W. & A.K. Johnston Map of the Middle East & Ottoman Empire, c. 1880-1914
$ 18.48
Description
W. & A.K. Johnston Map of the Middle East & Ottoman Empire, c. 1880-1914. "Del. & Lith.". credit at lower margin confirms the plate was drawn and lithographed by Johnston. Geographic scope: Visible labels include Cairo, Suez, Alexandria, Damietta, Damascus, Aleppo, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra, and Tabriz. A fragment of a W. & A.K. Johnston atlas plate showing the pre-WWI Middle East with the Ottoman Empire still intact — lithographed in Edinburgh in Johnston's characteristic soft pastel color palette. Coverage spans Egypt, Cyprus, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, western Persia, and the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, all under Ottoman sovereignty as it existed before the Sykes-Picot partition. Geographic scope: Visible labels include Cairo, Suez, Alexandria, Damietta, Damascus, Aleppo, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra, and Tabriz. The Ottoman Empire is rendered as a unified color across modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula — a political geography that ceased to exist after 1918. Publisher: W. & A.K. Johnston, Edinburgh — one of Scotland's major cartographic publishers, active from the mid-19th century through the early 20th century. "Del. & Lith." credit at lower margin confirms the plate was drawn and lithographed by Johnston. Historical moment: Captures Ottoman sovereignty in the Levant in the brief window before the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and the post-WWI mandate system carved the region into the British and French zones that would become the modern Middle East borders. Condition: Clean fragment with Johnston's soft pastel color palette well preserved; paper supple; engraver/lithographer credit legible at lower margin. For collectors of pre-WWI Ottoman cartography, Middle East historical scholars, or anyone drawn to maps documenting political geographies that dissolved within a decade of printing. Included: Map fragment as shown.
