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The 'Fra Mauro Map', "considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography" according to Roberto Almagià^[1] is a map made between 1457 and 1459 by the Venetian monk Fra Mauro. It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame, about two meters in diameter.
The original world map was made by Fra Mauro and his assistant Andrea Bianco, a sailor-cartographer, under a commission by king Alfonso V of Portugal. The map was completed on April 24, 1459, and sent to Portugal, but did not survive to the present day. Fra Mauro died the next year while he was making a copy of the map for the Signiory of Venice, and the copy was completed by Andrea Bianco.
The map was discovered in the monastery of San Michel in Isola, Murano, where the Camaldolese cartographer had his studio, and is now located in a stairway in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, but is visible by entering in the Museo Correr, where it is accessible from the easternmost room upon request to the museum attendants there. A critical edition of the map was published by Piero Falchetta in 2006.

Contents

World map

Africa

Japan

Origins

Other areas

Notes

References

See also

External links

World map

The Fra Mauro map is unusual, but typical of Fra Mauro's portolan charts, in that its orientation is with the south at the top, one of the usual conventions of Muslim maps, in contrast with the Ptolemy map which has the north at the top.
Fra Mauro was aware of the Ptolemy map, and commented that it was insufficient for many parts of the world:
:"I do not think it derogatory to Ptolemy if I do not follow his Cosmografia, because, to have observed his meridians or parallels or degrees, it would be necessary in respect to the setting out of the known parts of this circumference, to leave out many provinces not mentioned by Ptolemy. But principally in latitude, that is from south to north, he has much 'terra incognita', because in his time it was unknown." (Text from Fra Mauro map)
He recognized however the extent of the East given by Ptolemy, thereby suppressing the central position that Jerusalem had held on previous maps:
:"Jerusalem is indeed the center of the inhabited world latitudinally, though longitudinally it is somewhat to the west, but since the western portion is more thickly populated by reason of Europe, therefore Jerusalem is also the center longitudinally if we regard not empty space but the density of population." (Text from Fra Mauro map)

Fra Mauro regarded the world as a sphere, although he used the convention of describing the continents surrounded by water within the shape of a disc, but had no certainty about the size of the Earth:
:"Likewise I have found various opinions regarding this circumference, but it is not possible to verify them. It is said to be 22,500 or 24,000 miglia or more, or less according to various considerations and opinions, but they are not of much authenticity, since they have not been tested." (Text from Fra Mauro map)
The depiction of inhabited places and mountains, the map's ''chorography'' is also an important feature. Castles and cities are identified by pictorial glyphs representing turreted castles or walled towns, distinguished in order of their importance, a map-making tradition probably inherited from illustrated Roman itineraries and represented in the ''Tabula Peutingeriana''.

Africa

The description of Africa is surprisingly accurate, especially in light of the fact that Portuguese explorers had not yet been beyond 12 degrees North at that date.
Fra Mauro puts the following inscription by the southern tip of Africa, which he names the "Cape of Diab", describing the exploration by a ship from the East around 1420:

:"About the year of Our Lord 1420 a ship, what is called an Asian junk (lit. "Zoncho de India"), on a crossing of the Sea of India towards the "Isle of Men and Women", was diverted beyond the "Cape of Diab" (Shown as the Cape of Good Hope on the map), through the "Green Isles" (lit. "isole uerde", Cabo Verde Islands), out into the "Sea of Darkness" (Atlantic Ocean) on a way west and southwest. Nothing but air and water was seen for 40 days and by their reckoning they ran 2,000 miles and fortune deserted them. When the stress of the weather had subsided they made the return to the said "Cape of Diab" in 70 days and drawing near to the shore to supply their wants the sailors saw the egg of a bird called roc, which egg is as big as an amphora." (Text from Fra Mauro map, 10-A13.)^[2]
The "Asian junk" described (specifically called "Zoncho" in the text) was possibly an Arabian expedition, which would have become the source of Fra Mauro's description of the southern tip of Africa, or possibly a part of the 1421 Chinese expedition of admiral Zheng He, as suggested in the "1421 theory" of the Chinese discovery of the New World. The description given for the junks actually suggests a Chinese-type construction, and the drawing are reflective of the flat-bottomed and curved hull design of Chinese junks:

:"The ships called junks (lit. "Zonchi") that navigate these seas carry four masts or more, some of which can be raised or lowered, and have 40 to 60 cabins for the merchants and only one tiller. They can navigate without a compass, because they have an astrologer, who stands on the side and, with an astrolabe in hand, gives orders to the navigator." (Text from the Fra Mauro map, 09-P25.)^[3]
Fra Mauro explained that he obtained the information from "a trustworthy source", who traveleled with the expedition, possibly the Venetian explorer Niccolò da Conti who happened to be in Calicut, India at the time the expedition left:
:"I have spoken with a person worthy of trust, who says that he sailed in an Indian ship caught in the fury of a tempest for 40 days out in the Sea of India, beyond the Cape of Soffala and the Green Islands towards west-southwest; and according to the astrologers who act as their guides, they had advanced almost 2,000 miles. Thus one can believe and confirm what is said by both these and those, and that they had therefore sailed 4,000 miles." Inscription 149 on the Fra Mauro map.^[4]
Some of the islands named in the area of the southern tip of Africa bear Arabian and Indian names: ''Negila'' ("celebration" in Arabic), or ''Mangula'' ("fortunate" in Sanskrit.).

