Piri Reis

Piri Reis (Turkish: Pîrî Reis; born Muhiddin Piri; c. 1470–1553) was an Ottoman Turkish cartographer, admiral, navigator, and corsair. He is best known for his 1513 world map and his nautical atlas, the Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of the Sea). His maps combined classical sources, his own seafaring knowledge, and information from new European discoveries. The 1513 world map drew international attention when rediscovered centuries later during renovations to the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul because it includes details from a now-lost map by Christopher Columbus.

Piri Reis
Statue of Piri Reis in Karaman, Turkey
Born	Muhiddin Piri c. 1470 Ottoman Empire
Died	1553 (aged 82–83) Cairo, Egypt Eyalet, Ottoman Empire
Cause of death	Execution by beheading
Notable work	1513 world map Kitab-ı Bahriye
Relatives	Kemal Reis (uncle)

He began his maritime career sailing with his uncle, the corsair Kemal Reis, with whom he entered Ottoman naval service. He later commanded his own ship in the Ottoman–Venetian wars and, following his uncle’s death, began the cartographic work for which he became best known. Returning to the fleet by 1516, he took part in the conquest of Egypt. He presented his world maps and atlases as gifts to the Ottoman Sultan, and commanded a small group of ships in naval operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Later, as grand admiral of the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean, Piri Reis led successful campaigns in the Red Sea, but was executed following his retreat from the siege of Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

During his lifetime, Piri Reis' cartography received little appreciation, but many copies of the Kitab-ı Bahriye were produced after his death. The 1929 rediscovery of his first world map increased interest in his work and made his career a point of national pride for Turkey. Although the map has been the subject of fringe theories based on the disproven hypothesis that the map depicted an ice-free Antarctica, studies have shown no significant similarities between the map and Antarctica's subglacial coast. Nevertheless, this speculation has increased interest in Piri Reis' cartography.

Biography

Early life and piracy

What historians know about Piri Reis' early life comes almost entirely from his own writing in a few surviving cartographic works. Across decades of naval service and piracy—which began at a young age—he created notes and charts that would later inform his cartography. He was likely born between 1465 and 1470 in Gelibolu, Turkey, also known as Gallipoli, a major naval base for the Ottoman Empire. Ibn Kemal, an Ottoman historian active during the period, wrote: "The children of Gelibolu grow up in the water like alligators. Their cradles are the boats. They are rocked to sleep with the lullaby of the sea and of the ships day and night." Born Muhiddin Piri, he later earned the rank Reis, equivalent to a captain in the Ottoman Navy. He wrote that his father's name was Hacı Mehmed. His uncle Kemal Reis was a notable corsair, a type of pirate acting with state approval, often along religious lines, in the Mediterranean Sea.

Piri Reis began sailing aboard his uncle's ship as a child around 1481. His first recorded naval combat experience came fighting alongside his uncle in the Western Mediterranean. From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Catholic monarchs in the Iberian Peninsula had been expanding south and conquering Muslim-ruled al-Andalus (Andalusia) in campaigns known as the Reconquista (Reconquest). When their forces reached the Emirate of Granada, its Muslim rulers asked for assistance from the Ottoman Empire, one of the largest Muslim powers in the Mediterranean, spanning Anatolia and much of the Balkans in Eastern Europe. With Sultan Bayezid II's approval, Kemal Reis sailed to the Western Mediterranean with his nephew. As a teenager, Piri Reis helped his uncle bombard the Catholic forces laying siege to Málaga in 1487. Despite the corsairs' assistance, Málaga fell by the end of 1487 and Granada by 1492. After Spain expelled its Jewish population in 1492, Sultan Bayezid II instructed Kemal Reis to aid religious refugees. Piri Reis transported Muslims and Jews from Catholic Spain to North Africa.

Barbary corsairs led by Kemal Reis continued to threaten European maritime traffic after the fall of Granada. Piri Reis wrote that they "sailed on the Mediterranean and fought the enemies of our religion mercilessly." During winters, he and his uncle took shelter in harbors on the Barbary Coast in North Africa, including Béjaïa in modern-day Algeria. For six summers from 1488 to 1493, they conducted raids along the coasts of Spain, Southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily.

