Map of western Mediterranean

Portulan charts originated in the thirteenth century[1]. The term, from the Italian portolano, referred to a detailed description of coastlines and ports and was later extended to encompass any graphic representation of such features in which their place names are written perpendicularly to their outline. Until the end of the Middle Ages, the Mediterranean remained the centre of production of these maps. From the fifteenth century, Italy, which dominated trade and commerce through the maritime power of towns such as Venice, Genoa and Florence, was the focus of production. In sixteenth century, however, the Ottoman Empire in direct competition with the Portuguese for control, in particular, of the Red Sea, began a series of campaigns of exploration and topographical surveys which inspired great scientific and artistic development. This chart is an example of the renaissance of Portulan charts in the sixteenth century.

The chart is bound in brown leather without flaps; the covers are decorated in relief with medallions and saz motifs and the inside covers are lined in marbled (ebru) paper of the sixteenth century. The author, ‘Ali Macar, was of Hungarian origin who settled in Gallipoli as a mercenary; he was a captain in the Ottoman navy. The atlas comprises nine pages, including seven double-page maps representing, respectively, the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara (f.1b, 2a), the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea (f. 2b, 3a), central Mediterranean, Italy and the Adriatic Coast (f. 3b, 4a), western Europe, Great Britain and Ireland (f. 5b, 6a), the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara (f . 6b, 7a), and an oval chart of the world (f. 7b, 8a).

Folios 4b and 5a represent the western Mediterranean; as on other charts of the atlas (except on the representation of the world) the coasts are marked in blue and islands in red, yellow and green. On the land, the major towns are marked with green representations of woods, the principal town being Toledo. The names of the towns and ports are written in Arabic or Ottoman Turkish. The lines in red, green and black which radiate from several centres represent navigation routes.  A compass is depicted in the upper left corner; underneath, an inscription sets out the date of execution and the signature of the cartographer in Arabic.

The stylistic similarities of these charts to Italian or Catalan charts has led them to be attributed to the celebrated Venetian cartographer Battista Agnese (1500-1564), or to Angelo de Conte Freducci of Ancona, since ‘Ali Macar was only know to have written texts. S. Soucek hypothesises that the inscriptions bearing his name were added subsequently. However, examples of Ottoman portulan charts testify to the mastery by the imperial workshops and studios of the genre. Moreover some, like the chart in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, are very similar to the ‘Ali Macar atlas. The atlas produced by Pir-i Re’is in 1513 on vellum[2], depicting the coasts of Africa and eastern Europe and the east coast of central and southern America, was based on both Portuguese charts and on Christopher Colombus’ charts representing the New World and the Antilles, a mere twenty years after their discovery. In another branch of the arts, the imperial workshops also produced a great number of realistic views of towns which were often well annotated.

Whatever its origin, Ottoman or Italian, this atlas reflects the intensity of geographical research carried out at this time and its contemporary importance. The accumulation of this precious knowledge was a key to unlocking the oceans for the great powers of the period, which were fighting for control of the world’s wealth.