Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

46 • The Making of Islamic ScienceThe Ottomans translated many Arabic texts into Turkishand produced new works. They further rearranged old material,corrected geographical information, and added new observations. Forexample, Abu’l Fida’s Taqwim al-Buldan was translated into Turkishby Sipahizade Mehemmed bin Ali (d. 1588), who supplemented andrearranged the material in alphabetical order. Turkish geographersalso produced considerable new literature on marine geography andnavigation. Seyyidi Ali Re’is bin Huseyn (d. 1562), also known asKatib-e Rumi, wrote a book on the Indian Ocean entitled al-Muhit,using the experiences of South Arabian sailors—some of whomhad served as guides to Vasco de Gama on his voyage to Calicut(Taeschner 1991, 588). Piri Muhyi’l Din Re’is (d. 1554) produceda world map in 1513, for which he used as sources maps containingPortuguese discoveries up to 1508, and another map containingdiscoveries of Christopher Columbus during his third voyage (1498).He had obtained this map from a Spanish sailor who had voyaged withColumbus to America three times and who had been made a Turkishprisoner in 1501 at Valencia by none other than Piri Re’is’s uncle,the famous naval hero Kemal Re’is (Taeschner 1991, 588). One ofthe most comprehensive geographical works of the early seventeenthcentury, written by Mustafa bin Abdallah, popularly known as KatibKhelebi or Haji Khalifa (1609–1657), also uses Muslim as well as atleast one European source, the Atlas Minor (1621) of Gerhard Mercator(Taeschner 1991, 589).Cartography, the science of production of maps and construction ofprojections and designs, became a basic need of the expanding Muslimworld within the first generation. The administrative needs of thenewly conquered lands required detailed descriptions, and early mapsemerged on the basis of first-hand information of the new regions.This tradition was to receive a most direct impetus from the religiousrequirement already mentioned—the need to determine the qiblah.Muslims may have received some Greek, Indian, and Pahlavimaps when the astronomical and geographical texts from theselanguages were translated into Arabic. We do not know when thefirst world map was constructed by Muslims, but we do know that thetradition of making these maps already existed in the ninth century,when a world map was constructed for Caliph al-Ma’mun (813–833)