Description

This scarce separately published map in Ottoman Turkish, lithographed in blue, brown and black, embraces the area on the Balkans between Bosnia, Serbia, Rumania, Istanbul and Greece with Corfu and the southernmost part of Apulia on the left-hand side. It was made in 1911 by the Military School in Istanbul. Shown are the new borders, important railroad lines and charts with connections between cities. The map also bears some contemporary annotations, such as train connections added in pencil in the area of Apulia and movement of the military troops on the Balkans, added in blue pencil.

The map was made in 1911, when the Balkan borders of the Ottoman Empire on the Balkans were collapsing one by one. The broken lines on the map mark the defined borders of the countries, as some are left open. Noticing the weakness of the Ottoman Empire in the same year Italy attacked the Tripolitania Vilayet, the North African territory belonging to the Ottomans, and the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea.

In the following year the Balkan League, formed by the kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro joined against the Ottoman Empire, starting the First Balkan War, which led to the creation of an independent Albania. The Balkan League succeeded in driving out the Ottoman Empire from its European provinces, leaving the Empire with only the Çatalca and Gallipoli peninsulas. The latter is on the map annotated with pencil lines.

In 1913 the Second Balkan war followed, when Bulgaria attacked its old allies Serbia and Greece. The Ottoman Empire used the situation to regain some of the old territories.

The manuscript editions in blue show the transfer of combat troops from Eastern Thrace to the Serbian borders through Bulgaria.

The map is a rare survival of the late Hamidian Ottoman cartography showcasing the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, with unique hand-written annotations of military movement.