National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 75 | June 2005


Ottoman Printed World Map in Mercator’s Projection

[World map in Mercator's projection] 1803. Maps Collection, RM 1803
[World map in Mercator's projection]
[Uskudar, Istanbul: Tab hane-i Humayun, 1803]
col map; 50.0 x 84.9 cm
Maps Collection, RM 1803

[CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

One of the most recent maps acquired by the National Library is a very rare Ottoman printed map of the world by Mahmud Ra’if Effendi. Published in 1803 in Istanbul, this world map in a Mercator projection is centered on the Australian continent. As commonly depicted at the time, the mainland of Australia and Tasmania are shown as one landmass. All the continents are outlined in colour, with Asia and Australia a wash with yellow and the Americas with green. All map text such as title, place-names and annotations are in Ottoman Turkish. The map also shows navigational routes explored by Captain James Cook from 1768 to 1780.

This printed map is a plate from the Cedid Atlas Tercümesi, the first Muslim-published world atlas based on European geographic knowledge and cartographic methods. The plates were made in Vienna while the maps were printed at the Engineer’s School Printing Press, which operated from 1776 to 1826. The atlas emerged during the reign of Sultan Selim III (1789–1807), who sought to implement reforms based on European models. The atlas was produced to provide modern geographic information for students and teachers at the military engineering school, and for officials in the Ottoman War and foreign ministries.

The atlas is an Ottoman translation of the General Atlas produced by London map maker William Faden. A number of editions of Faden’s General Atlas were issued in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Mahmud Ra’if Efendi acquired a copy of the General Atlas when he was private secretary to the Ottoman ambassador in London, though the edition used as the basis for the Cedid Atlas is unknown. All the map plates, excluding a celestial map, match those by Faden and the text was transliterated into Arabic script.

Only 50 copies of the Cedid Atlas were printed and it is now estimated that no more than 20 complete and five incomplete or loose sheet atlases still exist. The only two complete copies of the atlas, believed to exist outside of Turkey, are owned by the Library of Congress and the Newberry Library.

Having acquired the Ottoman world map, the National Library of Australia now owns two map plates from the Cedid Atlas namely the World Map in Mercator’s Projection and a double hemispherical world map titled Nisf-i Kure-i Sarki; Nisf-i Kure-i Garbi. Not only are these maps rare, they are of historic and aesthetic significance and fill a void in our collection on Islamic maps of the world.
—TERESA DONNELLAN, Senior Map Librarian

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