Newberry Library - Tarih-i Yeni Dünya, el-musemma be hadis-i nev ca. 1600

Title Tarih-i Yeni Dünya, el-musemma be hadis-i nev ca. 1600

Date 1600

Description Text in Arabic "nesih" script, rubricated, within gold and black borders; illuminated head-piece is a gold cartouche on a lapis background decorated with gold, red, turqoise, and white flowers; on heavy yellowish glazed paper.
Thirteen color miniatures illustrate textual descriptions of native American flora and fauna, such as the coconut, guava, and banana trees, cochineal cactus, tapir, armadillo, bison, pelican, and jaguar; a landscape of the Peruvian town of Potosí, with its silver mountain; and two imaginary drawings of a merman, and a wak-wak tree, bearing fruit in the form of naked women. Cf. Goodrich.
Three double-page maps, oriented with the south at the top, illustrated in red, blue, black, white, and gold with small pictures of cities and sailing ships, and borders in gold and black. Includes two circular hemispheric maps (24 cm.) of the Old and New Worlds, and a rectangular mappa mundi (19 x 26 cm.), very similar to the one by J. Gastaldi in Geografiya di Claudio Ptolemeo (Venice, 1548).
First printed in Constantinople in 1730 by Ibrahim Müteferrika; reprinted in 1875 without the maps. Cf. Goodrich.
English translation of the Newberry ms. by Thomas D. Goodrich in Ottoman Turks and the New World: a study of Tarih-i Hind-i garbi and sixteenth-century Ottoman Americana. Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz, 1990.

Summary Unsigned ms. copy, dated 1368-1369, but actually from ca. 1600, of the Tarih-i Hindi-i garbi [A history of the India of the West], written by an anonymous Turk around 1580. The account relates the explorations of Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, and others, introducing American colonial history and the new geographic discoveries to the Islamic world. Chapts. 1 and 2 discuss Islamic cosmology and geography, the Old World with its seven "climes," its bodies of water, and areas of aridity and fertility, and the Atlantic Ocean. Chapt. 3 contains one section on North America and the Magellan expedition, and another on South America, mainly Peru. The author, probably assisted by someone from Spain who knew Italian, worked from Italian translations of 16th-century texts: López de Gómara's Historia general de las Indias; Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés' De la natural hystoria de las Indias; Peter Martyr's De orbe novo; and Historia del descubrimiento y conquesta del Peru by Agustín de Zárate.

Extent [107] leaves, bound, [6] leaves of plates : 13 col. ill., 3 col. maps ; 26 cm

Format Early works

Archival Collection Title Edward E. Ayer Collection

Link to Catalog View record

Call Number Ayer MS 612

BibID 174224

Rights Status No Copyright - United States

Contributing Institution Newberry Library

Newberry Open Access Policy The Newberry makes its collections available for any lawful purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without licensing or permission fees to the library, subject to these terms and conditions.

IIIF Resource Type Canvas

Size 2100px × 2992px 17.99 MB

Filename 991742248805867_VAULT_Ayer_MS_612_0001.tif

Unique Identifier NL11JKYF