Maps · a Light

An Ottoman admiral's map lists its own sources

In 1513 Piri Reis, an Ottoman naval captain, drew a world map on gazelle skin. Only the left third survives, showing the Atlantic, the coasts of Iberia and West Africa, and part of South America. What makes it unusual is that he wrote his method on the map itself: he names about twenty source charts he compiled from, including Portuguese and Arab charts and, he says, a map used by Columbus, which he had obtained from a Spanish sailor taken prisoner. He later wrote a detailed pilot's book of the Mediterranean. The surviving fragment was found in the Topkapi Palace archives in 1929, more than four centuries after it was drawn.

Piri Reis · Gallipoli, 1513 CE