Naval career and cartography

Venice as depicted in the Kitab-ı Bahriye

Sultan Bayezid II recruited Barbary and Aegean corsairs into the Ottoman Navy, including Piri Reis, who sailed first under his uncle and later under Hayreddin Barbarossa. Although Kemal Reis was imprisoned for piracy in 1495, rather than being sentenced he was given an official position in the navy. As Piri Reis later documented in the Kitab-ı Bahriye, he and his uncle advocated taking the Venetian coastal fortresses of the Peloponnese and the small but strategically valuable island of Rhodes.

Piri Reis fought in the Ottoman–Venetian wars as a captain under his uncle's command. Like other Ottoman captains, he operated a galley, a shallow oar-driven warship well suited to the Mediterranean coasts. During the 1499 Battle of Zonchio—the First Battle of Lepanto—Piri Reis sailed in a fleet of about 270 ships that broke through the Venetian fleet to enter the Gulf of Corinth, forcing the governor to surrender. Kemal Reis led the Ottomans to victory in the 1500 Battle of Modon—the Second Battle of Lepanto—and the following year in battles to retake Modon and capture Navarino in modern-day Greece. After these victories, the Ottoman Navy began to consolidate control over the Eastern Mediterranean.

Piri and Kemal returned to the Western Mediterranean, raiding the coasts of Spain and nearby islands in 1501. In a naval battle near Valencia, Spain, they captured a Spaniard who said he had sailed with Columbus, and likely possessed an early map of the Americas that Piri Reis would later use as a source for his maps. In 1502, he and his uncle returned to Constantinople and soon resumed hostilities with Venice.

After his uncle died in a shipwreck c. 1511, Piri Reis returned to Gelibolu to work on his navigational studies. There, he completed the world map for which he is best known today. Dated to March 1513 AD (Muharram 919 AH), the manuscript depicts the recently explored shores of the Americas and Africa. Although Piri Reis had not sailed the Atlantic, he compiled over 20 maps of Arab, Spanish, Portuguese, Indian, and older Greek origins into a comprehensive representation of the known world of his era. By 1513, Piri Reis was sailing for the Ottomans under Hayreddin Barbarossa along the North African coast.

During the 1516–1517 Ottoman conquest of Egypt, Piri Reis commanded the Ottoman ships blockading Alexandria. After the Ottoman victory, Piri Reis presented the 1513 world map to Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520). How Selim used the map is unknown, as it vanished from history until its rediscovery centuries later.

Rhodes (largest island outlined in red) south of Anatolia (outlined in dark blue)

Venetian documents report that Piri Reis left the Ottoman Navy in 1518 to engage in piracy again. By 1522, he rejoined the navy and took part in Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent's Siege of Rhodes, for which he had advocated; indeed, his first version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye—a nautical atlas dedicated and gifted to Suleiman—included advice on conquering the island. Located just 20 km (12 mi) off the coast of Anatolia, Rhodes had a secure harbor that could threaten maritime communication between the empire's capital and Mediterranean ports. Controlled by the Knights of St. John, the island provided shelter to Christian pirates.

During the siege, the Knights' 10-ship fleet remained in the harbor rather than confront the larger Ottoman force. The Ottoman Navy conducted an amphibious operation, transporting many troops to the small island. The Knights were defeated in December 1522, temporarily taking refuge at Viterbo, Italy, and relocating more permanently to Malta several years later. The second version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, completed after the conquest, discusses the siege only in practical terms of acquiring drinking water from Karabağ in Bodrum.

Suleiman's reign was the beginning of a shift towards power concentrating in a group of viziers, advisers, governors, and royal family members. His childhood friend Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha rose to become the Ottoman grand vizier, or chief minister. When putting down Hain Ahmed Pasha's 1524 rebellion in Egypt, Ibrahim rode aboard the navy's flagship, commanded by Piri Reis. The longer second version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye resulted from a conversation with the grand vizier, during which Piri Reis said they discussed cartography after Ibrahim asked him about the maps and charts used aboard the ship. Ibrahim commissioned Piri Reis to create an expanded version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, which he finished and presented to the sultan by 1526. In later centuries, many copies were made of both versions of the book. Piri Reis completed a second world map in 1528 or 1529. According to Turkish science historian Sevim Tekeli, the changes from the first world map demonstrate that he was actively following European voyages of discovery.

