1807 Rare Map - ANTILLIA ISLAND - Age of Discovery - DE

Antillia island went by various other names such as Isle of Seven Cities, Ilha das Sete Cidades (Portuguese), Septe Cidades, Sanbrandan (or St Brendan). Antillia was also connected at times with ancient legends including the Isles of the Blest and the Fortunate Islands. Atullia appeared on a 1367 chart by Franciscus Pizigano. Although difficult to read, it has been translated as "Here are statues which stand before the shores of Atullia (ante ripas Atulliae) and which have been set up for the safety of sailors; for beyond is the vile sea, which sailors cannot navigate."

A theory which first emerged in the late eighteenth century fancifully connected it with Plato's Atlantis but this has been dismissed by academics. Later writers have favoured a derivation from the Latin ante-ilha (i.e. the island out before or the island in front of). Alexander von Humboldt suggested an Arabic etymology from Jezirat al Tennyn ("Al-Tin"), or "Dragon's Isle". Historians Samuel Morison and G.R. Crone suggested that the name may have derived from Getulia, the classical name for the north-western part of Africa, and that the phrase on the 1367 chart actually read "ante ripas Getuliae" where in medieval times it was thought that there were islands where Hercules had set up columns warning that sailors had reached the boundaries of safe navigation, at the edge of the then known world.

A Portuguese legend tells how the island was settled in the early eighth century in the face of the Moorish conquest of Iberia by the Archbishop of Porto, six other bishops and their parishioners, to avoid the ensuing Moorish invasion. Each congregation founded a city, respectively Aira, Anhuib, Ansalli, Ansesseli, Ansodi, Ansolli and Con, and once established burnt their caravell ships as a symbol of their autonomy. The reporting of this settlement comes courtesy of a young couple who eloped back to Europe on a rare trading ship and reported the seven cities as a model of agricultural, economic and cultural harmony. Centuries later, the island became known as a proto-utopian commonwealth, free from the disorders of less favoured states.

It should be noted that since these events predated the Kingdom of Portugal and the clergy's heritage marked a claim to significant strategical gains, Spain counter claimed that the expedition was, in fact, theirs. One of the chief early descriptions of the heritage of Antillia is inscribed on the globe which the geographer Martin Behaim made at Nuremberg in 1492. Behaim relates the Catholic escape from the barbarians, though his date of 734 is probably a mistake for 714. The inscription adds that a Spanish vessel sighted the island in 1414, while a Portuguese crew claimed to have landed on Antillia in the 1430s.

With this legend underpinning growing reports of a bountiful civilisation mid-way between Europe and Cipangu, or Japan, the quest to discover the Seven Cities attracted significant attention. However, by the last decade of the 15th century the Portuguese state's official sponsorship of such exploratory voyages had ended, and in 1492, under the Spanish flag of Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus set out on his historic journey to Asia, citing the island as the perfect halfway house by the authority of Paul Toscanelli. Columbus had supposedly gained charts and descriptions from a Spanish navigator, who had "sojourned... and died also" at Columbus's home in Madeira, after having made landfall on Antillia.