The Leardo Map of the World, 1452 or 1453 / In the Collections of the American Geographical Society

by John Kirtland Wright

The Known World According to Leardo

The numbers in parentheses correspond to the reference numbers in the Appendix (pp. [32]-60) and on the key maps at the end of the book.

In the Appendix (pp. [31]-67) I have tried to identify as many as possible of the names and other features shown on the Leardo map with existing places, or at least with corresponding features on other maps of the period. Here I propose to conduct the reader on a rapid sight-seeing tour around the map, pointing out some of the most interesting details only.

Asia

In the extreme north (left-hand side) there is a large structure which looks like an Italian church with its campanile (13). The legend beneath, suggested ultimately by a passage from Marco Polo, runs about thus: “[This is] the sepulcher of the [Grand Khan] and they do this when he comes to be carried for interment: he comes accompanied by many armed men who kill those whom they find on the roads, and they say that the souls of these are blessed because they accompany the soul of the Grand Khan to another life.” Marco Polo adds that at the time of the funeral of Mangou Khan 20,000 persons were thus slain! The actual place of burial of the Mongol Khans was in Cathay, far away from northern Russia where Leardo, following the model of Catalan maps, draws it. European cartographers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have known and cared little about the relative positions of places in Asia; as Italian merchants by this time had established contacts with the Mongols in southern Russia, what was more natural than to place the Mongol overlord’s tomb in the hinterland of the Black Sea? Here there was more available space than in the Far East, and here on Leardo’s map the Grand Khan’s tomb could be made symmetrically to balance Prester John’s palace across the map in Africa ([299]).

South of the sepulcher we see the River Volga ([6], [7]) flowing into the northwestern corner of the Caspian ([250]). A branch from the east ([8]), perhaps the Kama, joins the Volga where the latter bends at a right angle to the south. East of the lower Volga is a “desert of thirty days” ([10]), Polo’s mysterious demon-haunted desert of Lop, where the traveler hears ringing bells and other uncanny sounds (possibly “singing sands”). Like the Grand Khan’s tomb, this desert is also wofully misplaced, since the actual desert of Lop lies in eastern Chinese Turkestan. The responsibility is not Leardo’s, however, for the Lop desert is in the same place on the Catalan Atlas of 1375 and on the Este map.

Farther east, beyond a row of six castles representing towns on the borderlands of China ([35]-40), we come to a gulf of the encircling ocean and to a great system of mountains. The gulf ([11]), which contains three islands, appears in almost the same position and form on the Este map, where there is a legend explaining that on the islands griffons and falcons are found and that the natives are not allowed to kill them without the permission of the Grand Khan of the Tatars. This is also from Marco Polo, who writes that the islands where the gerfalcons are bred lie so far north that the North Star is left behind you in the south! The mountains southeast of the gulf make an enclosure shaped something like a θ ([42]-47). Inside the northern half of this θ a legend tells us that “this is the province of Gog and Magog, where many tribes of the Jews were shut in” ([70]), referring to the medieval tradition that Alexander the Great enclosed Gog and Magog—the terrible hordes of Antichrist—within the Caspian Mountains. On many maps the mountains of Gog and Magog in the Far East are named thus. Leardo, however, places “M^o Gaspio” (Caspiae Montes) ([4]) north of the Caspian Sea somewhat nearer the position at which Ptolemy had placed them. To the mountains of Gog and Magog he assigns names derived from Ptolemy’s northeastern Asia. Running westward from the southern basin formed by these mountains Leardo has added a river ([49]), the Oechardes of Ptolemy. Near the point where this river emerges from the mountain rim we see a red spot labeled “Iron gate” ([72]) and, immediately to the west, two short red marks, “Statues of Alexander” ([73]). The iron gate was built by Alexander in the wall enclosing Gog and Magog, and the statues represent trumpeters set up by Alexander to keep guard over these unclean hordes. On the Catalan maps the trumpeters themselves are shown with their trumpets.

Immediately west of the statues appears “Mount Tanacomedo” ([48]), an amusing instance of Leardo’s carelessness; he has here evidently copied “Montana Comedorum” from a Ptolemaic map, combining the last part of the first word with the first part of the last! At the extreme eastern edge of the world disk we see the Terrestrial Paradise ([63]) surrounded by an enormous wall to keep out curious intruders. The River Indus flows southwestward to a great delta near the entrance of the Persian Gulf ([84]). Many of the place names in India correspond with those of the Catalan maps and in turn were derived from Marco Polo. The scene of St. Thomas’ mission and of the early introduction of Christianity into India is indicated by the inscription: “Here preached St. Thomas” ([113]).

In central Asia, we note two rivers entering the eastern side of the Caspian Sea, the Jaxartes ([117]) and Oxus ([118]). The Lake of Aral, in which these great streams actually have their outlet, seems to have been wholly unknown to the geographers both of antiquity and of medieval Europe. Moslem scholars, however, were aware of its existence. Leardo’s castles of Organa and of Organzia (Urganj) ([120], [121]) at the mouth of the Jaxartes and his place name Orcania ([132]) on the Oxus recall Matthew Arnold’s description of the Oxus at the close of Sohrab and Rustum:

But the majestic river floated on ...

