in his Kitab-i Bahriye, a book of portolan charts and sailing directions produced in the early 16th century.
Originally composed in 932 AH / 1525 CE and dedicated to Sultan Süleyman
I (“The Magnificent”), this great work by Piri Reis (d. 962 AH / 1555
CE) on navigation was later revised and expanded. The present
manuscript, made mostly in the late 11th century AH / 17th CE, is based
on the later expanded version and has approximately 240 exquisitely
executed maps and portolan charts. They include a world map (fol.41a)
with the outline of the Americas, as well as maps of coastlines (bays,
capes, peninsulas), islands, mountains, and cities of the Mediterranean
basin and the Black Sea. The work starts with the description of the
coastline of Anatolia and the islands of the Aegean Sea, the Peloponnese
peninsula, and the eastern and western coasts of the Adriatic Sea. It
then proceeds to describe the western shores of Italy, southern France,
Spain, North Africa, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, western
Anatolia, various islands north of Crete, the Sea of Marmara, Bosporus,
and the Black Sea. It ends with a map of the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Poetry appears in all genres of Islamic literature. This book on
navigation opens with an introduction in verse by the author, the
celebrated naval commander Piri Reis, in which he explains the contents
of the book and his reasons for writing it. Piri Reis’s Book of the Sea
exemplifies the heights of early modern seafaring in the Islamic world.
Here we see depicted the Bay of Salonica.
Bay of Salonica. Paper with ink, paint, and gold
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