With 62 sheets on Venetian paper stained with black splotches throughout, the Khalili Portolan Atlas combines minimalist portolan charts depicting the cities along various coastlines of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with several city views of notable cities such as Venice and Istanbul. The portolan style maps feature small building icons denoting the location of cities, as well as elaborately drawn ships in the sea near many of the coastlines. These charts use yellows, oranges, blues, and other bright colors to depict islands and outline landmasses. Of particular note is the large quantity of blank space within these coastline maps—both in the sea and the inland portions of the maps. The city views also contain bright colors, but they feature much greater detail in terms of the buildings shown, and the use of size and curvature to create perspective. Also of importance is the somewhat ambiguous creatorship of the atlas as a whole. Although most of the maps—particularly the portolan charts—are nearly identical to others by Piri Reis in his earlier works, the Kitâb-i Bahriye, it is unknown who compiled them with the city views, and whether or not they were all made by Piri Reis himself or a later individual using his work as a reference.
London, Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Arts, MS. 718. Formerly in the private Istanbul collection of Halil Bezmen.
Soucek, Svat. Piri Reis & Turkish Mapmaking after Columbus: The Khalili Portolan Atlas. New York: Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1996.
Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
Rights for maps held by individual publishers and institutions. Thumbnails displayed constitute fair use.
https://art.thewalters.org/detail/19195/book-on-navigation-2/ [a copy of the Piri Reis's Kitâb-i Bahriye]
Carleton Library Special Collections (Folio) GA1303.5.A1 S65 1992