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PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY
OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES
(1) See The Columbus papers: The Barcelona letter of 1493, the landfall controversy,
and the Indian Guides: a facsimile edition of the unique copy in the New York Public
Library: by Mauricio Obreg6n, with a new English translation by Lucia Graves;
New York, Toronto, Barcelona, 1991. The Latin translation of this letter publis-
hed in Rome was followed by at least sixteen more editions between 1493 and 1499;
see Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: the Southern Voyages,
A.D. 1492-1616, New York, 1974, pp. 90-91.
122 SVAT SOUCEK
sighted Brazil and sent one of his fourteen ships back to Portugal
to report the discovery. (2)
Cabral's expedition was a follow-up on another historical first,
Vasco da Gama's voyage around Africa to the Indian Ocean and
India, which the Portuguese captain reached in May
1498. (3) Nineteen-ninety-eight still lies ahead, and so do the
commemorative celebrations as well as storms of criticism likely to
buffet da Gama's three ships. Again without taking sides,
I would add that the dramatic, almost romantic epic of the
Voyages of Discovery from those launched by Henry the Naviga-
tor to those undertaken by Sir Francis Drake obscures the fact
that another and still greater discovery was entering history's cen-
ter stage and has occupied it ever since: a scientific and technologi-
cal revolution, man's discovery that he has the potential to unders-
tand and even control nature itself, with the prodigious (as well as
terrifying) consequences introduced by this discovery. (4)
(2) J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, London, 1963, pp. 142, 155.
(3) Parry, op. cit., p. 141-42; idem, The Discovery of the Sea, Berkeley, 1981,
p. 174. Parry questions the veracity of the generally accepted belief that the
famous Arab pilot Ibn Majid steered the Portuguese from the east African port of
Malindi to Calicut in India. Parry bases his doubts on the persuasive argument
that a Muslim of such reputation would hardly have consented to guide the Infi-
dels. On the other hand it is true that navigation in the Indian Ocean was prima-
rily peaceful and commercial, free from the religious confrontation plaguing the
Mediterranean. Ibn Mfjid might not have had the reaction the two Spanish-spea-
king Tunisian merchants showed when confronted by the Portuguese whom da
Gama sent ashore at Calicut as the first step toward establishing contact with the
"natives." It led to the following exchange: "'Ao diabo que te dou; quem te
trouxe ca?' E preguntaram-lhe o que vinhamos buscar t5o longe. E ele respondeu:
'Vimos buscar cristaos e especiaria.'" ("May the devil take you; what brought you
here?", and they asked him what we had come to look for so far from home. And
he answered: "We've come to look for Christians and spices"). This reply, written
down in Portuguese by da Gama's companion Alvaro Velho, has become the prover-
bial symbol of Europe's entry into the Indian Ocean. See Alvaro Velho, Roteiro da
Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama (1497-1499), ed. by A. Fontoura da Costa, Lis-
bon, 1969, p. 40; English translation by E. G. Ravenstein, A Journal of the First
Voyage of Vasco da Gama, London, 1898, pp. 48-49.
(4) The history of science is a relatively new discipline, and even newer is the
focus on the rise of modern science; the latter, essentially post-Sartonian, became
established with such works as H. Butterfield's The origins of modern science, 1300-
1800, London, 1949, or A. R. Hall's The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800, London,
1962 (3rd ed. as The Revolution in science, 1500-1750, London, 1983). The field is
experiencing a rapid growth with a proliferation of reappraisals, from T. S. Kuhn's
Structure of scientific revolutions, Chicago, 1970, to I. Bernard Cohen's Revolution in
science, Cambridge-London, 1985, and The Reappraisal of the Scientific Revolution,
ed. D. C. Lindberg and E. S. Westman, Cambridge UP, 1990. All these titles and
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 123
periodizations suggest the discipline's formative nature, but only closer examina-
tion reveals their virtually absolute Eurocentrism (dictated by the evidence, and
without deserving the derogatory connotation of the word). The reappraisals dif-
fer on a number of points, but they all agree on the fact that we are dealing with a
scientific and technological revolution or revolutions that have ushered in the
modern world. I would suggest a broadening of the concept so as to include the
transormation's philosophical, aesthetic and other related aspects, and call it an
intellectual revolution.
(5) One exception is the mystic's knowledge of the esoteric truth. Although
this experience is routinely believed attainable through any religion-or even inde-
pendently-, it plays, according to some, a fundamental role in Islam-in fact, it is
the very essence of Islam. This in turn would explain why Islam, despite the fact
that its civilization was perfectly capable of generating a Scientific Revolution of its
own, chose not to do so. This argument will be discussed at the end of my article.
124 SVAT SOUCEK
(6) Except for the basic and growing divergence between formal higher educa-
tion in Islam and Christendom, thus between the madrasa and the university, as
I shall try to show below.
