Enlightenment Cartography at the Sublime Porte: François Kauffer and the Survey of Constantinople

Abstract

This article is a study of the work of François Kauffer and his survey of Con- stantinople, which produced the first “scientific” map of the city in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In spite of its influence as a “first” for Istanbul, the Plan de la ville de Constantinople et ses faubourgs should be placed and interpreted in the context of antiquar- ian and military large scale mapping in eighteenth-century Europe. Its detailed contents served the purposes of authors interested in ancient history, but its goal of reliability and verifiability insured its place for a long time in the development of ever more detailed plans of the Ottoman capital.