---
title: "History of cartography"
chunk: 7/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:26.449661+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Yuan dynasty (Mongol Empire) ====
In the Mongol Empire, the Mongol scholars with the Persian and Chinese cartographers or their foreign colleagues created maps, geographical compendium as well as travel accounts. Rashid-al-Din Hamadani described his geographical compendium, "Suvar al-aqalim", constituted volume four of the Collected chronicles of the Ilkhanate in Persia. His works says about the borders of the seven climes (old world), rivers, major cities, places, climate, and Mongol yams (relay stations). The Great Khan Khubilai's ambassador and minister, Bolad, had helped Rashid's works in relation to the Mongols and Mongolia. Thanks to Pax Mongolica, the easterners and the westerners in Mongol dominions were able to gain access to one another's geographical materials. The Mongols required the nations they conquered to send geographical maps to the Mongol headquarters.
One of medieval Persian work written in northwest Iran can clarify the historical geography of Mongolia where Genghis Khan was born and united the Mongol and Turkic nomads as recorded in native sources, especially the Secret History of the Mongols.
Map of relay stations, called "yam", and strategic points existed in the Yuan dynasty. The Mongol cartography was enriched by traditions of ancient China and Iran which were now under the Mongols.
Because the Yuan court often requested the western Mongol khanates to send their maps, the Yuan dynasty was able to publish a map describing the whole Mongol world in c.1330. This is called "Hsi-pei pi ti-li tu". The map includes the Mongol dominions including 30 cities in Iran such as Ispahan and the Ilkhanid capital Soltaniyeh, and Russia (as "Orash") as well as their neighbors, e.g. Egypt and Syria.

==== Ming dynasty ====

The multicolour map, Da Ming Hunyi Tu dates to the early Ming dynasty from about 1390, is in multicolour. The horizontal scale is 1:820,000 and the vertical scale is 1:1,060,000. Many of the oldest surviving maps from China dates between the 16th to 17th centuries, these include the Sihai Huayi Zongtu (1532) and the Shanhai Yudi Quantu (1609). Similar to these, the earliest European style map from China, the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (1602) influenced and was exported to Japan and Korea. By this time, Jesuit missionaries contributed to similar maps such as the Wanguo Quantu (1620s) and the Kunyu Quantu (1674). While the Selden Map (c. 17th century) employs a system of navigational routes emanating from ports in China. The Mao Kun map published in 1628 is thought to be based on a strip map dated to the voyages of Zheng He.
In 1579, Luo Hongxian published the Guang Yutu atlas, including more than 40 maps, a grid system, and a systematic way of representing major landmarks such as mountains, rivers, roads and borders. The Guang Yutu incorporates the discoveries of the naval explorer Zheng He's 15th-century voyages along the coasts of China, Southeast Asia, India and Africa.

==== Qing dynasty ====
From the 16th and 17th centuries, several examples survive of maps focused on cultural information. Gridlines are not used on either Yu Shi's Gujin xingsheng zhi tu (1555) or Zhang Huang's Tushu bian (1613); instead, illustrations and annotations show mythical places, exotic foreign peoples, administrative changes and the deeds of historic and legendary heroes. Also in the 17th century, an edition of a possible Tang dynasty map shows clear topographical contour lines. Although topographic features were part of maps in China for centuries, a Fujian county official Ye Chunji (1532–1595) was the first to base county maps using on-site topographical surveying and observations.

=== Japan and Korea ===

In 1402, Yi Hoe and Kwan Yun created a world map largely based from Chinese cartographers called the Gangnido map. It is currently one of the oldest surviving world maps from East Asia. Another notable pre-modern map is the Cheonhado map developed in Korea in the 17th century.
Sekisui Nagakubo produced a world map in 1785 called the Comprehensive Map and Description of the Geography of the Myriad Countries of the Globe (地球萬國山海輿地全圖說), mainly deriving it from an earlier map made by Matteo Ricci. The production was made by woodblock print and folded into paper boards, he made corrections and additions on top of Matteo's production. This was one of the earliest maps with longitude and latitude information in Japan and was written in Katakana.
Another well-known cartographer of the late-Edo period was Ino Tadataka, he is known for completing the first map of Japan using modern surveying techniques. His most famous work, the Dai Nihon Enkai Yochi Zenzu (大日本沿海輿地全図) consisted of three large map pages at a scale of 1:432,000 and it showed the entire country on eight pages at 1:216,000. Some of his maps are accurate to 1/1000 of a degree, which allowed it to become the definitive maps used in Japan for nearly a century. Maps based on his work were in use as late as 1924.

=== India ===

==== Ancient India ====
Indian cartographic traditions covered the locations of the Pole star and other constellations of use. These charts may have been in use by the beginning of the Common Era for purposes of navigation.
Detailed maps of considerable length describing the locations of settlements, sea shores, rivers, and mountains were also made. The 8th-century scholar Bhavabhuti conceived paintings which indicated geographical regions.
Italian scholar Francesco Lorenzo Pullè reproduced a number of ancient Indian maps in his magnum opus La Cartografia Antica dell'India. Out of these maps, two have been reproduced using a manuscript of Lokaprakasa, originally compiled by the polymath Ksemendra (Kashmir, 11th century), as a source. The other manuscript, used as a source by Pullè, is titled Samgrahani. The early volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica also described cartographic charts made by the Dravidian people of India.