Venice viewed Piri Reis as an adversary and obstacle to their aims in the Eastern Mediterranean during the 1530s. In 1532, he led a group of five galleys and three fustas—smaller and lighter variants of the galley—against Dalmatian pirates in the Adriatic, the branch of the Mediterranean Sea leading to Venice. One year later, he led an attack on the Venetian-held castle at Coron with 10 galleys and five fustas. He captured a Venetian galley in 1536 and chased down Venetian ships in the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 1530s. When he received a promotion in Egypt in 1546, during a period of peace between Venice and the Ottomans, he attacked the Venetian ship Liona along his route, killing several sailors and capturing others.

Grand admiral of the Indian Ocean fleet

Map of Alexandria in Egypt from the Kitab-ı Bahriye

After the death of Sinan Reis, the Hind Kapudan-ı Derya or grand admiral of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean, Piri Reis took his position as admiral of the Indian Ocean fleet, as well as admiral of the fleet in Egypt. Although experienced in Mediterranean naval warfare, he arrived as a relative outsider to the conflicts unfolding around the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese and Ottoman empires were both expanding into the Indian Ocean at this time. Portuguese ships had arrived in the Indian Ocean in the early 1500s, raiding the Red Sea as far as Suez, Egypt, and attempting to gain control of the port city of Aden in Yemen.

The Portuguese Navy employed sailing ships capable of navigating in open seas, whereas the Ottoman Navy relied mainly on galleys, which were more effective along coasts. This limited Ottoman naval warfare to the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the narrow straits around Arabia. The Ottoman Empire focused on using its navy to continue land-based expansion into new areas for tax revenue and agriculture, in contrast to the Portuguese, who were attempting to control new oceanic trade routes between Europe and Asia. The Ottoman Empire was additionally split in its Indian Ocean endeavors between the central government managed by Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha—who was seeking to turn the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf into "Ottoman Lakes," as the Black Sea had become—and regional leaders, who were attempting to preserve their autonomy.

Aden as illustrated in the 16th-century Civitates Orbis Terrarum

Using his fleet based out of Suez, Piri Reis led campaigns in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Just prior to his promotion, the empire lost Aden, its only port on the Indian Ocean since the city's conquest just a decade earlier. The city, built into the crater of an extinct volcano on one arm of a crescent-shaped bay, was known as the "Eye of Yemen" because of its position at the entrance to the Red Sea along sea routes to Indian and East African ports. Üveys Pasha, the governor of Yemen Eyalet, led a disastrous campaign to expand Ottoman territory inland into the highlands of Yemen that resulted in his assassination, a rebellion in Yemen's interior, and Aden's departure from the Ottoman Empire. Urban leaders in Aden gave their city to a local Arab chief, Ali al-Tawlaki, who immediately sent an ambassador to the Portuguese outpost on Hormuz Island to seek protection and alliance. The most senior remaining Ottoman leader in Yemen was Ozdemir Pasha, who wrote the Ottoman governor of Egypt to seek his assistance.

Piri Reis left Suez to aid Ozdemir Pasha with a fleet of 60 ships on 29 October 1547. The fleet dropped off reinforcements on the shore of Yemen outside the range of Aden's cannons, then continued to Aden's crescent-shaped bay to besiege the city by sea. The two Portuguese ships that had arrived under the command of Dom Paio de Noronha were not enough to stop the Ottoman Navy or the large Ottoman land army that quickly overran the city. On 26 February 1548, the forces under Piri Reis recaptured the citadel of Aden. When another small group of Portuguese ships arrived in January 1549 and found the Ottoman Navy in the bay, they attempted to flee, but Piri Reis had his fleet pursue them, capture the Portuguese sailors, and set fire to their ships. By February of that year, when Ottoman control was fully restored, Piri Reis was reaching his 80s.

Piri Reis' expedition against Hormuz (1552)

Following the success at Aden, Sultan Suleiman instructed Piri Reis to take the Portuguese-controlled Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Taking Bahrain Island was a secondary objective. In April 1552, Piri Reis left Suez with 25 galleys, five ships, and 850 soldiers. The Sultan's official plan had been for Piri Reis to bring his fleet past the Portuguese unnoticed, and to merge the Suez fleet with the recently formed Ottoman fleet in the Persian Gulf. However, the fleet was spotted by a light Portuguese galley captained by Simão da Costa who was able to sail in advance to Hormuz, and Piri Reis decided to attack Portuguese strongholds directly. In August, the Ottoman Fleet took Muscat after a one-month siege. When the Portuguese garrison surrendered, the Ottomans took them prisoner and forced them to work the oars on galleys in the fleet.

