In May 1520, as Europe convulsed with revolts in Spain against its Habsburg ruler and Luther’s Protestant challenge churned the Catholic hierarchy, a man named Ali Bey, one of Selim’s dragomans (interpreters), arrived in Edirne carrying a gift for his sultan: a new mappamundi, this one inscribed in Italian and Latin. Like the map Piri Reis had unfurled for Selim in Cairo in 1517, this new world map enchanted and amazed the sultan, as Venetian sources relate—though, unlike Piri’s map, it has not survived and therefore not received the attention from historians it deserves.
