Piri Reis (full name Hadji Muhiddin Piri ibn Hadji Mehmed) was an Ottoman Turkish admiral and
cartografer born in 1465 in
Gallipoli on the Aegean coast of Turkey. He is famous for his maps collected in his Kitab Bahriye (Book of Navigation) , a book which contains detailed information on navigation as well as extremely accurate charts describing the important ports and cities of the Mediterranian Sea. He gained fame as a
cartografer when a small part of his first world map prepared in 1513 was discovered in 1929 at Topkapi Palase in Istanbul.The Piry Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the nordern coast of Antarctica. The coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discoverd, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC. All trough the Middle Ages were circulating a number of sailing charts called "
portolani", which were accurate maps of the most sailing routes, showing coastlines, harbors, straits, bays,etc. Most of those portolani focused on the Mediterranian and the Aegean seas, and other known routes, just as the sailing book which Piri Reis himself had written. But a few reported of still unknown lands, were circulating among few sailors who seemingly kept their knowledge about those speciale maps as hidden as they could. Columbus is supposed to have been one of those who knew these special sailing charts. To draw his map,Piri Reis used several different sourses, collected here and there along his journeys. He himself has written notes on the map, that give as a picture of the work he had been doing on the map. He says he had been not responsible for the original surveying and cartografy. His role was merely that of a compiler who used a large number source-maps. He says then that some of the source-maps had been drown by contemporary sailors, while others were instead chart of great antiquity, dating back up to the 4th centure BC or earlier. Piri Reis refused to support the Ottoman governor of Basra Kubad Pasha, in another campaign against the Portugese in the northern Persian Gulf, and was publicly beheaded in 1555.