Piri Reis map

Rare card · No. 54391

The Piri Reis map is a world map compiled in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. Approximately one third of the map survives, housed in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. After the empire's 1517 conquest of Egypt, Piri Reis presented the 1513 world map to Ottoman Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520). It is unknown how Selim used the map, if at all, as it vanished from history until its rediscovery centuries later. When rediscovered in 1929, the remaining fragment garnered international attention as it includes a partial copy of an otherwise lost map by Christopher Columbus. The map is a portolan chart with compass roses and a windrose network for navigation, rather than lines of longitude and latitude. It contains extensive notes primarily in Ottoman Turkish. 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 the peculiar arrangement of the Caribbean...

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