Item #10994 Title in Arabic. MEHMET CELAL.
Title in Arabic.
Title in Arabic.
Title in Arabic.
Title in Arabic.
Title in Arabic.
Title in Arabic.
Title in Arabic.
A Beautiful, Finely Hand-Colored Turkish Atlas
Pocket Atlas.
[Istanbul, 1908]

Title in Arabic.

Octavo (7 ½ x 4 ½ inches), Elegantly embossed cloth over boards, somewhat worn; 32 double-page maps with fine original color, 153 pp text; lightly toned internally, else very good.

Rare, richly hand-colored atlas, showcasing all parts of the world and the Ottoman vilayets, published in Istanbul by Mehmet Celal Bey (1863 – 1926), a Professor of Geography and the Director of Mekteb-i Mülkiye-i Şahane, an Ottoman college, later the School of Economic Science.   In 1915, Mehmet Celal, at the time the governor of Konya Vilayet, in response to the Armenian Genocide, tried to save thousands of lives through his influence with the government. Today he’s known as the Turkish Oskar Schindler.

The atlas was printed in the late Hamidian period when the Ottoman Empire was in its decline, losing large amounts of its territory. At the same time, it was a golden period for map making and education in geography, which were taught mostly in military and economic collages on the eve of WW I.  Map making techniques in Turkey were then influenced by the practices of the Germans and the French, the traditional allies of the Ottoman Empire.

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