The Map of Piri Reis

The Piri Reis map is a pre-modern world map compiled in 1513 from military intelligence by the Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. The half of the map that survives 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 historical importance of the map lies in its demonstration of the extent of exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, perhaps before others. It used 10 Arabian sources, 4 Indian maps sourced from Portuguese and one map of Columbus.

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 Sarayı 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. Realising 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 presented 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.

Whereabouts: Topkapi Palace