ABSTRACT
This passage by Piri Reis epitomizes the ottoman stance towards the distant regions of the world in the sixteenth century. Piri Reis’s account informs its readers about the recent discoveries in the Atlantic ocean, but it does so in a concise yet careless manner. For instance, it summarizes the intellectual disputes about the landmasses bordering the Atlantic ocean, but it dates the early geographical discoveries in the Atlantic ocean to 1465-66, at least 26 years earlier than they actually took place. Sixteenth-century ottoman political and intellectual circles observed the recent geographical discoveries in the Atlantic Ocean closely, however, they consciously located these regions on the borders of their imperial vision and geographical knowledge. This chapter maintains that Piri Reis’s account was an early example of a larger corpus of geographical works reflecting a new era in ottoman history. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Ottoman curiosity and intellectual attention to distant regions of the world increased considerably. In a period when the ruling elite’s efforts focused more on the consolidation of Ottoman sovereignty in the regions already under the empire’s control, some members of the ottoman court commissioned geographical works on the far regions of the world in order to change and shape the imperial policies of the Ottoman state.