The Ottomans pillaged the area, destroyed fortifications, regrouped, and continued to Hormuz as a consolidated fleet. The expedition cleared the Arabian Peninsula coast of Portuguese occupation, and the Portuguese forces prepared for the coming attack on Hormuz by evacuating most of the island. Wealthy Hormuz residents took refuge on the nearby island of Qeshm, and the Portuguese soldiers and the Hormuz royal family retreated to the fortress.

Ottoman soldiers entered the city of Hormuz in September 1552, but could not take the fortress. They besieged and bombarded it for several weeks, and Piri Reis grew concerned about the possibility of the Portuguese fleet attacking them during the siege. The Ottoman forces ran low on gunpowder during the siege, but Kubad Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Basra, did not send supplies. The next month, the Ottomans sacked the city, looted Qeshm, and retreated into the Gulf with over a million pieces of gold. The fleet arrived at Basra by 1553. A letter from the Portuguese governor inside the fortress, dated 31 October 1552, said that the walls had been near collapsing but that the Ottomans had run low on "munitions, gunpowder, and other war materials," much of which they had lost when a galleon—a type of larger sailing ship—sank on the way to Hormuz. The Portuguese governor of India, Afonso de Noronha, organized a fleet of 40 ships led by his nephew Antão de Noronha that reached Hormuz in November 1552.

As a result, Piri Reis retreated. After the Ottoman expedition's failure, Kubad Pasha denied Piri Reis rowers for his galleys. Historian Svat Soucek suggested that hostility between the two men "may have been at the root" of Piri Reis' decision to return to Egypt quickly as well as the "accusatory report the Pasha probably sent to Constantinople." Leaving most of the fleet behind, Piri Reis returned with only two ships in 1553. The gold he brought back to Egypt played a role in his death sentence. Ottoman histories criticize Piri Reis for looting Qeshm, some even alleging that he had accepted bribery; and although those allegations were unlikely, as a delegation from Hormuz traveled to Constantinople to demand compensation, they may have been believed at the time of his execution. Venetian diplomats in Constantinople sent a letter dated 15 November 1553 stating that Piri Reis had been "charged with having raised the siege of the fortress of Hormuz because of bribery" and replaced by Seydi Ali Reis. It was for sacking the city instead of maintaining the siege that the sultan had him beheaded in Cairo, the exact date of which is unknown.

Soon after his death, Piri Reis' fleet in Basra was destroyed by the Portuguese. Seydi Ali Reis attempted to return the fleet to Suez but the Portuguese intercepted them and the Ottoman ships were captured, destroyed, or swept out to sea.

Works

Piri Reis' cartography was unusual for 16th-century Turkish and broader Islamic cartography for its deep engagement with recent European discoveries. Three of his works survive to the present day: fragments of his 1513 world map and his 1528 world map held in the Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul, and copies of the Kitab-ı Bahriye in libraries and museums around the world, although his original manuscripts are lost.

Across his works, Piri Reis engaged with the European Age of Discovery. His first world map incorporated many non-Muslim sources, unusual for Islamic cartography of the period, and famously cites a now-lost map by Christopher Columbus. The second edition of the Kitab-ı Bahriye incorporated information from new Portuguese and Spanish voyages, including Vasco da Gama's discovery of a sea route to India, and the 1528 world map cited new Portuguese voyages to Labrador and Newfoundland.

All of Piri Reis' surviving maps are portolan charts, late medieval nautical maps with compass roses from which lines of bearing radiate. Widely produced and used by European navigators, they were designed for navigation by dead reckoning, a method by which a ship's location is estimated from its direction, speed, and elapsed time. Portolan charts employ a windrose network matching the directions of a compass rather than a longitude and latitude grid. Piri Reis' maps employed standard portolan symbols to indicate hazards, such as dots for shallow water and sand banks, and crosses for rocks and reefs.

