Philippe Vandermaelen

A map of Yemen and Bab-el-Mandeb, the entrance to the Red Sea, marking Aden.

• Philippe Vandermaelen (Belgian).
• Brussels: 1827. 
• Original color.
• Unframed.

This map was published in the "Atlas Universel de Geographie," the first atlas to have every map on the same scale, 1:1,641,836. Because of this standardization, it was the first time that some areas of the world were shown with any detail. Even before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the region was important to British shipping on route to India, which was falling prey to pirates. In 1839, twelve years after the publication of this map, the East India Company occupied Aden to use as a base to fight piracy.

Vandermaelen's atlas contains a landmark map in the cartography of Arabia; one of the other sheets shows Riyadh for the first time on a Western printed map.