Mapping the Center of the World: Constantinople in the Early Modern Ottoman Geographical and Imperial Consciousness

This paper aims to investigate the close relationship between cartographical productions of the Ottoman imperial capital, Constantinople and the articulation of imperial ideology in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire. The sixteenth century saw a radical transformation in the character and use of maps. After Ptolemy’s Geography was translated into Latin in the early fifteenth century, humanist scholars in Europe were exposed to a set of new techniques. Ptolemy’s works introduced a geometric approach to the depiction of space that was defined by the celestial grid of longitude and latitude. In the same period, innovations in printing and the expansion of a commercial market increased circulation as maps found a new audience, literate urbanites. Commercial map-printing houses of Italy and the Netherlands contributed to the standardization of maps used and distributed across Europe. Mapping in this period shaped how cartographers, intellectuals, and ruling elites conceived space, territory, and political power.

Although this new development impacted the Ottoman world, the Ottoman cartographers and their works have not yet fully been integrated into these discussions. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature through a historical analysis of select cartographical works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries including historian Matrakçı Nasuh’s (d. 1564) Mecmu‘-i Menazil (The Collected Stages) and geographer Katip Çelebi’s (d. 1657) translation of Gerardus Mercator’s Atlas Minor. In doing so, it will argue that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ottoman ruling elites and cartographers began understanding their realms and measuring their imperial authority in spatial terms. The cartographical depictions of Constantinople in this period reflected changes in Ottoman imperial ideology and demonstrate how Ottoman geographers repositioned their imperial capital at the center of the world.