Mahmoud Raif Efendi was the Secretary of the first Ottoman Embassy in London. Efendi was a government official with influential connections in the Ottoman court. 

During his time in England, he held regular meetings and fostered relationships with figures such as 

. During his trip to London, he produced the ‘Ucalet - ül Geography’ (c. 1795), a book outlining the advantages of geography. 

After returning to Istanbul in 1796, Efendi produced the

, which was a translation of William Faden’s ‘General Atlas’ (1798). Inspired by the cartography Efendi had seen in Europe, the book was the first folio atlas published in the Muslim world and included twenty-four copperplate maps and a celestial chart.