This large, finely-detailed map of Southwestern Asia extends from Turkey and the Arabian peninsula in the west, to Tibet and all of India in the east. It was based on d’Anville’s important 1751 map, amended by Solomon Bolton for the English market, and engraved on two sheets by R.W. Seale for Malachy Postlethweyt’s Dictionary of Trade & Commerce.
The map is both an attractive display piece and an interesting view of the cartography of Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, and India in the the mid-18th century, a time in which the British Empire was the dominant power in much of this region, especially in the Indian subcontinent following the East India Company’s conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.
Tibbetts considered the d’Anville map upon which this based to be the first modern map of Arabia. This view was based not only on the rich amount of information included on the map, including tribal names, desert routes, and semi-permanent watercourses — but also on information not included on the map. For centuries, mapmakers had filled Arabia with spurious mountain ranges, lakes, and cartographic myths. D’Anville, and with updates from Bolton, have instead provided as accurate a picture of Arabia cultural and physical geography as was possible at the time.