I'm deep in the history of cartography and exploration at present for the book I'm writing about the
Portuguese in
Asia. As they worked their way down the coast of
Africa in the middle years of the fifteenth century, their discoveries were avidly followed by the mapmakers, noting each successive bay or cape as it was named. By the end of the century
Lisbon was the go-to place for cartography. Maps were knowledge and power. The Portuguese tried vainly to prevent their leakage to foreign powers but fifty years earlier, when
Venice was the clearing house for everything that was known from travellers' tales, the King of Portugal, Afonso V, commissioned a map of the world from a monk on the island on Murano.
Fra Mauro, who had been a soldier and adventurer before taking to the cloister, produced a remarkable image, summarizing all that was reasonably known about the world, and annotating it with his comments and judgements. The map was orientated with south to the top, but is here rotated to make us feel more at home with ways of seeing the world. It includes tantalizing information - the idea that the Chinese had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope - but what was revolutionary, apart from its scepticism about the ideas of the classical authors who had dominated thinking for so long, was that it clearly presented Africa as a continent that could be circumnavigated to reach
India. (There was a widely prevailing view that the
Indian Ocean was probably a closed sea.)
The Mauro Map was a powerful incentive for the Portuguese kings to continue investing in voyages down the coast of Africa to seek a seaway to the east, which would end with Vasco da Gama's arrival on the shores of
India in 1498.
The Portuguese map has disappeared, but the Venetians also had a copy. It hangs in the Biblioteca Nationale Marciana in
Venice. It's reported that when the doge saw the map he complained to the monk that he'd made
Venice disproportionately small for its importance. 'That's the size it is' came back the reply - Mauro was not to be budged from his notions of objective truth. By the time the Portuguese had stolen some of
Venice's spice trade after Vasco da Gama, it might have seemed still smaller.
There's a good little
video on the significance of Mauro's map produced by the British Library.
After reading your book on Venice I can understand why the doge didn't think the size was appropriate for Venice. . .got a good chuckle out of that!
ReplyDeleteThe Venetians also made the fatal mistake of presenting the Portuguese with a copy of Marco Polo's travels - which further spurred them on to see what's round the corner!
DeleteRegarding your point about the map having south at the top you may be able to clarify an issue for me I have always meant to follow up.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that early Muslim maps were usually drawn with south at the top. Also, my further understanding is that early compasses were constructed in such a way as to point south. This was certainly so at the time of Fra Mauro in the 15th century.
So I am wondering what connection, if any, there is between the design of maps and workings of the compass at that point in history? Were compasses a Muslim invention? Which came first, south pointing compasses or maps with a south up orientation? Why didn’t the north up format of Ptolemy persist?
I am reminded at this point that whenever I wander through the public corridors of the Vatican I usually pause at the large map of Sicily which is “upside down” but the era of its making escapes me.
A trip to the library for a bit of intensive study next week is needed I think. My retirement is always busy and often involves the library. Fortunately, they haven’t yet started closing libraries here in Australia as I hear they are doing in Britain
Hi Brian,
ReplyDeleteTo be honest I don't know the answer to your questions. I haven't studied Muslim maps enough to know why/if they always had south at the top. I would have thought orientations towards the Kaaba might have been important too. (Plus early Christian maps orientated - pointing to the east - on Jerusalem.) The compass seems to have been a Chinese invention and there's not much evidence that the Islamic world had compasses much before Europe, which would be mysterious as most transmissions, such as gunpowder, would I guess have come via the Arab world. It looks as if the Chinese drew maps that orientated both north and south.
My guess is that the map of Sicily probably dates from the age of the Normans in Sicily - the 12th century - who had a strong Arab influence in their court. There's a famous Arab-Norman map from this time called the Tabula Rogeriana (The Book of Roger) produced in Sicily by someone called al-Idrisi, which has south at the top.
It would be interesting to know more - if you make it to a still-existent library!