Carte Marine de la mer Caspienne

Title

Carte Marine de la mer Caspienne

Map shows the total Caspian sea with the Wolga delta and the city of Astrachan, 8 inset maps of islands and coast lines.

ca. 1745

Artist

L´Isle, de /Covens & Mortier (1675-1726)

Guillaume De L’Isle (1675–1726) was a renowned French cartographer famous for his accurate maps of Europe, the Americas, and Africa. He joined the French Académie Royale des Sciences, signing his maps as “Géographe de l’Académie,” and later became Premier Géographe du Roi in 1718, teaching geography to the Dauphin. De L’Isle mostly worked from his office, relying on a strong network of traveler reports and scientific updates, ensuring his maps were precise and honest. He openly noted uncertain information, such as a disputed river in Louisiana. In 1700, he won a legal case against Jean-Baptiste Nolin for plagiarism. Unlike the Sanson workshop, which often published outdated maps, De L’Isle focused on up-to-date, scientifically grounded cartography.

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.