User:Sweissberg/sandbox

Week 2 Assignment: Critique an Article
The Wikipedia article on Mappa Mundi provides a general overview of the historical context for this style of maps as well as a more thorough explanation of the technical aspects of mappa mundae. The page includes a section on the typography of the maps, outlining four categories and describing their graphic and physical characteristics. Though the authors have included information on the purposes of mappa mundae, they focus on their utility as navigational and pedagogical tools, without addressing the underlying geopolitical motivations that drove the specific visual representational choices made by the maps' creators. The article also does not cover the relationship between the draftsmen of the maps and the individuals and governments that commissioned their work. The article could further develop the social-political context for the mappa mundae, their circulation, and creation by integrating scholarship from Gioncarlo Casale, particularly his essay "Seeing the Past: Maps and Ottoman Historical Conciousness" in Cipa, H. Erdem; Fetvaci, Emine. Writing History at the Ottoman Court : Editing the Past, Fashioning the Future. Currently the references section is rather sparse with only one source from 1987 listed. Sweissberg (talk) 00:38, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Week 3 Assignment: Add to an Article
The map is heart shaped, otherwise known as a "cordiform projection," a style that was popular in sixteenth century Europe, and the extant copy was printed from wooden blocks in Venice, Italy, in 1559. It was kept until the late 18th century in the archives of the Venetian Council of Ten.

Known as the "Mappamondo Hacı Ahmet", the map outlines legends and place-names in Turkish, and it may be the first map in Turkish ever published for sale to an Ottoman audience.[1][2] Whether the map is original, or was simply a translation into Turkish, it helps show how the people of the Ottoman Empire perceived themselves in relation to the wider world.[2] Three small spheres appear below the main map at the bottom of the page - the central graphic represents Earth and a number of satellite planets, while the left and right depict constellations.

Within the accompanying text of the map, Hacı Ahmet explains that the map was created to share knowledge of the shape of the world, especially of the New World. Specifically, Ahmet points out that the classical philosophers, such as Plato and Socrates, did not know about the newly discovered continent, which he says shows that the world is round.[1] He says that the New World demonstrates the "extent to which the Ottomans were participants in their own right in the process of physical expansion abroad and intellectual ferment at home that characterized the period of history commonly referred to as the Age of Exploration." '''Ahmet also assigns the Ottoman Empire's rulers and kingdoms to the celestial bodies represented in the lower quadrant of the map, a maneuver which has been interpreted as an effort to impose a hierarchical geopolitical system that preferences Ottoman rule above all other world powers. Sweissberg (talk) 23:19, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Sections I edited appear here in bold, I edited the sections under the username Weissbergs.