Coğrafi Bilimler Dergisi (Aug 2009)
Tarihi Coğrafya Bakımından Önemli Bir Kaynak: Cihannüma
Abstract
Due to this year is the 400th birthday of Kâtip Çelebi, 2009 was accepted as the year of Kâtip Çelebi by Unesco. In the memory of this, the achievement of Kâtip Çelebi “Cihannüma” has been analysed and introduced at geographical point in this work. There are a lot of researches about Kâtip Çelebi and his life. A few of them are about his geographical achievements. Being known as “Hacı Halife” in the East of the World and “Hacı Kalfa” in the West, Kâtip Çelebi wrote numerous achievements during his life. Some of them is considerably important for historical geography. Kâtip Çelebi examined the geographical achievements written in the East and the West. He understood from them how important geography is and indicated that the places, which can not be gone, can be learnt from geographical achievements. Then he wrote two books called as Cihannüma”. He wrote the first book according to the opinions of the people who consider right. However this book didn’t adapt the geographical views of the West. Therefore between 1650-1655 he wrote the second book. Besides, Kâtip Çelebi emphasised on the importance of the cartography and making map in geography. Accordingly, he specified the necessity of maps in the geography books. For this reason, he translated Mercator Atlas. In 1732 İbrahim Müteferrika published “Cihannüma”, when he saw the importance of this geographical achievement. He added some extra information to this achievement. At the end, Kâtip Çelebi and his achievement “Cihannüma” were known at short notice in the West and the East of the World. Being 762 pages, Cihannüma is an achievement of Regional Geography. It informs about the continents and many of countries of the Wold. There are 38 shapes in this achievement and 25 of them are maps. Seas, continents, islands, rivers, settlements, roads, economical activities are also mentioned in Cihannüma. Kâtip Çelebi offered all of thems by geographical methods, which were not used before. The achievement is completely important for historical geography
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