Nova Persiae, Armeniae, Natoliae et Arabiae Descriptio per F. de Wit.

DE WIT, F[rederik].

Published by Amsterdam c., 1666

About this Item

Original double-page hand-coloured engraved map of the Middle East (51 x 61 cm), stretching from present day Turkey and Egypt in the west and Afghanistan in the west, with the Arabian Peninsula prominently displayed in the centre. Embellished with a decorative symbolic cartouche to lower right showing a robed woman, her hair coiled into a topknot, presenting an ouroboros to a man with an Arab or Ottoman man leaning against a stone stele bearing the title of the map; in the background loom an elephant, lion, and camel, symbolising the continents of Asia and Africa. Manuscript numeral to verso, trivial split along bottom centrefold, some light marginal smudging, one small instance of dampstaining to bottom right corner, generally a very good example with attractive full contemporary hand-colouring. According to G.R. Tibbetts this was "the largest scale map of the area until 1700" and "the most useful until d'Anville's map of 1751" (Arabia in Early Maps). Frederick De Wit (c.1629-1706) was a mapmaker and mapseller who was born in Gouda but who worked and died in Amsterdam. He moved to the city in 1648, where he opened a printing operation under the name of The Three Crabs; later, he changed the name of his shop to The White Chart. From the 1660s onward, he published atlases with a variety of maps; he is best known for these atlases and his Dutch town maps. (Tibbets, 121). Seller Inventory # 62439

Bibliographic Details

Title: Nova Persiae, Armeniae, Natoliae et Arabiae ...

Publisher: Amsterdam c.

Publication Date: 1666