# The Ottoman Empire's Forgotten Navy: Piri Reis and the Indian Ocean

An episode of [The Ottoman Empire: How It Ruled Three Continents for 600 Years — Fexingo History](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1895336292), 23 Aug 2026, 9:56.

Audio: https://audio.fexingo.com/history/the-ottoman-empire/episode-0212.mp3

In 1517, the Ottoman Empire conquered Egypt and suddenly inherited a naval frontier that stretched from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. For decades, Istanbul struggled to project power across waters that were a world away from the Mediterranean. This episode follows the rise and fall of the Ottoman Indian Ocean fleet, from the early expeditions of Selman Reis to the ambitious campaigns of Hadim Süleyman Pasha against the Portuguese at Diu. We meet the cartographer Piri Reis, whose magnificent world map survives to this day, and his ill-fated successor Seydi Ali Reis, who lost his fleet in a storm and then wrote a book about it. We explore why the Ottomans, despite their resources, never managed to dislodge the Portuguese from the Indian Ocean, and how that failure shaped the balance of power in Asia for centuries. Along the way, we touch on the geopolitics of the spice trade, the role of the Aceh sultanate in Sumatra, and the surprising connections between Istanbul and the islands of Southeast Asia. #OttomanEmpire #IndianOcean #PiriReis #SuleimanTheMagnificent #PortugueseEmpire #NavalHistory #RedSea #Diu #Aceh #SeydiAliReis #HadimSuleymanPasha #SpiceTrade #16thCentury #MaritimeHistory #TopkapiPalace #HistoryOfNavigation #FexingoHistory #History Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo

