Portraying the world at the court of Mehmed II: The contribution of George Amiroutzes and Mehmed Bey to the translation of Ptolemy’s Geography (1465)

The story of the translation of Ptolemy’s Geography on the eve of the birth of Modernity has often been written with a perspective that privileges events unfolding on the Western shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In the same period, however, a parallel process was taking place on the Eastern shores, at the court of Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople, the city that was to become Istanbul, the heart of the newly born Ottoman Empire. Here, in 1465, the Byzantine scholar George Amiroutzes (ca. 1400–1475) and his son Mehmed Bey produced a new world map with Arabic texts, one of the great endeavours in geographical studies in the years following the fall of Constantinople (1453). They were subsequently commissioned to produce a new translation of Ptolemy’s work into Arabic. The analysis of a number of studies on Amiroutzes’ contribution to Mehmed II’s ecumenical vision, as well as that of other Byzantine scholars such as George of Trabzon (Trapezuntius), offers new insight into how the Ottoman Empire wished to create fresh room for manoeuvre and express its desire to expand. At the same time, it lays the groundwork for future research on toponymy, on the mathematical and geopolitical contents of cartographic production at the time of Mehmed and, particularly, on the world-map described in this work.