(Here
you can see Leyla at her favourite passtime, if she does not
cuddle her cats.)
Bodrum,
7 October 2004
Dear
Leyla,
You
asked me yesterday about the Topkapi Palast. Indeed, the Palast
is a treasury fo very valuable artifacts and handwritings
and more. One event, 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 lager map and shows the Atlantic Ocean. To the West is
America, To the East you can very clearly see 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,
Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, had ordered
two things of concern to the discovery:
1.
He had established the Turkish Historical Society and your
great grandfather, Yusuf Akcura,
had become the first chairman of the Society. I
am enclosing a picture of him, with your babaanne and with
your late great uncle on his lap, you will recognize babaanne,
she is older than uncle Tugrul.
2.
He had ordered experts to find out what was in the Palasts,
including the Topkapi Palast; he had ordered a so called "inventory".
This
inventorizing was going on 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, like 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.) And Prof. Deissmann
was working a few months when he, by chance, saw the Piri
Reis map.
Prof.
Deissmann was not a specialist for 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 wrote: 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
kept 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?
Love
from your baba.
Yusuf
Civelekoglu
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