Piri Reis
Piri Reis was an Ottoman Turkish cartographer, admiral, navigator, and corsair. He is best known for his 1513 world map and his nautical atlas, the Kitab-ı Bahriye. His maps combined classical sources, his own seafaring knowledge, and information from new European discoveries. His cartography was more engaged with the Age of Discovery than other Ottoman works from the period.
Piri Reis began his maritime career sailing with his uncle, the corsair Kemal Reis, with whom he entered Ottoman naval service. He later commanded his own ship in the Ottoman–Venetian wars and, following his uncle’s death, began the cartographic work for which he became best known. Returning to the Ottoman fleet by 1516, he took part in the conquest of Egypt. He presented his world maps and atlases as gifts to the Ottoman Sultan, and commanded a small group of ships in naval operations in the eastern Mediterranean. Later, as grand admiral of the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean, Piri Reis led successful campaigns in the Red Sea, but was executed following his retreat from the siege of Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
During his lifetime, Piri Reis' cartography received little appreciation, but many copies of the Kitab-ı Bahriye were produced after his death. The 1929 rediscovery of his first world map, during renovations to the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, increased interest in his work in part because it cites many contemporary Portuguese explorers and a now-lost map by Christopher Columbus. The rediscovery made his career a point of national pride for Turkey. Although the map has been the subject of fringe theories based on the disproven hypothesis that the map depicted an ice-free Antarctica, studies have shown no significant similarities between the map and Antarctica's subglacial coast. Nevertheless, this speculation has increased interest in Piri Reis' cartography.
Early life and piracy
The only primary sources covering Piri Reis' early life are his own surviving cartographic works. He was likely born between 1465 and 1470 in Gelibolu, Turkey, also known as Gallipoli. It was a major naval base for the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim power in the Mediterranean, spanning Anatolia and much of the Balkans in Eastern Europe. Ibn Kemal, an Ottoman historian active during the 1500s, wrote that Gelibolu had a strong maritime tradition where the town's children were "rocked to sleep with the lullaby of the sea and of the ships day and night." This would have shaped Piri's upbringing, according to Turkish historian Afet İnan. Born Muhiddin Piri, he later earned the rank Reis, equivalent to a captain in the Ottoman Navy. He wrote that his father's name was Hacı Mehmed. His uncle Kemal Reis was a notable corsair, a type of pirate acting with state approval, often along religious lines, in the Mediterranean Sea.Across decades of naval service and piracywhich began at a young agePiri Reis created notes and charts that would later inform his cartography. Piri Reis began sailing aboard his uncle's ship as a child around 1481. According to cartography scholar Ibrahim Yilmaz, Piri Reis' parents likely died around this time. Years later, Piri Reis described how a storm nearly destroyed their galley while in a small stony harbor near Mount Athos in modern-day Greece. While sheltering from rough seas, Eastern Orthodox monks came to the water with ropes and tied the galley down until the storm passed.
His first recorded naval combat experience came when Kemal Reis sailed west with Sultan Bayezid II's approval. Along with other Ottoman corsairs, they fought against Catholic forces to aid the Emirate of Granada, the last Muslim-ruled territory in Iberia. As a teenager, Piri Reis helped his uncle bombard the Catholic forces laying siege to Málaga in 1487. Málaga fell by the end of 1487 and Granada by 1492. After Spain expelled its Jewish population in 1492, Sultan Bayezid II instructed Kemal Reis to aid religious refugees. Piri Reis transported Muslims and Jews from Spain to North Africa.
Barbary corsairs led by Kemal Reis continued to threaten European maritime traffic. Piri Reis wrote that they "sailed on the Mediterranean and fought the enemies of our religion mercilessly." During winters, he and his uncle took shelter in harbors on the Barbary Coast in North Africa, including Béjaïa in modern-day Algeria. For six summers from 1488 to 1493, they conducted raids along the coasts of Spain, Southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily.
Naval career and cartography
Like many Ottoman corsairs of the period, Piri and Kemal Reis were recruited into the Ottoman Navy by Bayezid II. When the Ottoman Empire imprisoned Kemal Reis for piracy in 1495, rather than sentencing him, the sultan gave him an official position in the navy. As Piri Reis later documented in the Kitab-ı Bahriye, they advocated taking the Venetian coastal fortresses of the Peloponnese and the strategically valuable island of Rhodes, located just off the coast of Anatolia and capable of threatening maritime communication with the empire's Mediterranean ports.In the early 1500s, Piri Reis fought in the Ottoman–Venetian wars as a captain under his uncle's command. Like other Ottoman captains, he operated a galley, a shallow oar-driven warship well suited to the Mediterranean coasts. During the 1499 Battle of Zonchio, Piri Reis sailed in a fleet of about 270 ships that broke through the Venetian fleet to enter the Gulf of Corinth, forcing the governor to surrender. Kemal Reis led the Ottomans to victory in the 1500 Battle of Modon and the following year in battles to retake Modon and capture Navarino. After these victories, the Ottoman Navy began to consolidate control over the Eastern Mediterranean.
