Piri Reis Map

Timeline

1. 1513Gallipoli · GallipoliAt Gallipoli, Piri combined the Ptolemaic tradition, Portuguese Indian Ocean charts, Arabic maps, and a Spanish chart reportedly obtained from Columbus's voyages into a world map, with long notes in Ottoman Turkish explaining the sources. The surviving portion shows an early composite image from West Africa to the Atlantic coast of South America.
2. 1517Cairo · CairoAfter taking part in the 1516–1517 Egypt campaign, Piri presented the 1513 world map to Selim I. How the sultan used the map is unknown; the original subsequently vanished from public records, leaving only the fragments later found in the palace collection.
3. 1929Topkapı Palace · IstanbulIn 1929, while cataloguing its collections, Topkapı Palace discovered a parchment fragment identified as a remnant of Piri Reis's 1513 world map. Because it may preserve copied information from Columbus's lost map of the Americas, it became a key artifact for the history of the Age of Discovery and Ottoman cartography.