«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 168 n George Tsoutsos, Christos Teazis continent are mapped. His second work (1521, though its editing lasted 45 years) is a geographical book, which also explains the economic and social aspects of the Mediterranean. His third work (1528) is a local map which draws the distance from Constantinople to the central and south coasts of the American continent 1 . Concerning the World Atlas Piri Reis himself writes: “This is a unique map such as no one has ever produced, and I am his author. I have used 20 maps as well as mappae mundi . The latter derive from the prototype that goes back to the time of Alexander the Great and covers the entire inhabited world; the Arabs call such maps ja‘fariyyah . I have used eight such ja‘fariyyahs . Then I have used an Arab map of India, as well as maps made by four Portuguese who applied math- ematical methods to represent India and China. Finally, I have also used a map drawn by Columbus in theWest. I have brought all these sources to one scale, and this map is the result. In other words, just as the sailors of Mediterranean have reliable and well tested charts at their disposal, so this map of the Seven Seas is also reliable and worthy of recognition” 2 . In this text Piri Reis himself refers to the classical Arabic cartography and possibly to the maps of Claudius Ptolemaeus, the famous Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer fromAlexandria 3 . Many researchers reckon that Piri Reis did not draws directly from the so-called “map of Alexander the Great”, but from the map of the Venetian Bartolommeo dalli Sonneti that was published in 1482. B. Slot points out that there is no way to investigate the reference of Piri Reis to the “map of Alexander the Great”. He also points out that even if there are many similari- ties between the books of Piri Reis and Bartolommeo, there are differences as well. For example, Piri Reis covers more locations than Bartolommeo does, and is more the type of a navigator who gives useful nautical information i.e. sea water depth and the existence of fresh water. According to Slot, “the most conspicuous difference between the Ottoman and the Italian is the cul- tural background.” Bartolommeo is a Renaissance man “well versed in the ancient Greek mythology”. On the other hand, “typical for the mixed Islam- ic — Christian legends found among the Turks of that time, is what Piri tells about the relics of Saint John on the island of Patmos. According to him the relics were carried to the Balat quarter of İstanbul, but every time the Saint mysteriously returned home” 4 . When Piri Reis maps Crete, he is obviously 1 Levy R. Op.cit. P. 563–565. 2 Svat S. Piri Reis and the Persian Gulf // Uluşlararası Piri Reis sempozyumu tebliğler kitabı, 27–29 September 2004, İstanbul Deniz Kuvvetleri Komutanliği Seyir Hidrografi ve Oşinografi Dairesi Başkanlığı. İstanbul, 2004. P. 4–31. 3 Ptolemy // The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary. London: Book Club Associates. P. 682. 4 Slot B. J. Piri Reis’s Kitab-ı-Bahriye // Hadeeth al-Dar. Kuwait: Dar al-Athar al-Islami- yyah, 2008.Vol. 25. P. 27–30. See also V. Christides. The Conquest of Crete by the Arabs (ca. 824). A turning Point in the Struggle between Byzantium and Islam. Athens, 1984. P. 27, 100.