Turkish Professor: Muslims Discovered Ame

I've read books about how Phonecians circumnavigated Africa and reached America... all sorts of possible stories.  I had a look on that map on some book I've encountered in a library, and it showed a bare coutour of Brazil and the Carribean, as well as what the book labeled "unfrozen Antarctica."  Fascinating stuff indeed.

First we get Europeans saying they discovered it, then CHINESE, now the freakin Turks discovered it??? Hello!?!?!?! the native americans were there first. It was not really discovered, because there were people already living there!!!!

Hello?!?!?!  You were supposed to have discovered the "Pacific Ocean," and named it "pacific!"  You shouldn't be complainng! 

Originally posted by Komnenos I hereby proudly claim that the German people did not undertake the first European exploration (or discovery) of the American continent, did not participate in its initial colonialisation and therefore not be held responsible for any subsequent events.

wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didrik_Pining

Na I think it is just trumpeting Islamo chauvinism.

Edited by Zagros

Plato discovered America, he called it: Atlantis.

Well, actually, it was a prophetic view, soon the USA will be crushed by a giant asteroid falling from the sky in the supervolcano of yellowstone.

I hereby proudly claim that the German people did not undertake the first European exploration (or discovery) of the American continent, did not participate in its initial colonialisation and therefore not be held responsible for any subsequent events.

Edited by Komnenos

What a waste of time: Piri Reis map is well known, it is as commented a 16th century map and it is known to have been reconstructed out from other maps, that the famous Turk admiral captured to Christian vessels most likely.

The map depicts the coasts of South America (particularly Brazil) and the Caribbean without a clear concordance. For 1513, the date normally attributed to the Piris Reis map, the Spaniards (Colombus and others) had throughty explored the Caribean Sea and Amergo Vespucci had doen the same with Brazil for the Portuguese crown. It is precisely the works of these explorers and nothing else what is in Piri Reis map, which is no doubt an excellent work of military inteligence.

In fact the map seems to depict very exactly what Colombus and Vespucci had discovered - and nothing else

What, does this guy think he has discovered something new in the Piri Reis map?  There is a good deal of scholarly literature covering the map and its possibilities, but I have never heard it put forward that what Reis thought was Africa was actually the Americas!

One of my side interests is Ottoman perceptions of the New World.  As far as I can tell from what I have studied, there were not many Ottomans (or Muslims, for that matter) who came to the New World in the early period of discoveries, 15th-17th centuries.  I really don't think there were any official Ottoman expeditions to the New World; they concentrated mostly on Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean for their explorations.

Of the primary source accounts that we have, in which Ottomans discuss the New World, most are copies and borrowings from European accounts.  However, I am always open to finding new mentionings, and according to scholars, there are some original first-hand accounts of the New World written by Ottomans.

Turkish Professor: Muslims Discovered America!

Presenting some documents, founder of the Institute for History of Arabic-Islamic Science argued that Turkish Muslims discovered America before others.

Tehran, 9 February 2006, (CHN) -- In his commemoration ceremony which was held at the Association of Written Heritage office in Tehran this week, Professor Fuat Sezgin, founder and chairman of the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, presented some documents regarding the discovery of America by the Turkish Muslims.

Presenting a map which he called �Piri Reis�, the 82 year old Turkish Islamic scholar said, �There is a map belonging to the 16th Century AD showing the journey of the first people who discovered America which the Chinese and Portuguese claim to be theirs, while due to some reasoning, this map does not belong to them. It was Piri Reis, a Turkish Muslim admiral who noticed for the first time the existence of a region in the west of Africa which was later called America.�

Some foreign and domestic scholars in historical and Islamic sciences attended the meeting which was held to honor Sezgin�s different and abundant researches in the fields of Islamic sciences and the history of sciences.

Praising the Turkish scholar�s worldwide contributions, Akbar Irani, managing director of Association of Written Heritage said, �One of the most important accomplishments of Professor Sezgin is printing over 80 volumes of significant and old Islamic texts which have played key roles in bringing to the surface the glory of Islamic sciences all around the world.�

Sezgin was born in Turkey in 1924 and graduated from the University of Istanbul in Islamic Sciences & Iranian Studies in 1954.

In the year 1956 he set off for Germany where he founded the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, affiliated with the University of Frankfurt. Fuat Sezgin has published about 750 books by now.

http://www.chn.ir/en/news/?section=1&id=1543


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