Muslim Geographers

Muhammad al-Idrisi

Muhammad al-Idrisi was a Muslim geographer, cartographer, Egyptologist and traveler who 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 Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Al-Idrisi was born into the large Hammudid family of North Africa and Al-Andalus, which claimed descent from the Idrisids of Morocco and ultimately the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

Al-Idrisi was born in the city of Ceuta, where his great-grandfather had been forced to settle after the fall of Hammudid Malaga to the Zirids of Granada. 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 including Portugal, the Pyrenees, the French Atlantic coast, Hungary, and Jórvík also known as York, in England.

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, which may be translated( A Diversion for the Man Longing to Travel to Far-Off Places).

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

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 his Kitab-ı 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 map drawn by Juan de la Cosa in 1500). Piri Reis' 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 (showing Greenland and North America from Labrador and Newfoundland in the north to Florida, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and parts of Central America in the south) 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 "Haji Ahmed Muhiddin Piri".The exact date of his birth is unknown. His father's name was Haji 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 and seafarer of the time, who later became a famous admiral of the Ottoman Navy. 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, including the First Battle of Lepanto (Battle of Zonchio) in 1499 and Second Battle of Lepanto (Battle of Modon) in 1500. 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.

Piri Reis is the author of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, one of the most famous pre-modern books of navigation, including a world map. Kitab-ı Bahriye has two main sections, with the first section dedicated to information about the types of storms; techniques of using a compass; portolan charts with detailed information on ports and coastlines; methods of finding direction using the stars; and characteristics of the major oceans and the lands around them.

The second section is entirely composed of portolan charts and cruise guides. Each topic contains the map of an island or coastline. In the first book (1521), this section has a total of 132 portolan charts, while the second book (1525) has a total of 210 portolan charts. This section also includes descriptions and drawings of the famous monuments and buildings in every city, as well as biographic information about Piri Reis who also explains the reasons why he preferred to collect these charts in a book instead of drawing a single map, which would not be able to contain so much information and detail.

A century after Piri's death and during the second half of the 17th century, a third version of his book was produced, which left the text of the second version unaffected while enriching the cartographical part of the manuscript. It included additional new large-scale maps, mostly copies of the Italian and Dutch works of the previous century. These maps were much more accurate and depict the Black Sea, which was not included in the original.

Copies of the first edition (1521) are found in the Topkapı Palace, the Nuruosmaniye Library and the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, the Library of the University of Bologna, the National Library of Vienna, the State Library of Dresden, the National Library of France in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.