Piri Reis

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Image:Piri reis world map 01.jpg Piri Reis (full name Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed) (about 1465 – 1554 or 1555) was an Ottoman admiral and cartographer born between 1465 and 1470 in Gallipoli on the Dardanelles.

He is known today for his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-i Bahrieh (Book of the Navy), a book about the Mediterranean Sea. He gained fame as a cartographer when a small part of his world map (prepared in 1513) was discovered in 1929 in Istanbul. The most surprising aspect was the presence of the Americas on the map, making it the first map ever drawn of the western coastlines of North and South America.

Piri began to serve in the Ottoman navy as a youth, in 1481, following his uncle Kemal Reis, a well-known seafarer of the time. He participated in many years of fighting against Spanish, Genoese and Venetian navies. When Kemal Reis died in 1511, Piri returned to Gallipoli and began to write his book "Kitab-i Bahrieh". In 1513 he produced his first map of the world, based on some 20 older maps and charts he had collected.

By 1516 he was again at sea, as a ship's captain in the Ottoman fleet. He took part in the 1516/17 campaign against Egypt, and in 1517 was able to show his world map to Sultan Selim I. 1521 he finished his "Kitab-i Bahrieh". In 1522 he participated in the siege of Rhodes which ended with the island's surrender on 25 December 1522. In 1524 he captained the ship that took the Ottoman Grand Vizier Makbul Ibrahim Pasha to Egypt. Following the Vizier's advice, he edited his book and was able to present it to Sultan Suleyman I in 1525. Three years later he presented his second map of the world to Suleyman.

By 1547, Piri had risen to the rank of Reis (admiral) and was in command of the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean and admiral of the fleet in Egypt, headquartered at Suez. On 26 February 1548 he recaptured Aden from the Portugese, followed in 1552 by the capture of Muscat, which Portugal had occupied since 1507, and the important island of Kish. Turning further East, Piri Reis then captured the island of Hormuz in the Straight of Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. When the Portugese turned their attention to the Persian Gulf, Piri Reis occupied the Qatar peninsula and the island of Bahrein to deprive the Portugese of suitable bases on the Arabian coast.

He then returned to Egypt, an old man approaching the age of 90. When he refused to support the Ottoman governor of Basra, Kubad Pasha, in another campaign against the Portugese in the northern Persian Gulf, Piri Reis was publicly beheaded in 1554 or 1555.

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Literature

Afetinan, A.: Life and works of Pirî Reis: the oldest map of America. Ankara 1975.
Kahle, Paul: Die verschollene Kolumbuskarte von 1498 in einer türkischen Weltkarte von 1513. Berlin/Leipzig 1933. (In German)
Kahle, Paul (Hrsg.): Piri Re'îs. Bahrîje. Das türkische Segelhandbuch für das Mittelländische Meer vom Jahre 1521. Berlin 1926. (In German)
McIntosh, Gregory C.: The Piri Reis map of 1513. Athens, Georgia 2000.
Mesenburg, Peter: Kartometrische Untersuchung und Rekonstruktion der Weltkarte des Piri Re`is (1513). In: Cartographica Helvetica, No. 24 (2001), 3-7. (In German)

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