## Transcript

Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Ottomans as a land empire, the timar system, the janissaries, the legal codes. But there's this other Ottoman world that I think gets overshadowed, and it's the one that floated on water. After they took Egypt in 1517, they suddenly inherited a naval frontier that pointed east, into the Indian Ocean.
Luna: I feel like we've mentioned the navy in passing, but never really dug into it.
Lucas: Right. And the thing is, for decades, the Ottomans actually tried to build a real presence in the Indian Ocean. They sent fleets, they fought the Portuguese, they even got as far as Sumatra. But it's a story that ends in a kind of quiet failure, and that failure had huge consequences.
Lucas: Let's start with the map, because that's the most famous artifact from this whole episode. In 1513, a guy named Piri Reis — an Ottoman admiral and cartographer — completed a world map that included a remarkably accurate depiction of the coasts of Brazil and South America. He drew it in Istanbul, using charts from Columbus's own voyages, which he'd somehow gotten his hands on.
Luna: Wait, he had Columbus's charts? How?
Lucas: That's the mystery. Piri Reis was a corsair turned naval officer, and he claimed he'd seen maps captured from a Spanish sailor who'd been on Columbus's third voyage. He also used Arabic and Portuguese charts. The surviving fragment, which is about a third of the original, shows the Atlantic and the coasts of Africa and South America, and it's remarkably accurate for the time. He presented it to Selim I in 1517, when he was in Egypt.
Lucas: But the map is also a bit of a tease, because Piri Reis was clearly a brilliant cartographer, and yet the Ottoman state never really invested in turning that knowledge into a permanent naval presence in the Indian Ocean. They'd send a fleet, then pull it back. It was never a sustained campaign.
Luna: Why not? They had the resources. They'd just conquered the Mamluk sultanate.
Lucas: Exactly. And that's the central puzzle. The Ottomans had access to the Red Sea, they had shipyards in Suez, they had timber from Anatolia. But they also had a Mediterranean focus. Suleiman the Magnificent, who came to power in 1520, was more interested in the Habsburgs and the Safavids, the land routes into Europe and Persia. The Indian Ocean was a side quest.
Lucas: The first serious expedition came in 1525, under a guy named Selman Reis. He was a Greek renegade who'd served the Mamluks, then switched to the Ottomans. He led a fleet out of Suez, raided the Portuguese shipping lanes, and actually captured a few ships near Aden. But the real push came in 1538, when Suleiman ordered a massive expedition to retake Diu, a Portuguese stronghold on the west coast of India.
Luna: Diu — that's the battle we keep hearing about in passing.
Lucas: Yeah. The Ottomans sent a fleet of over seventy ships, commanded by Hadim Süleyman Pasha, who was the governor of Egypt. He'd originally been a slave, a eunuch, but he rose through the ranks. They sailed from Suez, besieged Diu, but the Portuguese held out, and then a relief force arrived, and the Ottomans had to withdraw. It was a humiliating failure.
Lucas: And the interesting thing about Hadim Süleyman Pasha is that he wasn't a naval commander by training. He was an administrator. So he made tactical mistakes. He didn't bring enough siege guns, he didn't coordinate with local rulers who might have supported him against the Portuguese. It was a botched operation, and it set the tone.
Luna: So the Portuguese just stayed on top in the Indian Ocean?
Lucas: Pretty much. They had a network of fortified bases — Goa, Diu, Hormuz, Malacca. They controlled the choke points of the spice trade. And the Ottomans, even when they had the ships and the men, couldn't project power that far for very long. The logistics were brutal. The Red Sea is a difficult route, and once you're out in the Indian Ocean, you're far from any friendly port.
Lucas: But there's one more chapter that's really fascinating, and it involves Piri Reis himself. He wasn't just a cartographer. In the 1540s, he was appointed admiral of the Ottoman fleet in the Red Sea. And he actually had some success, raiding Portuguese ships, capturing Muscat in 1552, and then heading toward the Strait of Hormuz.
Luna: Oh, so he did command a fleet.
Lucas: He did. But he also failed to take Hormuz. And then, instead of retreating, he made a decision that got him killed. He pulled his fleet back to Basra, which was a dead end. He had to abandon some of his ships, and the Portuguese blockaded the rest. When word got back to Istanbul, Suleiman was furious, and he had Piri Reis executed in 1553. The great cartographer died in disgrace.
Luna: Wow. That's a harsh ending.
Lucas: Yeah, and it wasn't even the last attempt. The Ottomans sent another fleet under Seydi Ali Reis, who was also a navigator and a writer. He left Basra in 1554 with about fifteen ships, trying to break through the Portuguese blockade. But he got caught in a horrific storm off the coast of Oman, and most of his fleet was wrecked. He ended up having to travel overland through India, Persia, and Central Asia, and he didn't make it back to Istanbul until 1557.
Lucas: And he wrote a book about it, called The Mirror of Countries, which is one of the great travel narratives of the age. He describes the shipwreck, the hospitality of Indian rulers, the politics of the Safavid court. It's a treasure, but it's also a story of failure. He never got his fleet home.
Luna: So after all that, did the Ottomans just give up on the Indian Ocean?
Lucas: Not entirely. They maintained a presence in the Red Sea, and they forged an alliance with the Aceh Sultanate on Sumatra, in modern Indonesia. Aceh was fighting the Portuguese too, and they asked the Ottomans for help. The Ottomans sent guns, gunners, and a few ships, and that relationship lasted for decades. It's a strange and little-known connection, but it shows the Ottomans never completely abandoned the idea.
Lucas: But in terms of a permanent fleet, no. They kept a small squadron in Suez, but they never challenged the Portuguese again in any serious way. And that's a big deal, because it meant the Indian Ocean trade stayed in European hands, and the Ottomans never got a share of the spice wealth that was flowing to Lisbon and later to Amsterdam. That had long-term economic consequences for the empire.
Luna: It's kind of a lost opportunity, isn't it?
Lucas: It is. And it's a story that tells us a lot about how the Ottomans thought about power. They were a land empire at heart, and they never fully committed to the sea, even when they had a chance to compete. It's a counterfactual that haunts a lot of historians. What if they had won at Diu? What if they had kept a fleet in the Indian Ocean? The whole modern history of South and Southeast Asia might have been different.
Lucas: And, you know, it's a good reminder that history is full of roads not taken. The Ottomans made a choice, and it wasn't necessarily the wrong one for them, but it shaped the world we live in. And honestly, we're lucky to have the map and the stories that survive to tell us about it.
Luna: Yeah. And it makes me want to see that map in person.
Lucas: It's in the Topkapı Palace library in Istanbul, and it's stunning. If you ever get a chance, it's worth it. And if today's conversation felt like a cup of coffee's worth of history to you, there's a little way to keep this show going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it. No pressure.
Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that helps a lot.
Lucas: So back to the map, because there's one more detail I love. Piri Reis drew the coast of Brazil with a level of accuracy that's almost eerie for 1513. And he even included a note describing a voyage across the Atlantic, possibly to South America, that he'd heard about from a captured Spanish pilot. That note alone has fueled centuries of speculation about whether the Ottomans knew about the Americas before Columbus.
Luna: Wait, really? The Ottomans knew about the Americas?
Lucas: Probably not before Columbus, but they knew within a couple of decades. The map shows they had access to the latest geographic knowledge, and they integrated it into their own cartography. It's a testament to the exchange of ideas across the Mediterranean, even between enemies. The Portuguese and the Ottomans were trading charts even as they were fighting each other.
Lucas: And that's the thing — the Indian Ocean story isn't just about what the Ottomans didn't do. It's also about how information traveled, how maps and navigational knowledge were shared and contested. Piri Reis is a symbol of that, and his map is a window into a world that was more connected than we often give it credit for.
Luna: It's a good reminder that history isn't just about battles and treaties.
Lucas: Exactly. It's about people like Seydi Ali Reis, who lost his fleet but wrote a book that would be read for centuries. Or the Acehnese, who reached out to Istanbul across an ocean and got an answer. Those connections are just as important as the failures. They tell us about the reach of the Ottoman world, even when its ships couldn't stay.

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