50 Lira Katip Celebi

Katip Çelebi — the 17th-century Ottoman polymath born Mustafa ibn Abdullah — produced the Cihannüma, a geographical work so ambitious it attempted to synthesize Islamic and European cartographic traditions at a time when Ottoman scholars rarely engaged seriously with Ptolemaic methodology. He died in 1657 with the manuscript unfinished; it was completed and printed posthumously in 1732 on the first press ever operated in Istanbul. This commemorative issue is part of Darphane's ongoing series honoring figures of Turkish intellectual history, struck in the same year Turkey marked the 400th anniversary of Çelebi's birth.