The Sunderland Collection

Ibrahim Müteferrika appears to have commissioned much of the design of the atlas to a pair of named artists: Ahmedu’l-Kirimi’s (Ahmed the Crimean) name appears on eleven plates; Migirdic Galatavi (Migirdic of Galata – another suburb in Constantinople) appears on seven; and there is a suggestion that they were responsible for the decorative flourishes throughout the atlas, including the cartouches which neatly combine the baroque of their European cartographical counterparts and Ottoman artistic motifs.

The atlas includes twenty-seven double-page maps that depict geography extending from Japan to the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Among the maps are a double-hemisphere map of the world, the world on an oval projection, and maps showing Europe, Africa, Asia, the North and South Poles, Arabia, Japan, regional Asia, and - most notably - the first map of the Americas published in the Ottoman Empire. 

Kâtip Çelebi's atlas was completed in 1732 by Ibrahim Müteferrika, who added information obtained from translations of European atlases, such as Abu Bakr al-Dimashqi’s (d. 1691), translation of the Blaeu family '

en’ (1712). Müteferrika’s own personal interest in cartography is witnessed by the maps that he prepared himself: the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, Iran, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire, which is considered the first modern political and economic Ottoman map. 

In addition to the maps, Müteferrika takes credit for the planetary diagram, signing it ‘by the hand of the humble Ibrahim the geographer from among the stewards to the Exalted Throne’. He also includes an illustrated introduction to cosmography and astronomy based on the ideas of astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and 

. He is considered to be one of the first to introduce the Copernican, heliocentric, view of the Solar System to Ottoman readers.

Kâtip Çelebi’s ‘Cihannüma’ (‘Mirror of the World’) was the first atlas printed by İbrahim Müteferrika who operated the first printing house in Istanbul. Çelebi started compiling his ‘voluminous cosmography’ in 1648, however, an ongoing ban on printing in the Ottoman Empire prevented the ‘Cihannüma’ from being published until nearly 100 years after his death.

The atlas is an intriguing synthesis of European and Islamic cartography and cosmology. It included a comprehensive description of the regions of the world, extending westward from Japan and as far as the eastern Ottoman provinces. The ‘Cihannuma’ ('Mirror of the World') was the standard work of geography in the Ottoman Empire until well into the nineteenth century. This version is a deluxe issue in original binding, with plates and maps contain full contemporary hand-colour, and luxuriously heightened in gold.

Kâtip Çelebi (which loosely translates as 'Gentleman Scribe'), Mustafa bin Abdullah, Haji Khalifa or Kalfa, was an Ottoman scholar, historian, and geographer, who is regarded as one of the most productive authors of scientific literature in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire.

He is best known for his vast universal bibliographic encyclopaedia of books and sciences, the ‘Kaşf az-Zunūn’. The ‘Cihannuma’ (‘The Mirror of the World’) was first published in 1732, seventy-five years after the author's death by Ibrahim Müteferrika (1674–1747) who operated the first printing press in Istanbul and completed the work with updated maps.

The work presents a synthesis of European and Arabic cartographic traditions into a unique form, and would have served both as a tool for military and bureaucratic needs, as well as for educating Ottoman scholars and the elite. However, its influence was felt beyond the borders of Empire: Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon D’Anville (1697–1782) credits Katip Çelebi in his 'Memoire' accompanying his 1776 map of the Persian Gulf, valuing the ‘Cihannuma’ ('Mirror of the World') for 'the systematic descriptions, collected from a variety of sources, of those parts travellers.'

World map on Mercator's projection

Bosporus Strait, Turkey

Anatolia 

Arabian Peninsula

Caucasus 

Northwestern Iran

Transoxiana

Iran

North Indian Subcontinent

Desert of Iran

Coast of China

Borneo and surrounding Islands

Malacca Straits

Moluccas

Malay Archipelago

Indian Ocean

Guinea

Japan

Polar regions

Americas

Asia

Africa

Europe

Double Hemisphere World Map

Aegean Sea

Adriatic Sea

Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea

Compass diagrams for inclination and declination 

Circle diagrams showing cardinal directions and the names of winds

Table of Climes

Table and diagram of Climes

Climes

Orbital theories: Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus 

Diagrams showing Cosmological Systems and Planetary Orbits 

Constellations

Heavenly Spheres according to Ptolemy

Geocentric diagram of the Heavenly Spheres

The sun, moon, and Earth

The geometric shapes of the orbits

Model of an armillary sphere

A “watershed moment in the Europeanisation of Ottoman geographical literature” (Karamustafa), in which East meets West, synthesising European and Ottoman cartography and sensibilities. This is the first atlas to be printed at the first Islamic printing house in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), including the first map of America published in the Ottoman Empire. A superb deluxe issue of this important atlas: the plates and maps all with full contemporary hand-colour and heightened in gold.

The Mirror of the World

Cihannuma

Çelebi's 'Mirror of the World'