1835 Hall Map of Northern Africa

This is a beautiful map of northern Africa from Sidney Hall's extremely scarce 1835 New General Atlas. It covers the Maghreb or Barbary Coast and the western Mediterranean Coast of Africa from Morocco to Tripoli, including modern day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. The map focuses on Morocco and the Mediterranean regions of Fez, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli and the ancient Greek and later Roman, Byzantine colony of Barca. It also shows the inland oasis Kingdom of Fezzan. Though mostly desert, 19th century Fezzan had numerous oases and supported a relatively large population. This desert kingdom was a critical stopping point for trade caravans crossing the Sahara since antiquity. This important still active caravan route, with its string of Oases, is mapped out in some detail. The Tuat, a vast desert region, marked with numerous oases is also noted. The desert area is largely unmapped, simply identified as 'Blaid-el-Jerid, Country of Dates.' The map offers various interesting annotations, such as 'Point of assemblage for the caravans that are to proceed to Timbuctoo' at Tatta and 'Station for the Timbuctoo and Mecca caravans' at Fighig. Parts of North Africa, at the time were under the influence of the rapidly declining Ottoman Empire. The region would go on to be colonized by France, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy during the next century.

Sidney Hall's New General Atlas was published from 1830 to 1857, the first edition being the most common, with all subsequent editions appearing only rarely. Most of the maps included in the first edition of this atlas were drawn between 1827 and 1828 and are most likely steel plate engravings, making it among the first cartographic work to employ this technique. Each of the maps in this large and impressive atlas feature elegant engraving and an elaborate keyboard style border. Though this is hardly the first map to employ this type of border, it is possibly the earliest to use it on such a large scale. Both the choice to use steel plate engraving and the addition of the attractive keyboard boarder are evolutions of anti-forgery efforts. Copper plates, which were commonly used for printing bank notes in the early 19th century, proved largely unsuitable due to their overall fragility and the ease with which they could be duplicated. In 1819 the Bank of England introduced a £20,000 prize for anyone who could devise a means to print unforgeable notes. The American inventors Jacob Perkins and Asa Spencer responded to the call. Perkins discovered a process for economically softening and engraving steel plates while Spencer invented an engraving lathe capable of producing complex patters repetitively - such as this keyboard border. Though Perkins and Spenser did not win the prize, their steel plate engraving technique was quickly adopted by map publishers in England, who immediately recognized its value. Among early steel plate cartographic productions, this atlas, published in 1830 by Longman Rees, Orme, Brown & Green stands out as perhaps the finest. This map was issued by Sidney Hall and published by Longman Rees, Orme, Brown & Green of Paternoster Row, London, in the 1835 edition of the Sidney Hall New General Atlas.