For a long time, scientific development and progress has been seen as a purely European achievement, and hailed as a marker for Europe’s progress, and decline in other parts of the world. In line with a general pushback against decline theories in world historiography, historians of science have been attempting to correct this rather reductionist and simplistic notion for some time now. One area in which they have worked is in trying to understand science beyond its usual technical definitions. Sonja Brentjes, a historian of science in Islamic societies, makes that claim that the only thing that can be universally agreed upon in terms of science is that it is culturally constructed.¹ Thus instead of thinking of Science as a category of European exclusivity, one sees scientific activity in various societies over time, and more importantly, scientific activity as part of systems of cultural exchange networks between various early modern states.

A good place to apply this notion would be in early modern Ottoman society. Beyond asking what “Ottoman science” was, Shefer-Mossenshohn notes that it is more useful to ask about “how Ottomans engaged with knowledge and multiple ways of knowing? What was worthwhile for the Ottomans to know, and how did they go about learning them?” This not only encapsulates the Ottoman experience of science, but would also give us an idea about what is behind the label of “science” in the context of the early modern age in a Middle Eastern context.² Shefer-Mossenshohn also points out that networks were an important organizational factor in Ottoman scientific activity, and that the Ottoman state was responsible for a measure of bureaucratization in scientific activity since the early modern period. He is in agreement with other, more recent historians of Ottoman science such as Harun Küçük, in that Ottoman science was multilayered, eclectic and occurred ın a practical manner.³ Küçük, on his part, classifies Ottoman scientific activity in the seventeenth century as practical naturalism, since it was neither artisanal knowledge, nor was it quite applied science.⁴

Conceptions of scientific activity as cultural exchange between European states and the Ottoman Empire helps us understand Ottoman scientific activity from a multilayered perspective. Taking the example of cartography in the Ottoman empire, we know that two major seventeenth century European works of cartography were translated by Ottoman scholars. The two works were the Flemish cartographer and geographer Mercator’s Atlas (1595) and Willem Blaeu’s much more expansive Atlas Maior (1662-1665). Katip Çelebi’s Cihannüma is an adapted work from Mercator’s Atlas, and was a work in progress from 1648 to the author’s death in 1657. This work came into prominence with its publishing by the Müteferrika Press in 1732. On the other hand, Blaeu’s Atlas Maior was a much more advanced and updated work, and was considered a pinnacle of Dutch cartography; it was translated by Ebu Bekr b. Behram al-Dimashqi before his death in 1691 under the title Nusret al islam [Fig. 1]. It is indeed a mystery as to why Ibrahim Müteferrika chose to publish the older work as reflected in Katip Çelebi’s Cihannüma rather than the more updated Nusret al-Islam.

However, in order to see these works as symptomatic of how knowledge spread across cultures, and the changes which occurred during these moments of transfers of knowledge, Brentjes pertinently asks three questions – what kind of knowledge was necessary for translating these two mapworks, what kind of knowledge was involved in the process of transmission, and what were the changes which occurred in the process of translation between Latin maps and Ottoman producers and consumers of maps.⁵

Fig. 1: A page from Bleau’s Atlas Maior (above) and another from al-Dimashqi’s Nusret al islam (below) [Source: Brentjes, “Mapmaking”]

A look at Fig. 1 gives us an idea of the development of a phenomenon across cultures, and a comparison amongst the two will help us understand how mapmaking was translated across cultures, and how it changed in the process of interaction between the Ottoman and Latin cultures. Brentjes notes that technically speaking, the Bleau map is much more exact and mathematically solid. On the other hand, the Ottoman Turkish translated works did not feature the same level of mathematical precision.⁶ This speaks to the training of the people behind producing the documents. Bleau’s map was not just more precise, but it was also a printed work, which was produced on plates which were much more sophisticated than printing anytime before. Therefore, although al-Dimashqi’s work was done by hand, the fact that it was not precise shows that although he understood the importance of the work, he lacked the expertise to “reproduce” it as such, something which speaks about the latter’s training (or lack of it), and the difference in institutional structures in the two cultures.

Secondly, what was included in the translation versus what was excluded shows that the Ottoman translator or adaptor of the European work had different priorities from that of the European cartographer. From Fig. 1, it is clear that the Ottoman work does not contain the mythology in Bleau’s Atlas Maior, while some of the terminology or places already known to the Ottomans were included in the Ottoman translated work, such as ‘Muhit-e gharbi, bhr-e dualeduniya, Jaza’ir-e khalidat, Aq denizi, Sham, Quds, etc which are clear indications of a mindset which determines which Latin names had equivalents in Ottoman Turkish geographical knowledge.⁷ Also, al-Dimashqi prioritized some maps over others, and added or reduced details in maps of other places, probably keeping in mind that the map would be used for the Ottoman court and needed to be rendered accessible to that purpose.

Thirdly, and this has already been mentioned, this cartographic exercise was mainly due to the fact that al-Dimashqi had been ordered by the Grand vizier Ahmed Fazil Pasha to carry out the translation of the map which had been given as a political gift from the Dutch consul. This proves the necessity of the role of the Ottoman state in generating a level of bureaucracy to push through scientific activity of a vital science such as cartography,⁸ unlike in the case of Bleau, who was patronized by societal members not belonging to the government to carry out his work; Bleau’s work not just needed to be highly precise, but it also needed to be practical and at the same time profitable in terms of selling of copies.

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[1] Sonja Brentjes, “The Prison of Categories—‘Decline’ and Its Company,” in Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion, ed. Felicitas Opwis and David Reisman (BRILL, 2012), 137, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004217768_008.

[2] Miri Shefer-Mossensohn, Science among the Ottomans: The Cultural Creation and Exchange of Knowledge, First edition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), 13.

[3] Shefer-Mossensohn, 164–65.

[4] Harun Küçük, Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732, 2020, 4.

[5] Sonja Brentjes, “Mapmaking in Ottoman Istanbul between 1650 and 1750: A Domain of Painters, Calligraphers or Cartographers,” in Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province, and the West, ed. Colin Imber and Keiko Kiyotaki, Library of Ottoman Studies 5- (London ; New York : New York: I.B. Tauris ; Distributed in the U.S. by St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 126.

[6] Brentjes, 132.

[7] Brentjes, 134.

[8] Brentjes, 134.

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Bibliography

Brentjes, Sonja. “Mapmaking in Ottoman Istanbul between 1650 and 1750: A Domain of Painters, Calligraphers or Cartographers.” In Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province, and the West, edited by Colin Imber and Keiko Kiyotaki. Library of Ottoman Studies 5-. London ; New York : New York: I.B. Tauris ; Distributed in the U.S. by St. Martin’s Press, 2005.

———. “The Prison of Categories—‘Decline’ and Its Company.” In Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion, edited by Felicitas Opwis and David Reisman, 131–56. BRILL, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004217768_008.

Küçük, Harun. Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732, 2020.

Shefer-Mossensohn, Miri. Science among the Ottomans: The Cultural Creation and Exchange of Knowledge. First edition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.