Atlas based on Katib Celebi's Cihannuma [Universal Geography]

Bound in green velvet, this little book contains a series of fold-out maps of the world executed in watercolour. Interspersed between them are text pages whose contents are extracted from the first version of the Cihannuma, the famous but unfinished Turkish geography written in the mid-seventeenth century by the Ottomam scholar Katib Celebi (1609-57). Several features - including the style of its paintings, the political geography of its maps, and its European watermarks, date this book to the second half of the 18th century. Though based on the Cihannuman, the manuscript is not a simple copy, but a highly idiosyncratic adaptation whose maps and text place particular focus on the Ottoman Empire's Balkan provinces, which is where it may have been produced

Manuscript is fragile. Requests to consult the original manuscript should be emailed to docenquiry@soas.ac.uk and marked for the attention of the Head of Special Collections and Archives

Restrictions Apply

Presented to SOAS by the Earl Henry Herbert Kitchener, the Viscount Broome.

H15 x W14cm.

For permission to publish, please contact Archives & Special Collections, SOAS Library in the first instance