Right for the polar star, past Orgunjè,

Brimming, and bright, and large.

The Tigris and Euphrates ([165], [166]) join, reaching the Persian Gulf ([267]) as a single stream flowing between two large edifices that represent Susiana ([172]) and Babylonia ([173]). To the east of the Tigris a nameless river ([139]) having its headwaters in a large lake ([138]) also enters the Persian Gulf. This same stream on the Catalan Atlas and on the Este map rises in a double source, two bodies of water that have been identified with Lakes Van and Urmia. Leardo connects the Euphrates ([166]) with the Mediterranean through the Orontes ([168]) and with the Red Sea ([268]) through the Jordan ([167]).

The most prominent feature in Arabia is Mecca ([211]), a large domed and towered building in good Italian Renaissance style and presumably representing a mosque. Several corrupted Turkish place names ([227], [228], [229], [232]) along with classical names ([224], [231], [233]-235) appear in Asia Minor.

The Indian Ocean is filled with yellow and red islands. A legend asserting that pepper and spice are found in these islands ([275]) comes from Marco Polo’s description of the East Indian archipelago. The largest of all the islands, lying off the coast of India, is marked Taprobana ([269]) and probably represents Sumatra.

Africa

Leardo’s Africa, like that of the Este map, has a very unusual shape. Two gulfs reach inland from the Indian Ocean and from the Atlantic, partially cutting off the southern extremity of the continent. On the Este map the eastern gulf is not as prominent as that of Leardo’s map, but the western is even deeper. Kretschmer suggests that these features have sprung from a combination of the ancient doctrine of a vast austral continent with Ptolemy’s theory that the Indian Ocean is surrounded by land.[23] Certain Arabic maps show an eastward projection of Africa like those of the Este map and Leardo, although they do not indicate anything corresponding to the western gulf.

Prester John’s castle ([299]) bulks large in the interior of Africa. In the twelfth century, reports spread through Europe of the vast realm of a fabulous Christian monarch in the heart of Asia. By the fourteenth century, however, Prester John’s empire had been transferred to Africa, where it became associated with the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. The elaborate edifice with which Leardo represents Prester John’s empire may be intended for the sumptuous palace described in the thirteenth-century Letter of Prester John.

Like most medieval cartographers, Leardo makes the Nile ([312]) rise in West Africa ([338]). In this he follows Herodotus, Pliny, Mela, and other ancient authorities. Ptolemy, however, seems to have had a more correct view, placing the sources of the river in the Mountains of the Moon in eastern Africa. Nothing daunted, most of the fifteenth-century cartographers who used the writings of Ptolemy boldly transferred the Mountains of the Moon to West Africa to suit their theory of the river’s course. Thus, on the Leardo map we see the Montes Lunae ([334]) on the north coast of the West African gulf. Thence four streams flow north into a lake, out of which the Nile makes its way eastward and another stream flows westward into the Atlantic. The latter stream represents, perhaps, a combination of Niger and Senegal, of which some faint knowledge may have been gained through traders who had crossed the Sahara. The lower Nile is joined by the River “Stapus” ([313]), doubtless the Astapus of Ptolemy or the modern Blue Nile. On the Este map this tributary rises in the Terrestrial Paradise, there placed in East Africa.

To the mountain range of North Africa, the Carena of the Catalan maps, Leardo has added Ptolemaic names ([385]-392).

The Mediterranean

The outlines of the Mediterranean ([433]) and Black Seas ([431]) are more correct than any other features which Leardo draws. This, of course, is due to the fact that they were derived ultimately from the portolan charts. Leardo preserves the faulty orientation of the Mediterranean characteristic of the latter. If we assume that the perpendicular line extending from the wind-blower off the west coast of Spain through Jerusalem to the wind-blower east of the Terrestrial Paradise is intended to run due east and west, we see that the axis of the Mediterranean with the adjoining shores has been turned counter-clockwise some twelve degrees. This is probably because of failure on the part of the makers of the original portolan charts to take into consideration the declination of the compass.[24]

Leardo’s place names along the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts are all derived from the portolan charts, although Leardo wrote names only where it was easy to do so without crowding. The least successful portion of Leardo’s Mediterranean coast is that of Spain: the shore is here unduly elongated as compared with that of the Este Catalan map, Barcelona ([475]) and Ampurias ([476]) being placed too far northeast on what ought to be the French shore line.

Europe

As on the Catalan maps, the geography of northwestern Europe is badly distorted. The Seine ([448]), Rhine ([487]), and Elbe ([488]) all flow parallel with one another but slightly to the south of west. The course of the Danube ([552]) with its southern branches is more true to nature. The Baltic Sea ([577]) and Scandinavia are drawn much as on the Este map.