Scott Birdseye is a fine individual and writer of many interesting documents of an historical nature.

The Middle East, as a geographic region, provides a link between Africa, Europe, and Asia. The Turks, rulers of the Middle East, acted in much the same way as did their land area, providing a mixing point for the cultures of Egypt and the Maghreb, Greece and India and China. The Ottoman Turks, through their own achievements, were able to merge the science and learning of each of these distinct cultures and use their acquired knowledge to add to and expand on the intellectual advancements of their day, producing an environment wherein the arts and sciences flourished, achieving a greater level of in the perfection and expansion of knowledge then had ever been found in the world.

One of their many intellectual expansions was in the field of cartography. Islamic map-makers, such as Piri Reis, building upon the foundations set by the Greeks and Indians were able to fully modernize the field, transforming it from an archaic art into an precise science.

Early trade between the Babylonians and Egyptians was enhanced by Alexander’s later expeditions to the area, which brought the Hellenistic and Semitic worlds and their respective ideas together in the Middle East. After the rise and expansion of Islam in the region, the influence of Indian culture and learning, which was brought through Persia, proliferated through the scholarly circles of the Arab world, particularly after the movement of the Abbasid imperial center to Baghdad. Science and astronomy from India had been shaped by the Greek learning brought by Alexander’s expeditions near the sub-continent. Thus, a merged form of learning, encompassing both Greek and Indian discover-ies, made its way through Persia to the Arab world. During the late Abbasid period, the impact of the culture of the Greeks became stronger as the Hellenis-tic and Arab cultures interacted in the former Byzantine areas of Syria and eastern Anatolia. Unlike what was seen in the earliest conquests of the Arabs, the later incursions into Byzan-tine held territories were more receptive to multi-cultural society, and thus, it was during the late Abbasid period that the Greek culture of the Byzantine people was first allowed wider acceptance within the Arab world. Thus, the Middle East, through the trade and conquests of the Arab peoples, acted

This cultural fusion provided the Arabs, and later the Turks with intellectual resources from around the world, which formed the basis of their own scientific advancements. The Arab and Turkish imperial courts and institutions of learning were vastly multi-cultural entities, composed of scholars from Jewish, Christian, Persian, Indian and Byzantine and local back-grounds, each of which brought their societies own concepts and materials. Early Middle Eastern scientific endeavors were enhanced by the availability of paper, the manufacturing techniques of which had been brought through India from China. By the early Twelfth Century, translations into Arabic of Greek source materials were nearly complete, and the knowledge obtained through these writings
proliferated throughout the scholarly circles of the Middle East, producing a vast increase in both Muslim knowledge and in new Muslim advances. Greek mathematics, obtained through translation, were merged, in the Middle East, with Sanskrit mathematical texts from India. These two sources enabled Arab and Turkish scientists to develop and explore entirely new fields of mathematics, directly contributing to the vast Muslim knowledge of astronomy.

It was Islamic advancements to the field of astronomy which allowed the cartography created by Muslims to excel beyond any previous attempts at map-making. Astronomically based cartography, known in the Arabic tongue as “Surat al-Ard,” was initially utilized for the purpose of enabling travelers to find the holy city of Mecca during the Hajj, however, using a mathematically based system for cartography allowed for many corrects to Ptolomy’s system, which was predominant in the pre-Muslim world. Astronomically based map-making was also influenced by Indian spherical form geometry, which helped Muslim scholars create a world-view based upon a spherical representation of the Earth.

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The earliest known globe was built by Muslims in the year 1279, years before the round-earth concept was widely accepted in the West. Islamic cartography was so well respected throughout the world, that when, in the Twelfth Century, Sicilian King Roger II sought to create a reliable atlas of the Mediterranean for the purpose of expanding trade in his domain, he invited the leading Muslim map-makers to his court to create the atlas. Idrisi, the leading Muslim cartographer in Roger’s court, used the astronomical and zodiacal mapping system prevalent in the Muslim world as the basis for maps which were, for the first time, useful navigational aids for sea travel. Later, the Ottoman Turks recognized the importance of these accurate, reliable and systematic maps for their use in imperial administration, and also for the planning of military strategies and tactics.

One notable Turkish military commander whose use of maps for practical purposes enabled him to achieve victory against formidable foes was Piri Ibn Haji Mehmed, later known by his naval title of Piri Re’is. Born sometime between 1465 and 1470 in the city of Gelibolu, Piri Re’is rose to become Admiral of the Turkish Fleet, where his most notable of achievement was the defeat of the Portuguese in the Red Sea, which reopened the Indian sea route to Egypt. The temporary defeat of the Portuguese fleet allowed the restoration of Turkish naval expansion, and Piri Re’is saw a need for accurate navigation and administrational maps for renewed oceanic expansions.

Cartography, being of personal interest to him, in 1513 Piri Re’is produced the Kitabi Bahriye, or Book of Navigation which described, in great detail, the coasts, ports, harbors, currents, bays, shallows and prevailing winds of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. The Admiral’s position allowed him access to the royal libraries and archives in Istanbul, and his studies of earlier works provided him with an immense of amount of source material upon which to base his own work, maps which would cause him to be recognized as the expert of his day on world geography and cartography. The book’s most famous entry and possibly the world’s most infamous map, now known simply as the Piri Reis Map, a protolan of the entire Earth, was the first known world map to include the Americas and the Antarctic. The precise accuracy of the map illustrates the level of perfection obtained by both Piri Re’is and Turkish cartography.

Turkish map-makers were the first to include the Americas in their world-picture, however, this was not the only change they brought about through their work. A desire by cartographers to find the ubbat al-ard, the central point of the Earth’s surface, placed at Ceylon by the Indians and at Jerusalem by Christians, prompted vast travel and exploration by Muslims. These investigative journeys were conducted throughout Eastern Asia and the Indian Ocean area, and thus Muslim cartographers were the first to place Malaysia, China, Korea, Japan, and Sub-Saharan Africa in their proper geographic locations on world maps.

The Muslim world-view was, due to extensive travel, far more complete than that of the Europeans at the dawn of the Age of Discovery, as Muslims were the first to break away from the rigid stagnation of the Ptolemaic geographical system which dominated the study of geography in the West. Ironically though, it was later Christian discovery of Muslim learning and discoveries such as these which would help usher in the Renaissance in Europe, signally the decline of the power of the Turkish Empire.

Though the Ottomans would decline and collapse in later centuries, in the time prior to the European ascendancy, Turkish science was the greatest and most advanced that the world had ever seen. With their geographical location in the midst of many different societies, the Muslims were able to incorporate the science and learning of their neighboring cultures into a unique form which allowed them to excel in fields such as cartography, and to achieve a level of perfection in these field which helped to bring about profound changes in the history of the world.