His works also reveal his attitude toward European discoveries. In the 1513 world map and the Kitab-ı Bahriye preface, he rhetorically undermines the significance of European discoveries by reframing them as the rediscovery of ancient knowledge. For instance, he invokes Alexander the Great when explaining Columbus' discoveries. According to the Quran and Turkish literary tradition, "Dhu al-Qarnayn"—believed to be a Quranic reference to Alexander the Great—traveled to every corner of the world, thereby defining its limits. Marginal inscriptions on the world map mention "charts drawn in the days of Alexander" and a book that "fell into the hands" of Columbus, describing lands "at the end of the Western Sea." In the 1526 version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, Piri Reis explicitly credits European discoveries to lost works created during Alexander's legendary voyages:

My friend, the Franks both read and write everything there is to know about the science of the sea. But do not suppose that they invented such knowledge on their own; and if you wish, I will explain why. During his time, the famous ruler Alexander traveled over all the seas, and whatever he saw and whatever he heard he had recorded, item by item, by a competent person.

— Piri Reis, Kitab-ı Bahriye (1526)

1513 world map

Main article: Piri Reis map

Surviving fragment of the first world map of Piri Reis (1513)

The Piri Reis map of 1513 is a world map compiled from a range of contemporary and classical sources. Roughly one-third of the map survives, housed in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. The finished manuscript was dated to the Islamic year 919 AH, equivalent to 1513 AD. After the empire's conquest of Egypt, Piri Reis presented the map to Sultan Selim I, and then it vanished from history until rediscovered centuries later.

When rediscovered in 1929, the remaining fragment attracted international attention for including a partial copy of an otherwise lost map by Christopher Columbus. The map's longest inscription tells the story of Columbus' discovery of the Americas and states that Piri Reis and his uncle captured a Spaniard who had sailed with Columbus. The inscription credits part of the map's depiction of the Americas to a prisoner who said he had received a map from Columbus. Scholarly analysis of the placenames, knowledge of the Americas, and cartographic misconceptions indicates that Piri Reis likely did use a map composed during one of Columbus' early voyages to the Americas. For example, on the mainland in the northwest, a stretch of coast is labelled Ornofay, a term recorded by Columbus but not found on other maps.

Comparison of Piri Reis' Caribbean (left) to Martin Behaim's Asia (right)

The map contains extensive notes primarily in Ottoman Turkish. The colophon in Arabic is written in a different handwriting, likely that of Piri Reis himself. The depiction of South America is detailed and accurate for its time. The northwestern coast combines features of Central America and Cuba into a single body of land. Scholars attribute this peculiar arrangement of the Caribbean to a now-lost map from Columbus that merged Cuba into the Asian mainland and Hispaniola with Marco Polo's description of Japan.

This reflects Columbus's erroneous claim that he had found a new route to Asia. During the 1494 exploration of Cuba, Columbus was so adamant that he had found Asia, that he had a notary board each of his ships anchored off the coast. Columbus compelled his men to swear that Cuba was a part of Asia and agree to never contradict this interpretation "under a penalty of 10,000 maravedis and the cutting out of the tongue." Historian Joaquim Gaspar has suggested that both Columbus's notary stunt and his creation of a map with Hispaniola rotated to match Japan were an attempt to motivate his own men with the unattainable promise of wealth upon reaching India. Gaspar points out the difficulty in navigating the Caribbean by compass using a map with a second north and Cuba unfolded into a North–South coast. Researcher Gregory McIntosh suggests the possibility of an unofficial map for navigation, and an official map presented as evidence of his continued claims of having discovered a route to Asia.

The southernmost conclusively identified feature on the map is a stretch of Brazilian coastline including Cabo Frio (Kav Friyo on the map), possibly the earliest depiction of Rio de Janeiro and likely the area around Cananéia, labeled Katino on the map. Beyond this point, the coast curves sharply east. Cartographic historian Svat Soucek has suggested this is the coast of South America, bent to fit the natural curve of the skin the map was drawn on. However, there is no textual or historical evidence that the map represents land south of present-day Cananéia. Most scholars interpret this southern coast as a version of Terra Australis, a southern landmass once hypothesized to balance the known land in the Northern Hemisphere. A disproven 20th-century hypothesis identified the southern landmass with an ice-free Antarctic coast. Antarctica was last free of ice over 10 million years ago. However, the inscription on the southern coast records that the Portuguese explored the area and according to the Portuguese sources, the land was hot and home to large snakes.

The map is visually distinct from European portolan charts, influenced by the tradition of Islamic miniature painting. Piri Reis adapted the elements of iconography from the traditional maps—which illustrated well-known routes, cities, and peoples—to the portolan portrayals of newly discovered coasts. Historian Karen Pinto has described the positive portrayal of legendary creatures from the edge of the known world in the Americas as breaking away from the medieval Islamic idea of an impassable "Encircling Ocean" surrounding the Old World. Scholarly debate continues over some of the map's sources and the identification of certain geographic features.

