Piri Reis (* around 1470 in Gallipoli; beheaded in 1554 in Cairo) was a Turkish admiral of the Ottoman fleet and cartographer. He wrote an important book about seafaring in the Mediterranean and collected and created numerous maps, of which the so-called map of Piri Reis from 1513, which was only discovered in 1929, is the most famous today.
In 1513 he drew his first map of the world. It was based on around 20 maps and mappae mundi, one of which is said to date from the time of Alexander the Great. As he spoke Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish in addition to Turkish, he was able to access and process foreign language sources.
From 1516 he was the captain of the Ottoman fleet in the Mediterranean Sea and in the waters around the Arabian Peninsula. In 1517 he showed Sultan Selim I his first map of the world. In 1516/17 he took part in the campaign against Egypt and completed his Kitab-ı Bahriye in 1521. In 1522 he took part in the successful siege of the island of Rhodes. In later years he was the Turkish governor in Egypt, wrote poetry and continued to write his sailing instructions in lyrical form.
In 1524 he was the captain of the ship that brought the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha to Egypt. After revising the Kitab-ı Bahriye on the advice of the Grand Vizier, he was able to present it to Sultan Suleyman I in 1525. In 1528 he gave the Sultan his second map of the world.
Source: Wikipedia
Translated by Google •
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