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 125
for truth combined with a thirst for knowledge was now the gui-
ding principle of the vanguard scholars.
This, then, was the world in 1700, but it was Europe's world,
and the radical differrence between it and its contemporary Otto-
man, Chinese and other contemporaries elicits a host of ques-
tions. Why did this stupendous transformation happen in
Europe, but not elsewhere? Was it an anomaly, a freak accident
in history, or can we discern, at its inception, factors that made it
possible, perhaps inevitable in one civilization, but prevented it in
another? Was it perhaps Europe's incipient economic, colonial,
and even cultural aggression that thwarted such evolution else-
where? Or are there aspects where truth has been perverted by
Orientalism's incurable Eurocentrism, aspects that demand subs-
tantial revision, even rejection? And should we consider it our
duty to pronounce or accept severe moral censure aimed at
Europe, as we review this unique historical process?
Let us return to our chosen point of departure, 1400, and glance
at certain salient features in the evolution of the three major civili-
zations over the next three centuries that might offer some
clues. Although in 1400 Christian Europe, the Islamic Ottoman
Empire, and Confucian China stood at a comparable level of civili-
zation in science and technology, their psychological stance was by
no means identical: each of the three was about to formulate-or
reformulate-its major ideals and goals, and these radically diver-
ged, leading to a process that would eventually create the growing
chasm.
In Europe humanism and the Renaissance appeared, and with
them a shift from the primarily religious and spiritual (or should
we say next-worldly?) to the more this-worldly and experimen-
tal. True, in certain respects both humanism and the Renaissance
included decidedly medieval attitudes or had to coexist with linge-
ring medieval ideals: excessive acceptance of classical authority
and the persistent dream of recovering the Holy Sepulchre were
the most striking of such features. Both, however, contained ker-
nels of new and independent elements. His very reliance on Pto-
lemy's error would facilitate Columbu's discovery of America; the
medieval fanaticism of Henry the Navigator would propel the Por-
tuguese voyages of exploration; and Vesalius's admiration for
Galen would spur him on to correct his Greek mentor's theories
and produce his great book on anatomy, a prerequisite of modern
medicine. Europe's hostility to Islam too was medieval, but not
so her new idea of attacking it from the rear by circumnavigating
126 SVAT SOUCEK
(7) See Abbas Hamdani, "Columbus and the recovery of Jerusalem," Journal of
the American Oriental Society 99 (1979), pp. 39-48; Pauline Moffitt Watts, "Prophecy
and Discovery: on the spiritual origins of Christopher Columbus's 'Enterprise of the
Indies'," American Historical Review 90 (1985), pp. 73-102.
(8) Elizabeth Eisenstein, The printing press as an agent of change, Cambridge UP,
1979 (2 vols.). "The first attempt to use the new medium to arouse widespread
mass support was not in connection with Florentine humanism but with a late
medieval crusade, that is, with the war against the Turks" (p. 178); "...Church
officials hailed the new technology as a gift from God-as a providential invention
which proved Western superiority over ignorant infidel forces" (p. 303).
(9) There were recurring and sometimes important exceptions to this, as the
example of the Fondacco dei Turchi in Venice and of other Muslim Turkish colonies
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 127
in Italy shows; cf. Cemal Kafadar, "A death in Venice (1575); Anatolian Muslim
merchants trading in the Serenissima," Raiyyet Rusumi: Essays presented to Halil
Inalcik on his seventieth birthday, Harvard University, 1986, pp. 191-218. In terms
of long-distance trade, especially international maritime trade, however, these colo-
nies remained insignificant and never propelled the Ottoman Empire to launch an
economic expansion comparable to that undertaken by European powers.
(10) Juan Vernet-Ginbs, La cultura hispanodrabe en oriente y occidente, Barcelona,
1978, pp. 114-271; Thomas Goldstein, Dawn of modern science: from the Arabs to
Leonardo da Vinci, Boston, 1980, pp. 92-129.
(11) The process of supplementing the shari'a with governmental decrees went
back to the earliest times of Islam, but it was only under the Ottomans that this
secular branch of legislation acquired massive proportions and reinforced the cen-
128 SVAT SOUCEK
tralized structure of the state. Most historians attribute this coincidence to the
Central Asian and Turco-Mongolian roots of Ottoman political thought: the Turkic
tori and Mongol yasa re-emerged in the concepts of the sultans and their advisors
and theoreticians seeking to legitimize an autocracy especially pronounced since
Mehmed the Conqueror (1451-81). This process may have enhanced the effective-
ness of the governmental apparatus, especially on the level of fiscal administration,
but it did not secularize Ottoman society on the intellectual plane where not the
kanun but the shari'a continued to have the last word (at least until the end of the
17th century). See H. Inalcik, "Kanun," Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 4:
558-62; C. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Histo-
rian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600), Princeton UP, 1986, pp. 261-92.
