Service Description

Piri Re’is II: World Map 2 classes where we specifically focus on Piri Re’is’ 1513 World Map. Only a fragment is still extant… but you can imagine the rest if you like! The surviving fragment includes the west coast of Europe and Africa and the east coast of Brazil and the Atlantic Ocean including the Azores and… the Canary Islands! Piri Re’is’ map was based on about 20 other ones, so we are in a grand tradition of tracing and building on older knowledge. It’s a phenomenally important world map as it supposedly used the lost world map of Columbus as a source. From Piri Re’is’ map: “From eight Jaferyas of that kind and one Arabic map of Hind [India], and from four newly drawn Portuguese maps which show the countries of Sind [in modern day Pakistan], Hind and Çin [China] geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by Qulūnbū [Columbus] in the western region, I have extracted it. By reducing all these maps to one scale this final form was arrived at, so that this map of these lands is regarded by seamen as accurate and as reliable as the accuracy and reliability of the Seven Seas on the aforesaid maps.” He was also a sailor himself - an Admiral no less - unlike many mapmakers. It doesn’t mean we fully trust him - his world map also contained mythical islands - it seems he was not immune to the cartographic mania of what I call ‘peppering the sea with just-in-case islands’.