Piri and Kemal returned to the Western Mediterranean, raiding the coasts of Spain and nearby islands in 1501. In a naval battle near Valencia, they captured a Spaniard who said he had sailed with Columbus, and likely possessed an early map of the Americas that Piri Reis would later use as a source for his maps. They also took exotic new world materials including parrot feathers and black stones that could cut metal. In 1502, they returned to Constantinople and soon resumed hostilities with Venice.
After his uncle died in a shipwreck c. 1511, Piri Reis returned to Gelibolu to work on his navigational studies. There, he completed the world map for which he is best known today. Dated to March 1513 AD, the manuscript depicts the recently explored shores of the Americas and Africa. By 1513, Piri Reis was sailing for the Ottomans under Hayreddin Barbarossa along the North African coast.
During the 1516–1517 Ottoman conquest of Egypt, Piri Reis commanded the Ottoman ships blockading Alexandria. After the Ottoman victory, Piri Reis presented his world map to Sultan Selim I. How Selim used the map is unknown, as it vanished from history until its rediscovery centuries later.
Venetian documents report that Piri Reis left the Ottoman Navy in 1518 to engage in piracy again. By 1522, he rejoined the navy and took part in Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent's Siege of Rhodes, for which he had advocated. Controlled by the Knights of St. John, the island provided shelter to Christian pirates. Piri Reis' first version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye—a nautical atlas dedicated and gifted to Suleiman—included advice on conquering the island, but the second version, completed after the conquest, only discussed the siege in terms of acquiring drinking water.
Suleiman's reign was the beginning of a shift towards power concentrating in a group of viziers, advisers, governors, and royal family members. His childhood friend Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha rose to become the Ottoman grand vizier, or chief minister. When putting down Hain Ahmed Pasha's 1524 rebellion in Egypt, Ibrahim rode aboard the navy's flagship, commanded by Piri Reis. The longer second version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye resulted from a conversation with the grand vizier, during which Piri Reis said they discussed cartography after Ibrahim asked him about the maps and charts used aboard the ship. Ibrahim commissioned Piri Reis to create an expanded version of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, which he finished and presented to the sultan by 1526. Ibrahim Pasha was executed in 1536, and no surviving works of Piri Reis' cartography date past this point.
During the 1530s, Piri Reis attacked Venetian targets in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1532, he led a group of five galleys and three fustassmaller and lighter variants of the galleyagainst Dalmatian pirates in the Adriatic, the branch of the Mediterranean Sea leading to Venice. The following year, he attacked the Venetian-held castle at Coron in the Peloponnese, with 10 galleys and five fustas, captured a Venetian galley in 1536, and chased down Venetian ships in the Eastern Mediterranean throughout the late 1530s. When he received a promotion to admiral in Egypt in 1546, during the brief period of peace between the Third and Fourth Ottoman–Venetian Wars, he attacked the Venetian ship Liona along his route, killing several sailors and capturing others. The Venetian Bailo of Constantinople, a diplomat, sought freedom for the captured sailors but Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha sided with Piri Reis. Before departing for Egypt, he sold off his properties in Constantinople: his home, garden, and vineyard. He left with his family and all of his money, suggesting he did not plan to return.
Grand admiral of the Indian Ocean fleet
After the death of Yahudi Sinan, the or grand admiral of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean, Piri Reis took his position as admiral of the Indian Ocean fleet, as well as admiral of the Egyptian fleet. Although experienced in Mediterranean naval warfare, he arrived as a relative outsider to the conflicts unfolding around the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese and Ottoman empires were both expanding into the Indian Ocean at this time. Portuguese ships had arrived in the Indian Ocean in the early 1500s, raiding the Red Sea as far as Suez, Egypt, and attempting to gain control of the port city of Aden in Yemen.The Portuguese Navy employed sailing ships capable of navigating in open seas, whereas the Ottoman Navy relied mainly on galleys, which were more effective along coasts. This limited Ottoman naval warfare to the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the narrow straits around Arabia. The Ottoman Empire focused on using its navy to continue land-based expansion into new areas for tax revenue and agriculture, in contrast to the Portuguese, who were attempting to control new oceanic trade routes between Europe and Asia. The Ottoman Empire was additionally split in its Indian Ocean endeavors between the central government managed by Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha—who was seeking to turn the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf into "Ottoman Lakes," as the Black Sea had become—and regional leaders, who were attempting to preserve their autonomy.
Using his fleet based out of Suez, Piri Reis led campaigns in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Just prior to his promotion to admiral in Egypt, the empire lost Aden, its only port on the Indian Ocean since the city's conquest just a decade earlier. The city, built into the crater of an extinct volcano on one arm of a crescent-shaped bay, was known as the "Eye of Yemen" because of its position at the entrance to the Red Sea along sea routes to Indian and East African ports. Üveys Pasha, the governor of Yemen Eyalet, led a disastrous campaign to expand Ottoman territory inland into the highlands of Yemen that resulted in his assassination, a rebellion in Yemen's interior, and Aden's departure from the Ottoman Empire. Urban leaders in Aden ceded their city to a local Arab chief, Ali al-Tawlaki, who immediately sent an ambassador to the Portuguese outpost on Hormuz Island to seek protection and alliance. The most senior remaining Ottoman leader in Yemen was Özdemir Pasha, who wrote the Ottoman governor of Egypt to seek his assistance.
