Tabula Asiae VII

Title

Tabula Asiae VII

Map shows the Caspian Sea and partly Asia Minor with the countries Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India, Kazakhstan and three cartouches each with a description. Reverse title "Septima Aisiae Tabula..." with figurative border. Latin edition.

ca. 1542

Artist

Ptolemy/Münster Sebastian (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) was a prominent Renaissance cosmographer. His Cosmographia, published in 1544 with 24 double-page maps based on research from around 1528, was continuously expanded. It was the first widely accessible scientific description of the world in German, combining knowledge from history, geography, astronomy, and natural sciences. The work remained popular for a long time and was published in many editions and languages until 1650. Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100–160 AD) was a Greek mathematician, geographer, and astronomer. His works on astronomy, geography, and astrology were long considered standard references. He described the Earth as the center of the universe (Centrum Mundi) and established the basis for latitude measurement. His Geographia included the known world and the hypothesis of Terra Australis. Ptolemy provided written instructions for mapmaking but made only rough sketches himself; later maps were created under his name.

Historical Description

Since the Caspian Sea is not a sea in the legal sense, it is not subject to the 1994 Convention on the Law of the Sea. The oldest cultural evidence can be found on inscriptions on Assyrian pottery and call it a "Southern Sea". the first popular name refers to the tribe of the Caspians who lived on the southwestern bank of the Caspian Caucasus, in today's Azerbaijan, the second refers to the bank near Hyrkania, a landscape on today's Iranian and southern Turkmen coast. The changing history of settlement led to numerous other names such as B. the Tatar name "Ag Deniz", White Sea.