[Libya - map with Ottoman script]

Post card size map in Ottoman script of Libya from Mehmet Eşref’s ‘Küçük Atlas’, a rare portfolio of loose-leaf maps with text in Ottoman Turkish, published in Istanbul in 1909.
This is a small, but detailed map of Libya, then the last remaining part of Africa under de facto Ottoman rule. The traditional regions of Tripolitana (northwest), Cyranaica (northeast), and the Fezzan (interior south and southwest) are labelled, as are all major cities and towns, connected by roads and caravan routes.

Libya was conquered by the Ottoman in 1551, although from 1711 to 1835, the Sublime Porte’s authority was weak, as practical power was exercised by local rulers. Sultan Mahmud II reestablished central authority in 1835. The present map was made only two years before the Italo-Turkish War (September 29, 1911 – October 18, 1912), whereby Italy conquered Libya from the Ottomans, sparking a series of events that led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. However, the war produced one bright spot for Turkey, in that a young Ottoman officer, Mustafa Kemal, first gained fame for his skill and bravery in fighting the Italians; he would later become the hero of Gallipoli and the founding president of the Republic of Turkey, as ‘Atatürk’.

The present map comes from Mehmet Eşref’s Küçük Atlas (Small Atlas), an unusual work of 128 loose-leaf postcards sized maps, housed within a portfolio cover and accompanied by a 32-page brochure. Even though the period before World War I saw a great flourishing of Ottoman cartography, the Küçük Atlas was extraordinary in that it included a wide range of regional maps of Asia and Africa, as well as thematic maps, that in some cases are probably the only Ottoman maps of those subjects.

The Küçük Atlas is very rare, Worldcat lists only a single example, at the Boğaziçi University Library, Istanbul. All individual maps from the atlas are likewise rare.
The present map comes from an incomplete example of the atlas, so is offered separately.