An Ottoman Cosmography: Translation of Cihānnümā (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East, 142)

Book info: An Ottoman Cosmography: Translation of Cihānnümā (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East, 142) (Hardcover, 708 pages) – Brill, 2021. Language: English.

Cihānnümā is the summa of Ottoman geography and one of the axial texts of Islamic intellectual history. Kātib Çelebi (d. 1657) sought to combine the Islamic geographical tradition with the new European discoveries, atlases and surveys. His cosmography included a comprehensive description of the regions of the world, extending westward from Japan and as far as the eastern Ottoman provinces. Ebū Bekr b. Behrām ed-Dimaşḳī (d. 1691) continued with a survey of the Arab countries and the remaining Ottoman provinces of Anatolia. İbrāhīm Müteferriḳa combined the two, with additional notes and maps of his own, in one of the earliest Ottoman printed books, Kitāb-ı Cihānnümā (1732). Our translation includes the entire text of Müteferriḳa’s edition, distinguishing clearly between the contributions of the three authors. Based on Kātib Çelebi’s original manuscript we have made hundreds of corrections to Müteferriḳa’s text. Additional corrections are based on comparison with Kātib Çelebi’s Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Latin and Italian sources. Editorial Reviews Review “Every research library, especially those with special collections devoted to geography or cartography, should purchase An Ottoman Cosmography. It is a monumental contribution to the fields of early modern history, the history of geography and cartography, and Ottoman studies, and its team of editors and translators should be commended for a job well done.”
Zayde Antrim, Der Islam (2022). About the Author Gottfried Hagen (PhD Freie Universität Berlin, 1996) is Professor of Turkish Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Ein Osmanischer Geograph bei der Arbeit. Entstehung und Gedankenwelt von Kātib Čelebis Ǧihānnümā (2003, Turkish translation 2017) and many articles on Ottoman geography, cartography, and cosmology.
 
Robert Dankoff (PhD Harvard University, 1971) is Professor Emeritus of Turkish and Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is Ottoman Explorations of the Nile (2018, with Nuran Tezcan and Michael D. Sheridan).