Kitab-ı Bahriye

Main article: Kitab-ı Bahriye

A copy of the Kitab-ı Bahriye open to the page on Corsica

The Kitab-ı Bahriye (Ottoman Turkish: كتاب بحرية), or Book of the Sea, is a navigational atlas. Piri Reis compiled navigational charts and notes into the most detailed portolan atlas of the 16th century. The Kitab-ı Bahriye combines information from a range of sources. It also draws from Piri Reis' own experience, especially for the coast of North Africa; the section on Tunisia relies heavily on his personal observations. For example, the description of the Galite Islands just off the Tunisian coast notes the dangers posed by southern winds; the availability of wild goats; and the quality of the fresh water, which Piri Reis compares in flavor to rose water.

The main part of both versions is a nautical guide to the Mediterranean Sea. Separate chapters cover different locations with corresponding charts. Piri Reis said that he composed an atlas because any single map would have had limited space for written details, whereas some "knowledge cannot be known from maps; it must be explained." There are 130 chapters in the first version and 210 in the second. The chapters start at the Dardanelles, the narrow strait separating Asia from Europe, and move counter-clockwise around the Mediterranean. Each map has a compass rose indicating North for that page. Scale is indicated only in the textual descriptions, not with scale bars. Written when Ottoman sailors relied on oar-driven galleys, the Kitab-ı Bahriye reflects their needs and capabilities, such as information on coastal waters, safe harbors, hazards, and sources of fresh water.

There are two versions of the book, both dedicated to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. The first version was composed between 1511 and 1521. The second, expanded version was commissioned by the grand vizier and presented to the sultan in 1526. It begins with a longer introduction written in verse, offering information on storms, winds, navigation with a compass and by the stars, reading nautical charts, and the oceans. It provides the first detailed Ottoman description of the Indian Ocean, and gives special attention to Hormuz Island at the strait leading into the Persian Gulf.

The book achieved fame only after Piri Reis' death. The known surviving manuscripts are all copies created beginning in the latter half of the 16th century. At least some portion of the book has been translated into English, modern Turkish, Greek, French, German, and Italian.

1528 world map

Surviving fragment of the second world map of Piri Reis (1528)

Piri Reis compiled a second world map in 1528, of which only the northwest corner of the map survives. The parchment fragment is approximately 70 centimeters (28 in) square. As with his 1513 map, the 1528 map has calligraphic inscriptions in Ottoman-Turkish written in the Arabic alphabet. The colophon is in Arabic, likely handwritten by Piri Reis himself. According to the colophon, he compiled the map in 1528 in Gelibolu, although he may not have actually completed it until 1529.

The 1528 map was a portolan chart like his earlier works. It has one line of latitude, the Tropic of Cancer, positioned slightly south of the correct position for Cuba and the Yucatan. Each section of the scale indicates 80 km (50 mi).

The map is more accurate than Piri Reis' first world map and reflects new discoveries in the Americas. Based on its depiction of newly explored regions like Greenland, Newfoundland, and Florida, the map likely relies on Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian maps from the 1520s. Hispaniola and Cuba are much more accurate compared to the 1513 world map. Cuba, labeled "Isla di Vana," is now correctly positioned as an island in the Caribbean. Unlike the 1513 map, unexplored regions are left blank. Only the explored southern coasts of Florida are on the map; the rest of its geography is left ambiguous as potentially an island or peninsula. The Spanish Empire's master map, the Padrón Real, included this same ambiguity until 1520 and influenced Italian cartography, such as the Freducci map.

Legacy

Bust of Piri Reis in the Istanbul Naval Museum

Piri Reis' cartography received limited appreciation during his lifetime. Historian Svat Soucek said that the works of Piri Reis "show that although the Ottoman Empire had the potential to participate in the discoveries, its ruling elite spurned the attempt to blaze a trail in this direction."

Ottoman historian Cengiz Orhonlu, examining 16th-century Turkish authors who wrote about Piri Reis' execution, found that they criticized his performance during the Siege of Hormuz but did not discuss his maps or writing. He was not regarded especially highly as a seafarer by Turkish contemporaries. His reputation was overshadowed by that of his uncle Kemal Reis, and the reputations of both were surpassed by later Ottoman sailors like the Barbarossas. In the 21st century, Piri Reis is remembered as a cartographer more than a corsair or an admiral.

