Abraham Cresques

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Part of the Catalan Atlas
Caravan on the Silk Road - excerpt from the atlas based on reports by Marco Polo

Abraham Cresques (* 1325 Mallorca ; † around 1387), also Avram Cresques , was a Catalan cartographer and compass maker of Jewish descent. Together with his son Jehuda Cresques he drew the Catalan Atlas in 1375 .

Throughout his life, Cresques was occupied with maps, compasses and clocks. In 1375 he received an order from Peter IV of Aragón to draw four maps that should cover everything known from east to west. The Catalan Atlas can be viewed today in the French National Library .

The atlas is based on information obtained by the Cresques family from seafarers whose routes passed through the Mallorca hub. The peculiarity of the Catalan Atlas was that in addition to the results of the Catalan portulani (these are detailed nautical maps mostly of the lake areas of the Mediterranean), the geographical findings of Marco Polo's trips were also processed for the first time .

On the six double images drawn by Cresques, each 64 × 50 centimeters in size, the world from the Atlantic to China, known at the time, is depicted and richly provided with image information about the country and its people.

Trivia

On April 13, 2017, the asteroid (304788) Cresques was named in his honor.

See also

literature

  • Katrin Kogman-Appel: Catalan maps and Jewish books. The intellectual profile of Elisha Ben Abraham Cresques (1325-1387) , Turnhout: Brepols 2020, ISBN 9782503585482 .

Web links

Commons : Catalan World Atlas  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Minor Planet Circulars. (PDF) In: Minor Planet Center . April 13, 2017, p. 103983 , accessed on July 19, 2017 (English).