Beautiful example of Homann’s important map of the Persian Empire or modern Iran, with parts of Iraq, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan.

Homann’s map records the Empire in the last decades of the Safavid Dynasty which had ruled Persia for over a thousand years.

The geography is a compilation of several important maps produced by Adam Olearius, Adriaan Reland and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. Homann credits them in his cartouche. Uncredited is the surveys performed by Karl Van Verden, the Russian officer tasked by Peter the Great to survey the Caspian Sea. Once the survey had been completed in 1721, Peter sent copies to the French Academy of Sciences, where they were published and transcribed by Guillaume de L’Isle. Homann was an early adopter of this survey, hence the remarkably accurate rendition of that Sea.

In addition to this new feature, the map also bears an extraordinary amount of detail, such as caravan routes, district divisions and an extension of Persian power onto the southern shore of the Gulf, which is named Bahrain and shown to be under Persian influence. A further geographical feature in that region, just north of Bahrain, is an area which has been separated from the Peninsula by a mythical waterway and thus created into an island entitled “Cadar Insula” or the island of Cadar. This may by a confusion between the Island of Bahrain and the Peninsula of Qatar.

Homann’s map is further embellished by a large, illustrated cartouche on the lower left, featuring lions and tigers from Armenia and several inhabitants from various parts of the Empire. The lion and tiger vignette is a curiosity, as it cites Ovid, the classical writer, as a source and is most likely a reference to the Armenian or Asiatic Lion while the tiger is most likely the Caspian Tiger. 

This map proved very popular, emulated by Homann’s students and competitors such as Matthias Seutter and Christopher Weigel. In turn, it had a long publishing history, appearing in Homann’s atlases as well as many composite works.

Strong original colour. [MEAST4699]