2015_Grade_45_Muslim_Geographers

Muhammad al-Idrisi was a Muslim geographer, traveler and a cartographer (person who produces maps). He lived in Sicily, at the court of King Roger II. Al Idrisi was a descendant of the Idrisids, who in turn were descendants of Hasan bin Ali, the son of Ali and the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (S)

Al-Idrisi was born into the large Hammudid family of North Africa and Al-Andalus, in the city of Ceuta (present day Spain). He spent much of his early life travelling through North Africa and Al-Andalus and seems to have acquired detailed information on both regions. He visited Anatolia when he was barely 16. He is known to have studied in Córdoba.

Apparently his travels took him to many parts of Europe.

Al-Idrisi incorporated the knowledge of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Islamic merchants and explorers and recorded on Islamic maps with the information brought by the Norman voyagers to create the most accurate map of the world in pre-modern times, which served as a concrete illustration of his Kitab,Nuzhat al-Mushtaq.

The Tabula Rogeriana was drawn by Al-Idrisi in 1154 for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, after a stay of eighteen years at his court, where he worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map. The map, with legends written in Arabic, only shows the northern part of the African continent and lacks details of the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.

For Roger, the King, it was inscribed on a massive disc of solid silver, two meters in diameter.

Piri Reis was an Ottoman admiral, geographer, and cartographer born between 1465 and 1470. He died in 1553.

He is primarily known today for his maps and charts collected in Kitab-e-Bahriye (Book of Navigation), a book that contains detailed information on navigation, as well as very accurate charts (for their time) describing the important ports and cities of the Mediterranean Sea. He gained fame as a cartographer, when a small part of his first world map(prepared in 1513) was discovered in 1929 at the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. His world map is the oldest known Turkish atlas showing the New World, and one of the oldest maps of America still in existence anywhere (the oldest known map of America that is still in existence is the mapdrawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500).

Piri Reis's map is centered on the Sahara at the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer.

In 1528, Piri Reis drew a second world map, of which a small fragment still survives.

For many years, little was known about the identity of Piri Reis. His name means Captain Piri. Today, based on the Ottoman archives, it is known that his full name was "Al Hajj" Ahmed Muhiddin Piri". The exact date of his birth is unknown. His father's name was Al Hajj Mehmed Piri. The honorary and informal Islamic title in Piri's and his father's names indicate that they both had completed the Hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) by going to Mecca during the dedicated period.

Piri began engaging in government-supported privateering (a common practice in the Mediterranean Sea among both the Muslim and Christian states of the 15th and 16th centuries) when he was young, in 1481, following his uncle Kemal Reis, a well-known corsair (a fast ship used for piracy) and seafarer of the time, who later became a famous admiral of the Ottoman Navy. Privateer was a private person or a ship that was allowed by government to attack a foreign shop during wartime. During this period, together with his uncle, he took part in many naval wars of the Ottoman Empire against Spain, the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Venice.

When his uncle Kemal Reis died in 1511 (his ship was wrecked by a storm in the Mediterranean Sea, while he was heading to Egypt), Piri returned to Gelibolu, where he started working on his studies about navigation.

By 1516, he was again at sea as a ship's captain in the Ottoman fleet. He took part in the 1516–17 Ottoman conquest of Egypt.

In 1522 he participated in the Siege of Rhodes against the Knights of St. John, which ended with the island's surrender to the Ottomans and the permanent departure of the Knights from Rhodes.

In 1547, Piri had risen to the rank of Reis (admiral) as the Commander of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean and Admiral of the Fleet in Egypt, headquartered in Suez.

Several warships and submarines of the Turkish Navy have been named after Piri Reis.

Kitab-e- Bahriye: Piri Reis is the author of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, or "Book of Navigation", one of the most famous cartographical works of the period. The work was first published in 1521, and it was revised in 1524-1525 with additional information and better-crafted charts in order to be presented as a gift to Suleiman I. The revised edition had a total of 434 pages containing 290 maps.

This book had two main sections.

In the first section, special emphasis is given to the discoveries in the New World by Christopher Columbus and those of Vasco da gama and other Portuguese seamen on their way to India and rest of Asia.

The second section is entirely composed of Portolan charts and cruise guides. Portolan charts are navigation maps based on compass directions and estimated distances, observed at sea.

A century after Piri's death and during the second half of the 17th century, a third version of his book was produced.It included additional new large-scale maps. These maps were much more accurate and depict the Black Sea, which was not included in the original.

Copies of the Kitab-e-Bahriye are found in various libraries in Istanbul and in some of the major libraries in Europe, besides one copy known to be held privately in the USA (Walters Art Museum), in Baltimore.