The Sea Brings All That is Distant Together - European cartography of the Black Sea

To mark the International Year of Maps 2015-2016 an exhibition of the cartography of the Black Sea will be held at Europe House in Tbilisi, Georgia, from 20 May to 16 June 2016, in cooperation with the Bulgarian Embassy in Georgia. It is a collaborative event involving the Diplomatic Institute to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria with the support of the Archives State Agency of the Republic of Bulgaria, the Black Sea Strandja Association, the GEOPAN International Centre, and the Bulgarian Delegation to the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Parliamentary Assembly. The exhibition is called The Sea Brings All That Is Distant Together - The Black Sea in the European Cartography.

It is a display of posters of cartography information detailing the development of mapping the Black Sea, predominantly from the 13th century to the 18th century. It is a fascinating account of the people behind the maps, and the evolution of cities and navigation. The maps in the exhibition were developed by scientists, sailors, ecclesiastics, merchants, and military officers.

The exhibition begins with information from Strabo’s Geographica, which reported that the Black Sea was often just called the Sea. The Graeco-Romans referred to it in 475 BC as the Inhospitable Sea before Greek colonization, changing the name to the Hospitable Sea after the Milesians colonized the southern shoreline. In the 10th century the Hudud-al-‘Alam geography book (unknown author), written in Persian, called it the Georgian Sea or Sea of Georgians. The Georgian Chronicles from the 9-14th centuries used the name Sea of Speri after the Kartvelian tribe, Speris or Saspers, now in Turkey. An Abraham Ortelius map of Asia in 1570 referred to it as the Great Sea. In the 18th century British writers called it Euxine Sea. The name Black Sea may have derived from the Scythian word ‘axsaina’ meaning ‘unlit.’ During the Ottoman Empire it was called Bahr-e-Siyah or Karadeniz, both meaning Black Sea.

The earliest map of the Black Sea, made on leather covering a shield, from 230-240 AD, was discovered in archaelogical excavations in Syria, with more intricate maps produced by Roman engineers in the 4th century.

Below is part of the 13th century Tabula Peutingeriana road map made by a monk – now kept at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Konrad Peutinger had the map from 1508-1714 after it was found in a library. In 2007 it was placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and displayed for only one day on 26 November 2007 due to its fragile condition.  

Italian cartographer Fra Mauro (?-1464), a monk from Venice, was known as ‘chosmographus incomparabilis’ for his detailed maps. The map in the exhibition was produced in 1459 and is kept in the Museo Correr in Venice.

Piri Reis – Ahmed Muhiddin Piri (1465-1553) – was an Ottomn admiral, geographer, and cartographer. He wrote the Book of Navigation with information on the Mediterranean Sea. His world map is the oldest known Turkish atlas and one of the oldest maps of America. The map shown below was produced in 1525.

German cartographer Sebastian Munster (1488-1552) was a Franciscan monk who produced Cosmographia in 1544, the first to show the four continents – Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. He died in Basel of the plague, but his maps continued to be used (with 24 editions) until 1628. His map of the Black Sea (Pontus Euxid) shows Colchis and Iberia.

Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594) was the first to map the world after the discovery by Christopher Columbus and Magellan that the world was round, not flat. His Flemish birth name was Gerhard Kremer, but he changed his name to the Latin version, Mercator, in his teens. He studied mathematics, geography, and astronomy and in 1538 produced the first world map. The Inquisiton imprisoned him for a few months in 1544 for not accepting the Biblical account of the creation of the Universe. His map of the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) is below.

Flemish cartographer Abrahim Ortelius (1527-1598) published the first modern atlas – Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theatre of the World) – in 1570, which included Australia and Papua New Guinea. His map below shows Caucaseum Mare – the Caucasian Sea.

Italian cartographer Francesco Ghisolfi (1533-?) produced designs with arabesque borders that were never intended for practical use. The map of the Black Sea below may have been made for the Medici family of Austria.

French cartographers, Nicolas Sanson d’Abbeville (1600-1667) and his sons, produced the map below.

Herman Moll (1654-1732), the British cartographer produced the imaginary maps for the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and for Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. On a serious note, the Russian Emperor, Peter I (Peter the Great), commissioned the map of the region and the Black Sea (below) in 1722.

Johann Baptist Homann (1664-1724), a German cartographer, produced the map below.

There are many more historical maps of the Black Sea in the exhibition.

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).