Description

INCUNABLE OF THE OTTOMAN MODERN CARTOGRAPHY

على شرف پاشا Ali ŞEREF PAŞA (also Hafız Ali and Hafız Ali Eşref, Istanbul ? – 1907).

يكى اطلاس
[Yeni Atlas / New Atlas]

Paris: 1285 [1869].

Large quarto, [2], 22 double-page maps, lithographed in colour, bound tan wrappers in recent elegant light brown calf binding with black tooling and lettering, recent marbled endpapers (Very Good, minor foxing and staining, sporadic small tears in margins, a small piece of tape in the lower part of the front wrapper).

This exceedingly rare atlas is the first in the Ottoman language to be printed using lithography. It was likely produced in a limited number by Ali Şeref Paşa at the conclusion of his studies in cartography in Paris, where he was sent by the Ottoman government to learn about new Western techniques of map-making.

The atlas features 22 elegantly crafted maps of the world, continents, European countries, and the Ottoman Empire, all lithographed in vivid colors and adorned with oriental patterns in the margins. In the introduction, Hafiz Ali mentions that the atlas was based on maps created by Professor Boutet de Monvel at Lycée Bonaparte, where he studied.

The double-page maps are:
– General geography with the highest mountains and longest rivers,
– Map of the World,
– Europe,
– Asia,
– Africa,
– North America,

– South America,
– Australia and Oceania,
– Rumelia with an in-set map of Crete,
– Anatolia, Levant and Egypt,
– The Red Sea with Hejaz, Egypt and an in-set map of the Suez Canal (opened in the same year, this atlas was published!),
– France with an in-set map of Corsica,
– Great Britain with in-set map of the Shetland Islands,
– Prussia,
– European part of Russia,
– Austro-Hungary,
– Italy,
– The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg,
– Scandinavia,
– Spain and Portugal,
– Switzerland,
– Asian part of the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Tatarstan, Afghanistan and Baluchistan.

Ali Şeref Paşa – The Pioneer of the Modern Ottoman Cartography

Ali Şeref Paşa (also known as Hafız Ali Eşref) was a soldier and cartographer who graduated from the Military Academy in Istanbul and was sent by the Ottoman government to Paris in 1862 to study modern cartographic methods and the emerging technique of colour lithography. His training formed part of the Tanzimat reforms aimed at modernizing Ottoman science and technical production.

In 1869, while still a student in Paris, Ali published his first atlas. Containing 22 folio sized maps lithographed in vivid colours and adorned with decorative Ottoman lettering, it stands as the first modern Ottoman lithographed atlas and established the technical foundation for all subsequent Ottoman atlases.
Upon returning to Istanbul, Ali Şeref Paşa pursued a successful career in both cartography and the military. He introduced lithography as a printing technique for cartographic works in the capital and, in the following years, commissioned a series of folio maps that were later assembled into another large format atlas, ىگى جغرافىا آطلسى (Yeni Coğrafya Atlası / The New Geographic Atlas, 1892–1894). This was the first chromolithographed large format atlas printed in the Ottoman Empire, and likely the first of its kind in the Islamic world, making his Paris acquired expertise fully available within Ottoman scholarly and military circles.

Ali Şeref Paşa’s most ambitious late project was a 100 sheet map of Anatolia, based on Heinrich Kiepert’s map of the same region. At his death in 1907, the work remained unfinished. Individual sheets of the intended wall map were issued separately and today survive only rarely on the market.

We are aware of 3 institutional examples in Western libraries and collections (Library of Congress, University of Chicago and David Rumsey Map Collection).

References: OCLC 869856294. Osmanlı coğrafya literatürü tarihi. History of Geographical Literature during the Ottoman Period, 2000, pp. 378-379.