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 129
(12) Das Asafname des Lutfi Pascha, ed. R. Tschudi, Berlin, 1910, p. 32.
(13) Saffet, "Bir Osmanli filosonun Sumatra seferi," Tarih-i Osmani Encimeni
mecmuasi, 1 (1317), pp. 604-14, 678-83.
(14) There were exceptions that confirm the general indifference: one is of course
Piri Reis himself; another is the anonymous Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi (1580; see Thomas
D. Goodrich, The Ottoman Turks and the New World: a study of the Tarih-i Hind-i
Garbi and sixteenth century Ottoman Americana, Wiesbaden, 1990). Selman Reis's
Layiha, Seydi Ali Reis's Muhit, as well as mappaemundi copied from European
models and included in several Turkish portolan chart atlases complete the 16th
century picture; in the 17th, the polymath KAtip (elebi (1611-58), together with
such of his peers as Evliya (elebi (1611-84), Hiiseyin Hezarfenn (1610-91), and Ebu
Behram Dimi?ki (fl. late 17th century) do represent an intellectual climate willing
to step beyond the established parameter of values and to seek a share in Europe's
intellectual revolution. As in the case of the Turkish trading colonies in Italy, or
in that of the Ottoman Empire's purported Indian Ocean policy, we are dealing
with situations or individuals atypical of the official policy or of the mainstream
elite's (as typified for example by Naima) intellectual span. This immediately
jumps to our eyes when we compare the volume, quality, and effect of "discovery"
literature (meant in the broadest sense of the world) in the Ottoman Empire with its
counterparts in contemporary Europe. Modern historiography has been mesmeri-
zed by atypical cases (on the pattern of the formula "the Ottomans closely followed
the discoveries overseas: thus Piri Reis..., etc., oblivious of his isolation and ulti-
mate end) to the point of drawing debatable conclusions; see for example Andrew
Hess, "The evolution of the Ottoman seaborne empire in the Age of the Oceanic
Discoveries, 1453-1525," American Historical Review 75 (1970), pp. 1892-1919; idem,
"Piri Reis and the Ottoman response to the Voyages of Discovery," Terrae Incogni-
tae 6 (1974), pp. 19-37; Abbas Hamdani, "Ottoman response to the discovery of
130 SVAT SOUCEK
America and the new route to India," Journal of the AmericanOrientalSociety 101
(1981), pp. 323-330. Heidrun Wurm's valuable book Der OsmanischeHistoriker
Hiiseyn b. Ga'fer,genanntHezarfenn,und die IstanbulerGesellschaftin der Zweiten
Halfte des 17. Jahrhunderts, Freiburg, 1971, portrays an intellectual climate some-
what reminiscent of 15th century Italy, when scholasticism began to be challenged
and new vistas were opening up. It is worth comparing the link that related
Florentine Renaissance to the achievements of 17th century scientific revolution
with the distance between Hezarfenn and contemporary Europe, however; here is
Dr. Wurm's own conclusion: "Hezarfenn... gibt sich in seinen Werken als ein
Mensch, dessen Sehnsucht vergangenen Zeiten gilt und dessen Leitbilder die grossen
Herrscher der Vergangenheit sind, besonders Sultan Selim I" (p. 157). It is true
that on p. 156 the author states that Hezarfenn may have voiced less conventional
views in his conversations with foreign visitors, and that Katip 0elebi no longer
believed a return to past values possible. The marginality of these harbingers of
an Ottoman enlightenment is illustrated, however, by the fact that the ban on
printing outlived them by yet another generation.
(15) Some of the real causes of the incipient and then precipitous Ottoman
decline began to be noticed by European observers as early as the 16th century, but
not by Ottoman observers. For the best survey of the decline's causes see Halil
Inalcik's Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600, London, 1973, especially
pp. 51-52, 158, 165-166, 176-177, 180-82 (besides a number of specific studies by this
foremost historian of the Ottoman Empire).
(16) Selim Niizhet Ger;ek, Tiirkiye'de matbaaciligi [Printing in Turkey], Istan-
bul, 1939, pp. 35 ff.; Abdulhak Adnan Adivar, Osmanli Tiirklerinde ilim (2nd rev.
ed., Istanbul, 1982, pp. 168 ff.; more frequently cited under its earliest edition in
French: A. Adivar, La science chez les Turcs Ottomans, Paris, 1939). Ibrahim Miite-
ferrika, a Hungarian convert to Islam, organized in the 1720s the first Turkish press
to publish books in Arabic script. Another century passed before the invention
appeared in Iran; the first book printed there was a Koran lithographed at Tehran
in 1240/1824-25; see Ddyirat al-ma'arif-i fdrsi, ed. Ghulamhusayn Musahib, 1345/
1966, vol. 1, p. 786 (the so-called Qur'dn-i mu tamidi, because of the press's sponsor
Manfchihr Khan Gurjl Mu'tamid al-Dawla).
