Coast of Andalusia with the City of Granada (1525)

This map becomes especially charged once one remembers what Granada represented in the early 16th century. Only a few decades earlier it had been the last major Muslim stronghold in Iberia; by Piri Reis’s time it had already passed into Christian rule and become a symbol of profound political and religious change. Its appearance within an Ottoman maritime atlas therefore carries more than geographic interest. It places Granada within a wider Mediterranean world still shaped by memory, conflict, navigation, and the movement of power between Islamic and Christian states.

An Andalusian Coast in the Kitab-ı Bahriye

The map belongs to Piri Reis’s Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of Navigation), the great Ottoman maritime atlas compiled in the early 16th century. Piri Reis (c. 1465–1553), both admiral and cartographer, brought together practical seafaring knowledge and information drawn from Islamic and European cartographic traditions in order to create a work of unusual sophistication. The chart of the Andalusian coast reflects that method. It was designed for navigation, but it also records the coastline as a politically and historically meaningful region. Within this framework, Granada is given particular emphasis, linking the coastal world of sailors and ports to the inland memory of one of Iberia’s most consequential cities.

Granada after 1492

Granada’s presence on the map is especially important because of the date. The city had fallen to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, bringing an end to centuries of Muslim rule in al-Andalus and marking the conclusion of the Reconquista. That event altered the political and cultural landscape of Spain and resonated across the Mediterranean. By the time Piri Reis included Granada in his atlas, the city had already become a symbol of loss, transition, and imperial realignment. For an Ottoman audience, Granada was not simply another Spanish city, but a place bound up with the history of Islam in Europe and with the changing balance of power between Christian and Muslim polities.

A Coastline Shaped by Memory and Power

The map therefore operates on more than one level. On the surface, it is a practical chart of the southern coast of Spain, useful for navigation and coastal orientation. But it also reflects a larger Ottoman awareness of Mediterranean geopolitics. The coast of Andalusia was a zone of commerce, naval movement, and imperial rivalry, and Granada stood near the center of that historical imagination. The mention of the Treaty of Granada and its later reversal, which led to forced conversions and eventually to the expulsion of the Moriscos, adds further weight to the city’s significance. Even if the map itself does not narrate these events, its subject is inseparable from them.

Ottoman Cartography and Mediterranean Knowledge

Like the other maps in the Kitab-ı Bahriye, this one shows Piri Reis’s ability to combine navigational clarity with cultural and geographic richness. The work follows the portolan tradition in its practical features, including compass roses and rhumb lines, yet it is also more expansive in its descriptive ambition. It reflects the Ottoman Empire’s openness to multiple sources of knowledge and its determination to understand the Mediterranean as a connected but contested world. In that sense, the chart is both a technical instrument and a statement of intellectual reach.

Page, Material, and Design

The Kitab-ı Bahriye was produced on high-quality paper, with pages measuring approximately 29.3 × 20 cm (11.5 × 7.9 in.). Manuscripts prepared for elite presentation, including copies associated with the Ottoman court, were often richly bound in leather and embellished with gold. Within this format, the maps combine careful coastal delineation with visual elegance. The Andalusian chart would have balanced practical legibility with the refined craftsmanship expected of a major Ottoman manuscript atlas, uniting navigational purpose with aesthetic finish.

Preservation and Later History

Piri Reis’s chart of the coast of Andalusia with Granada was presented within the broader context of the Kitab-ı Bahriye, a work dedicated to Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. Over time, copies of the atlas entered collections that preserved Ottoman cartographic heritage. This particular map is now part of the Walters Art Museum collection, where it remains an important source for the study of Ottoman mapping and early modern Mediterranean navigation.