THE FIRST MODERN MAP DEVOTED TO ASIA in the second issue. Originally published by Martin Waldseemuller in 1513 it is extremely rare, this slightly reduced derivative was first published in 1522. Martin Waldseemuller (c.1475-c.1522) was the geographer behind one of the early schools to study cartography, that at St. Die. He was the author of the wall map of 1507 which named America for the first time. In that same year it is believed he was producing the maps for an edition of Ptolemy’s ‘Geography’, it was not until 1513 though that it was published. Waldseemuller’s maps are amongst some of the most sought after of the Ptolemy editions. Printed by Joannes Schott it is famous for including twenty modern or non-Ptolemaic maps. This map of Asia is one of the highlights of the work.

The cartography can be seen to derive from the portolan world map by Nicolo Caveri (Canerio) of Genoa dated c.1505 and surviving today in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. This is particularly seen by the fact that it extends further eastwards than the Cantino. Dominating the continent is ‘India Intra Gangem’ or India within the Ganges. The map displays a portion of the Arabian peninsula in the west including the entire Persian Gulf. The region represented by modern day Iran is named Carmania, an ancient Greek term for a province of the Achaemenid Empire. The prominent Indus River separates it from the recognisable Indian peninsula. Both the Maldives and Sri Lanka can be readily identified offshore. There has been considerable debate on the use of the term Taprobana and its use for Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and or Sumatra which we won’t go into here. One of the major representations here is of an open Indian Ocean against the belief of Ptolemy who believed it to be closed. The Portuguese at this time had reached India and were setting their sights on apparently ever greater riches further east. In 1511 they captured Malacca clearly identified on the map as ‘Mallaqua’ near the tip of the peninsula. Suarez describes this portion of the map identifying ‘Maitabane’ as Martaban, a port at the mouth of the Salween River in Burma. ‘Nagaragdi’ is Lugor or Nakhon si Thammarat in southern Thailand. Caveri described the region here as bearing ‘rubies and other stones of great value’. He states that the peninsula ‘is in fact a first attempt to map ‘true’ Malaya and Indochina, and was probably extrapolated in large part from Arabic textual sources. Some of the nomenclature on the map agrees with Islamic navigational texts’. He goes on to cite the example of ‘Timonia’ (Pulau Tioman) off the south eastern shore which was not known to the Portuguese at the time but was a regular port of call for Arab and Malay traders since at least c.850.

At the tip of the peninsula is found ‘Bargningapara’ or Singapore. Suarez describes the words corruption as coming from ‘bahr Singarpura’, ‘bahr’ being the Arab word for land. The earliest known Portuguese reference to Singapore is in a letter to Albuquerque in 1513. It is here as has been demonstrated that Portuguese awareness stops and early cartographers had to rely on the even earlier writings of the likes of Marco Polo. At the north east tip of the south east Asian peninsula can be seen a further smaller one entitled ‘fulicandora’, this represents what we know of as Indochina. The Lorenz Fries maps were first issued in the 1522 edition but by 1535 he had died. The blocks found their way into the possession of Melchoir and Gaspar Treschel. For this edition published in Lyon the brothers asked Michael Servetus to re-edit the text. Burden (1996-2007) I pp. xix-xxii; Nordenskiold (1979) 209 no. 45; Pastoureau (1984) Ptolemee E 45; Shirley (2004) T.Ptol-7d; Suarez (1992) pp. 82-114.