Jacques Pervititch

Jacques Pervititch (born Jakub Pervitić; 17 February 1877 – 13 November 1945) was a Croatian-born Turkish cartographer and topographical engineer. Pervititch is best known for his series of insurance maps of Istanbul, produced from 1922 to his death in 1945.

Early life and education
Jacques Pervititch was born on 17 February 1877, the first of four children to Pero Pervitić and Marianna Guljelmović, in the Croatian village of Močići, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was raised in a Catholic family who, having moved to Istanbul in 1880, had their children attend French Catholic minority schools in the city. Pervititch graduated from the Ecole Saint-Pierre elementary school and the Lycée Saint-Joseph high school, the latter with distinction in 1895. Little else is known about his early life.

Pervititch Maps and career
Pervititch is known for his eponymous Pervititch Maps (Pervititch Haritaları, properly the Plan cadastral d’assurances de la ville de Constantinople), a series of highly detailed cadastral insurance maps depicting urbanised areas of Istanbul. The maps were a continuation of three previous series prepared by Charles E. Goad, an English cartographer and early pioneer of the insurance map, between 1904 and 1906. Like Goad, Pervititch was employed by the Syndicate of Fire Insurance Companies Operating in Constantinople, founded in 1900 by a group of insurance companies which had been established in the aftermath of the Great Fire of Beyoğlu in 1870. Pervititch produced a total of 243 maps over the course of his career, the high level of detail and consistency of which have rendered them a primary source for urban historians of Istanbul. Pervititch is only known to have produced one map outside of the Istanbul insurance map series.

Following his death, a shorter series of insurance maps were produced by Suat Nirven between 1946 – 1950, intending to complete Pervititch's unfinished work.

Personal life
Pervititch married Josephine Drossa in 1903, with whom he had three children: Marcel (b. 1903), Jeanne (b. 1907), and Henri (b. 1911). Records indicate that the family lived on Aynalı Çeşme Street in Tarlabaşı from at least 1903 to 1907, and moved to a house at Number 7 Yaver Street in Kadıköy before Henri was born. No records exist from this point onwards, until Pervititch's "sudden" death in 1945, at the age of 68, of unknown causes. He is buried at the Pervititch family grave at the Saint Albert section of the Feriköy Latin Catholic Cemetery in Istanbul.