The 1513 world map disappeared from the historical record until its rediscovery centuries later, and there is no evidence that either version of his atlas circulated outside the royal palace prior to 1550. Copies produced after Piri Reis' death were often created for their aesthetic value rather than practical navigation. No Turkish school of cartography or navigation was established to build on his work. Murat Reis the Elder's expedition to the Canary Islands and the 1586 Sack of Lanzarote were some of the few times when Piri Reis' Atlantic cartography was likely used by the Ottoman Navy. The empire's navy—even during the Canary Islands expedition—remained largely composed of oar-driven galleys after the point when other naval powers were moving to sailing ships suited to the open oceans. Although Ottoman scholar Kâtip Çelebi built on the Kitab-ı Bahriye in his 17th-century work, Müntehab-ı Bahriyye, by the 18th century were major works of cartography from Western Europe being translated into Turkish.

Bust of Piri Reis in Gelibolu

When Piri Reis' world map was unearthed in 1929, it received international media attention for containing the surviving piece of an otherwise lost map of Christopher Columbus. Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, took an interest in the map and initiated projects to publish facsimiles and conduct research. Discovered during Atatürk's reforms to modernize Turkey, the map was a point of national pride. Its rediscovery also sparked interest in the Kitab-ı Bahriye. A facsimile of the book's second version was published by the Turkish Historical Society in 1935, and a four-volume facsimile with photographic quality was published in 1988. Several ships and submarines have been named after Piri Reis, including the RV K. Piri Reis and TCG Pirireis; and the Piri Reis University for maritime studies was founded in 2008. In the Turkish TV series Barbaros: Sword of the Mediterranean, Piri Reis is portrayed by actor Emir Benderlioğlu.

Piri Reis' 1513 world map is the subject of pseudoscientific claims and sometimes invoked in broader pop culture as an unsolved mystery. For example, civil engineer Arlington Mallery, Professor Charles Hapgood, and Hapgood's students developed the hypothesis that the 1513 world map contained cartographic information, notably from an ice-free Antarctic coast, that exceeded 16th century map-making abilities. In Hapgood's 1966 book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, he claims that islands along the map's southern Atlantic shore depict what are now ice-covered mountains in Antarctica's Queen Maud Land region.

Hapgood's book was met with skepticism due to its lack of evidence and its reliance on cataclysmic pole shift, the disproven geological hypothesis that the Earth's entire crust could shift around the planet. Also, according to geologist Paul Heinrich, the book did not account for post-glacial rebound, the process by which land rises after glacial ice melts and flows away. Additionally, the 1949 survey initially cited by Mallery could not measure even one percent of the area drawn in the Piri Reis map. Subsequent studies have shown no significant similarities to Antarctica's coast. Although the 1513 world map has been described by some authors as anomalous in its accuracy, it is no more precise than other 16th-century manuscript maps.

Hapgood's claims, however, have been uncritically repeated by Erich von Däniken in support of ancient astronauts and by Graham Hancock in support of an advanced lost civilization. The map and polar shift were key plot elements in Allan W. Eckert's science fiction novel The HAB Theory. Historian Karen Pinto has commented that popular speculation has contributed to Piri Reis' becoming "more famous than the Sultan who" executed him.

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External links

• Media related to Piri Reis at Wikimedia Commons
• Bostan, İdris (30 January 2014). "Piri Reis: Ottoman Sailor of the Exploration Age". SeaNews. ISSN 2791-6588.
• Cuoghi, Diego (2002). "Part 1 (Piri Reis)". The Mysteries of the Piri Reis map. Archived from the original on 10 March 2004.
• İnan, Afet; Yolaç, Leman (1954). "Piri Reis Map of 1513". Numbered English translation of the 1513 world map.
• Loupis, Dimitris (2004). Piri Reis' Book on Navigation (Kitab-ı Bahriye) as a Geography Handbook. Eastern Mediterranean cartographies. Athens, Greece: National Hellenic Research Foundation. OCLC 892160459.
• Piri Reis. "Kitab-ı Bahriye [W.658]". Baltimore: Walters Art Museum. Full color scans of every page.