Analyzing routes in Ottoman Greater Syria using historical GIS: The 1849 Saida map

Abstract

Most studies of cartographic materials depicting Greater Syria have examined European efforts to survey this region, which started at the turn of the 19th century (e.g., Ben-Arieh & Bartal, 1983;Goren, 2001;Schelhaas, Faehndrich, & Goren, 2017). By contrast, maps produced by the Ottoman Empire have largely been ignored. Thus, while the literature examining the European cartography of Greater Syria in the 19th century has been accumulating, there is a substantial lack of information about Ottoman cartography. In the last few years, however, there has been increasing interest in Ottoman cartography and the valuable information Ottoman maps may contain about the imperial provinces (