If the account of the roc's egg is not merely a traveler's fable, it would probably have been the egg of Aepyornis, an enormous flightless bird which still existed in Madagascar or had recently become extinct.
Fra Mauro also comments that the account of this expedition, together with the relation by Strabo of the travels of Eudoxus of Cyzicus from Arabia to Gibraltar through the southern Ocean in Antiquity, led him to believe that the Indian Ocean was not a closed sea and that Africa could be circumnavigated by her southern end (Text from Fra Mauro map, 11,G2). This knowledge, together with the map depiction of the African continent, probably encouraged the Portuguese to intensify their effort to round the tip of Africa.

Japan

The Fra Mauro map is one of the first Western maps to represent the islands of Japan (possibly after the De Virga world map). A part of Japan, probably Kyūshū, appears below the island of Java, with the legend "Isola de Cimpagu" (a mis-spelling of Cipangu).

Origins

An even earlier map, the De Virga world map (1411-1415) also depicts the old world in a way broadly similar to the Fra Mauro map, and may have contributed to it.
Fra Mauro also probably relied on Arab sources. This is suggested by the North-South inversion of the map, an Arab tradition examplified by the 12th century maps of Muhammad al-Idrisi, and the detailed information on the southeastern coast of Africa, which was brought by an Ethiopian embassy to Rome in the 1430s.
The map may also have drawn on Chinese sources as described by Ramusio, a contemporary who states that Fra Mauro's map is an improved copy of the one brought from Cathay by Marco Polo:
:"That fine illuminated world map on parchment, which can still be seen in a large cabinet alongside the choir of their monastery (The Calmoldese monastery of Santo Michele on Murano) was by one of the brothers of the monastery, who took great delight in the study of cosmography, diligently drawn and copied from a most beautiful and very old nautical map and a world map that had been brought from Cathay by the most honourable Messer Marco Polo and his father." Ramusio v.3.^[5]
The Fra Mauro map displays many similarities to the Kangnido map, made in 1402 in Korea, which is based on earlier, now lost, Chinese maps. They share the same understanding of the Old World in its general structure, although the relative proportions of the countries and continents are inverted, with Europe and Africa enlarged on the Fra Mauro map, and China and especially Korea very largely represented in the Kangnido.

These maps were made before the European voyages of exploration and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 by the Europeans. It has been suggested that the geographical knowledge contained in the Kangnido map was created by Muslim, Indian or Chinese sailors (expedition of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He), and then transmitted to the West in some other way, possibly through Indian or Muslim merchants, or through 15th century travelers to the East such as the Venetian Niccolò da Conti.
Fra Mauro and his map were recently celebrated in James Cowan's novel ''The Mapmaker's Dream''.

Other areas

Notes

1. Almagià, discussing the copy of another map by Fra Mauro, in the Vatican Library: Roberto Almagià, ''Monumenta cartographica vaticana'', (Rome 1944) I:32-40.
2. Text from Fra Mauro map, 10-A13 , original Italian: "Circa hi ani del Signor 1420 una naue ouer çoncho de india discorse per una trauersa per el mar de india a la uia de le isole de hi homeni e de le done de fuora dal cauo de diab e tra le isole uerde e le oscuritade a la uia de ponente e de garbin per 40 çornade, non trouando mai altro che aiere e aqua, e per suo arbitrio iscorse 2000 mia e declinata la fortuna i fece suo retorno in çorni 70 fina al sopradito cauo de diab. E acostandose la naue a le riue per suo bisogno, i marinari uedeno uno ouo de uno oselo nominato chrocho, el qual ouo era de la grandeça de una bota d'anfora." [1])
3. Fra Mauro map, 09-P25 original Italian: "Le naue ouer çonchi che nauegano questo mar portano quatro albori e, oltra de questi, do' che se può meter e leuar et ha da 40 in 60 camerele per i marchadanti e portano uno solo timon; le qual nauega sença bossolo, perché i portano uno astrologo el qual sta in alto e separato e con l'astrolabio in man dà ordene al nauegar" [2])
4. Piero Falchetta "Fra Mauro's World Map"
5. "Dichiarazione d'alcuni luoghi ne' libri di messer Marco Polo, con l'istoria del reubarbaro", preface to Marco Polo's book. Quoted in "Fra Mauro's world map" Piero Falchetta, p61

References

★ "Fra Mauro's World Map", Piero Falchetta, Brepols 2006, ISBN 2503517269

See also

★ Ancient world maps

★ Age of Discovery

External links

★ Monograph on Fra Mauro's map

★ Compilation of the text on Fra Mauro's map (Italian).