Piri Reis left Suez to aid Özdemir Pasha with a fleet of 60 ships on 29 October 1547. The fleet dropped off reinforcements on the shore of Yemen outside the range of Aden's cannons, then continued to Aden's crescent-shaped bay to besiege the city by sea. The two Portuguese ships that had arrived under the command of Dom Paio de Noronha were not enough to stop the Ottoman Navy or the Ottoman land army that quickly overran the city. On 26 February 1548, the forces under Piri Reis recaptured the citadel of Aden. When another small group of Portuguese ships arrived in January 1549 and found the Ottoman Navy in the bay, they attempted to flee, but Piri Reis had his fleet pursue them, capture the Portuguese sailors, and set fire to their ships.
Following the success at Aden, Sultan Suleiman instructed Piri Reis to take the Portuguese-controlled Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Taking Bahrain Island was a secondary objective. In April 1552, Piri Reis left Suez with 25 galleys, five sailing ships, and 850 soldiers. While the fleet was at sea, Rüstem Pasha, who had previously offered protection, was dismissed from his position as Grand Vizier. The Sultan's official plan had been for Piri Reis to bring his fleet past the Portuguese unnoticed, and to merge the Suez fleet with the recently formed Ottoman fleet in the Persian Gulf. However, the fleet was spotted by a light Portuguese galley captained by Simão da Costa who was able to sail in advance to Hormuz, and Piri Reis decided to attack Portuguese strongholds directly. In August, the Ottoman Fleet took Muscat after a one-month siege. When the Portuguese garrison surrendered, the Ottoman forces under Piri Reis took them prisoner and forced them to work the oars on galleys in the fleet.
The Ottomans pillaged the area, destroyed fortifications, regrouped, and continued to Hormuz as a consolidated fleet. The expedition cleared the Arabian Peninsula coast of Portuguese occupation, and the Portuguese forces prepared for the coming attack on Hormuz by evacuating most of the island. Wealthy Hormuz residents took refuge on the nearby island of Qeshm, and the Portuguese soldiers and the Hormuz royal family retreated to the fortress.
Ottoman soldiers entered the city of Hormuz in September 1552, but could not take the fortress. They besieged and bombarded it for several weeks. The Ottoman forces ran low on gunpowder during the siege and Piri Reis wrote to Basra for supplies, but the Ottoman governor there, Kubad Pasha, sent nothing. Sixteenth-century Portuguese historian Diogo do Couto wrote that Kubad Pasha had been instructed to assemble a naval force large enough to deliver 15,000 men to Hormuz, but these reinforcements never arrived. Relying on the imprisoned Portuguese commander from Muscat as an advisor, Piri Reis grew concerned about a possible Portuguese counterattack and lifted the siege.
The Ottomans looted the city of Hormuz, plundered the nearby island Qeshm, and retreated into the Gulf with over a million pieces of gold. A letter from the Portuguese governor inside the fortress, dated 31 October 1552, said that the walls had been near collapsing but that the Ottomans had run low on "munitions, gunpowder, and other war materials," much of which they had lost when a galleona type of larger sailing shipsank on the way to Hormuz. The Portuguese governor of India,, organized a fleet of 40 ships led by his nephew Antão de Noronha that reached Hormuz in November 1552.
The Ottoman fleet retreated into the Persian Gulf, bypassed their secondary target Bahrain, and arrived at Basra by 1553. They received a cold welcome from Kubad Pasha who denied Piri Reis rowers for his galleys. Historian Svat Soucek suggested that hostility between the two men "may have been at the root" of Piri Reis' decision to return to Egypt quickly as well as the "accusatory report the Pasha probably sent to Constantinople." Leaving most of the fleet behind, Piri Reis returned with only two ships in 1553. The gold he brought back to Egypt played a role in his death sentence.
Accusations of looting and bribery led to Piri Reis' execution in Cairo, Egypt. Ottoman histories criticize Piri Reis for looting Qeshm, and some even alleged that he had been bribed. Although those allegations were unlikely, they may have been believed at the time of his execution. Contemporary Ottoman historian İbrahim Peçevi wrote that "although the bribe charge was implausiblethe deigned to believe it and issued an order of execution." When a delegation from Hormuz traveled to Constantinople to demand compensation for the looted gold shortly after Piri Reis' death, they were dismissed for lack of proof. This dismissal, according to Soucek, "suggests that no effort had been made to probe" the allegations against Piri Reis before his execution. Venetian diplomats in Constantinople sent a letter dated 15 November 1553 stating that Piri Reis had been "charged with having raised the siege of the fortress of Hormuz because of bribery" and replaced by Seydi Ali Reis. It was for sacking the city instead of maintaining the siege that the sultan had him beheaded in Cairo, the exact date of which is unknown.
Soon after his death, Piri Reis' fleet in Basra was destroyed by the Portuguese. Seydi Ali Reis attempted to return the fleet to Suez but the Portuguese intercepted them and the Ottoman ships were captured, destroyed, or swept out to sea.