Exhibit ends Saturday: CSUSB presents exhibit of rare maps from 16th and 17th centuries

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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - The view of the world from the eyes of 16th and 17th century Ottoman cartographers is now on display through Saturday, Oct. 31, at Cal State San Bernardino when the university hosts an exhibition of rare maps and other collections in the anthropology museum in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Building on campus.

The Katip Celebi Ottoman Map and Cultural Exhibition is presented by the Civilization Studies Center at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Turkey, the Alliance of Civilizations from the Republic of Turkey and Cal State San Bernardino's Center for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

This is the first time the collection has been exhibited outside of Turkey, and CSUSB is the first site of an international tour that will later visit Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York and Paris.

The exhibition, showcasing the work of geographers and cartographers from Piri Reis (d.1554) to Katip Celebi (d.1657), is part of the 2009 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization International Year of Katip Celebi, an Ottoman historian, geographer and bibliographer.

The exhibition at CSUSB will showcase a collection of maps from the Cihan-Numa, one of Celebi's seminal works and the Islamic world's first set of comprehensive atlases.

The maps are visual artifacts that describe the continents and seas, climates and directions, countries and cities of the times, along with their rulers, flags and people.

The geographers of the great Ottoman Empire, of the 16th century, wondered about their neighbors, geographic structure and size, the seas surrounding them and their overall relevance in the larger world. Reliable information about those issues was not available at that time.

The world maps of Piri Reis, who presented them in 1526 to the Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent - or Suleiman the Lawgiver - were the most important 16th century naval and cartographical works of the time. They were based on personal experience, observations and earlier maps from the East and West, but lacked longitude and latitude lines. Still, they were as precise as scientific maps for naval purposes, because they had a projection center and were adjusted for variation.

The Ottomans later discovered the value of geography, and Celebi's work gave the first signs of moving cartography toward a scientific method.

The maps in the collection do not only uncover the Ottoman world view, but they also explore sections of the Ottoman era, including scholarship, intellectual movements, the Cretan War and the early challenges of the European military forces against the Ottoman military. The transfer of the treasures of the New World to Europe, and the weakening of the Ottoman economy are also captured.

Hours for the 17th century Katip Celebi collection exhibition are 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday from Oct. 19-31, with the exception of Thursday, Oct. 22, which is a "State Budget Campus Closure Day," when the university will be closed. The CSUSB anthropology museum is located on the third floor of the university's Social and Behavioral Sciences building.

For more information, contact the International Institute for Research and Analysis (909) 338-1091 or iira.staff@verizon.net.

For more information about Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university's Office of Public Affairs at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu.

The view of the world from the eyes of 16th and 17th century Ottoman cartographers is now on display at Cal State San Bernardino through Oct. 31.