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 131
rence. Early Muslim history is the idealized golden age when 'jus-
tice was pure and equity unmixed.' Islam will inevitably triumph
because it is 'better.' The Ottoman system needs much reworking
and restoration, but it is good and uniquely good and is destined to
endure..." I would also add that B. Lewis's definition of vigorous
intellectual life is valid strictly within this frame of reference; it
was a vigor of the past, however, and not of the modern kind a
society wishing to compete with Europe needed. Moreover,
B. Lewis emphasizes, by not so much as even mentioning it, the
glaring absence of that dimension of intellectual life which gave
Europe her sudden and overwhelming advantage-the scientific
and technological one (unless we exclude such works as Galileo's
Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, Tolemaico e Coper-
nico, or Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathemalica, or
again the invention and use of the telescope or of tools for celestial
navigation, from the sphere of intellectual history). Finally ano-
ther perspective on Naima may not be out of place: a comparison
with his older contemporary John Locke (1632-1704), author of the
ground-breaking Essays concerning human understanding, sheds
more light on the nature of the Ottoman crisis: Naima, a spokes-
man for his society's liberal elite, preaches a return to the values of
the past in order to save the Empire's future, whereas the English
philosopher is a harbinger of the Age of Enlightenment. In the
last analysis, the innermost core of Turkey's problem was the fact
that her elite lacked any genuine, spontaneous interest in modern
science and thought, independent of such motives as preserving
their empire or saving Islam from the infidel. In contrast, neither
Galileo nor Harvey, Locke, or any other discoverer or thinker for-
mulated his revolutionary theories in order to save a kingdom from
disintegration or Christendom from an external enemy, but
because of an internal need: a drive that may have had no less a
share in the intellectual revolution than such factors as the rise of
capitalism. It is this psychological dimension that is perhaps the
hardest to account for; it may have something to do with the
above-mentioned mutation through which the human spirit was
set free to use its investigative and critical faculties as the sole and
stimulating arbiter.
In short, the Ottoman observers of Ottoman decline saw the
ailment in the personal corruption of the personnel staffing the
system, but not in the system itself: the remedy they advised was a
return to their society's former virtues, not the thorough reform
the system needed; above all, none seems to have grasped the mea-
134 SVAT SOUCEK
(21) The circumstances of the execution are discussed in greater detail in my book
Piri Reis and Ottoman cartography after Columbus, London, 1992, pp. 101-104; see also
Cengiz Orhonlu, "Hint kaptanligi ve Piri Reis," Belleten 34 (1970), pp. 235-54.
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 135
of S. H. Nasr's Islamic Science, World of Islam Festival Publishing Co., 1976 (back,
besides plate 65). Such display is revealing of the intellectual reservoir the Muslim
world had at its disposal, but it is also misleading: for it obscures the different tack
the mainstream establishment took at this critical period.
(24) See Adivar, op. cit., pp. 99-109; Aydin Sayili, The observatory in Islam,
Ankara, 1988, pp. 289-305; Sevim Tekeli, 16'inci asirda Osmanlilarda saat ve
Takiyuddin'in mekanik saat konstriiksiyonuna dair "En parlak yildizlar" adli eseri
[Clocks in Ottoman Turkey in the 16th century and Taqi al-Din's work named "The
brightest stars" on the subject of construction of mechanical clocks], Ankara, 1966;
Ahmad Yfsuf al-Hasan, Taqi al-Din wa-'l-handasa al-mikanikiya al-'arabiya...,
Aleppo, 1986.
(25) Cohen, op. cit., pp. 117-25.
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 137
(26) The Cambridge History of China, vol. 7 (1988), pp. 232-36; Colin A. Ronan,
The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: an abridgement of Joseph Needham's
original text, vol. 3, Cambridge UP, 1986, pp. 128-59; Ma Huan, Ying-yai sheng-lan,
"The overall survey of the ocean's shores" (1433), tr. Feng Ch'en-chun, Cambridge,
1970.
(27) Ronan, op. cit., p. 148. "Showing the flag," spreading the fame of China's
might and grandeur far and wide is also cited as a probable component of the
expeditions' motivation. If so, it still constituted a remarkably enlightened form
of doing so. The glaring contrast between the sophisticated presents brought by
the Chinese and the paltry objects brought by the Portuguese (to be followed by the
Dutch and English who brought chiefly their own military superiority), and the
absence of any colonizing or proselytizing goals, complete the contrast between
China's and Europe's discovery voyages.
PIRI REIS AND OTTOMAN DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 139