Bodrum, 7 October 2004

Dear Leyla,

"You asked me yesterday about the Topkapi Palace. Indeed, the Palace is a treasury of very valuable artefacts and manuscripts and more. One discovery there, which I find of particular interest and which is in a way linked directly to you, is the discovery of the Piri Reis Map of 1513; have a look at it. It is a part of a much larger map and shows the Atlantic Ocean. To the West is America, and to the East you can see very clearly parts of the Iberian Peninsula (today's Spain) and of Africa. The map is dated 1513. 

The map was discovered in following way: In about 1930 - 1931, Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, made two orders that led to the discovery: 

1. He had established the Turkish Historical Society and your great grandfather, Yusuf Akcura, became the first chairman of the Society. [I am enclosing a picture of him, with your Babaanne (paternal grandmother) and your late great uncle on his lap. You will recognize Babaanne, she is older than uncle Tuğrul.]  

2. He had ordered experts to find out what was in the Palaces, including the Topkapi Palace; by compiling a so called "inventory". 

This inventorizing took a few years and a specialist for ancient maps, a German man called Deissman, had been asked to look into the maps at Topkapi. Prof. Deissmann was an expert for early maps, such as the maps of Ptolomeus and the maps of Alexander the Great. (It was expected, that at Topkapi some of these maps could be found, or rather, later copies of them, as in particular the Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror was known to have been very interested in these maps.) Prof. Deissmann had been working a few months when he, by chance, saw the Piri Reis map. 

Prof. Deissmann was not an expert in Islamic maps but he was a remarkable scholar. He realized that this was a very special map. All what he could say to the Topkapi Museum curator was "I think, today I have seen a very special map. I do not exactly know what it is. But it is rather special, I think. Have an expert see it." And the curator went out and asked Prof. Kahle, another German, who was a specialist in Islamic maps and who was at that time in Istanbul, to see this map. 

Mr. Kahle came to Topkapi and opened the folder with the Piri Reis Map. People who were with him recalled, that it took Kahle only a brief glance and he shouted in excitement "The lost map of Columbus!". Everybody was quiet when Prof. Kahle started to read the legend in Arabic script on the map. Everybody held their breath. The more he read the more he was sure that he had one of the most distinguished maps of the world in front of him. And, even more, it ought to be an early copy of the long lost map of Christopher Columbus, as it included Central America! 

Later, under the leadership of your great grandfather the map was studied carefully and, indeed, it was found that Piri Reis was writing on the map "My uncle, Kemal Reis, had a galley slave, who has sailed to America with Columbus. The depiction of the coast of Central America and the Carribean is according to my uncle's slave." Piri Reis was a real scholar and learned man. He always let people know, when he had received information from elsewhere. This is called "the reference". 

In 1932 your great grandfather published for the Turkish Historical Society the Piri Reis Map with annotations. These annotations are still being used today. It is remarkable, that "The Annotations to the Piri Reis Map of 1513" are the Society's publication number 1! 

In summary: The Piri Reis Map is believed to include a copy of the Christopher Columbus map and is a very early description of the Americas. Other parts may have shown England and Scandinavia to the North and India and China to the East. 

All these other parts of the map are lost. Maybe, one day, you or one of your friends may decide to become a historian and will come across the lost parts of the Piri Reis Map of 1513. Who knows, it needs only tough work, some imagination and a little bit of luck. 

Or, do you think, one of you will discover the lost map of Christopher Columbus?