Our Notes & References

An early, scarce and attractive map of the Caucasus, engraved in St. Petersburg and especially remarkable for showing locations of ethnic minorities, including some very little-known today. It shows the whole region included between the Kuban and Terek rivers to the North, and the Kura delta to the South, that is nowadays Southern Russian (Kuban region, North Caucasus etc.), Georgia and Azerbaijan.

In fine condition, the print dark and strong.

Next to a large decorative cartouche showing monumental ruins, the map provides valuable information on various ethnic groups of the Caucasus, including the Ingush, Kist, Karabulak, and Alani, along with many other smaller nationalities that are less known today. On the right-hand side, the map’s legend also lists territories of Prince Uzumm, Khan Feth Ali, Prince Melik Muhamed, Prince Ali Sultan, Prince Hasbulat, and Cadi Bei Tabassaran, as well as provinces like Ghazi Kumuk, Kiafer Kumuk, and Big Kabarda, among others.

The creation of the map is ambiguous due to the conflicting prefaces of the book it illustrates, the Allgemeine historisch-topographische Beschreibung des Kaukasus [General Historical-Topographical Description of the Caucasus. Published posthumously in Gotha and St. Petersburg (1796–97), the work was based on the notes of Dr. Jacob Reineggs (1744–93), a confidant of Prince Grigorii Potemkin, a participant in several Russian diplomatic missions in the Caucasus, and an Imperial Russian College Councillor. In the preface to the first volume, Friedrich Enoch Schroeder states: “The map of the entire Caucasus was drawn according to [Reineggs’] design by Mr. Alexander Digby, an architect in Astrakhan, who undertook several arduous journeys and measurements with the late Reineggs. It is undoubtedly the most accurate map we have of this mountain range to date. [The map] will be engraved in St. Petersburg by Nabholz [and…] will be included in the second volume” (p. XI, our translation here and elsewhere, and our underlining).

The second part, with a preface by J. D. Gerstenberg, provides new details: “When Reineggs wanted to give the manuscript of his work to Prince Potemkin, he brought a drawn map to then-Major Engineer, Lieutenant Colonel von Thorszon […] in St. Petersburg and asked him to copy it for Potemkin. Reineggs had personally made numerous improvements to the map, which were clearly distinguishable from the work of the original draftsman. He had added many place names, altered the directions of several rivers, and placed mountains in different locations.”

The updated map was lost along with Reineggs’ manuscript, which had been given to Potemkin. However, “the map was recreated based on the original drawing with Reineggs’ changes that remained in Mr. von Thorszon’s possession. I do not know whether it had been originally drawn by the architect Alexander Digby […] We entrusted the engraving of this map to Mr. Nabholz, […] but Mr. Nabholz, who had already made a name for himself in this type of work—and charged us quite handsomely for it—[…] delegated most of the work to a less experienced Russian engraver. […] As a result, the engraving shows little variation between higher and lower mountains and bears little resemblance to the original drawing” (pp. XIII–XV). It is still remarkable for its great details.

It is worth noting that the map is often found on its own. Several libraries list it as a separate entity – but date it to as early as 1760, such as Harvard (mentioning Nabholz as the engraver) and the State Library in Moscow (without mentioning the artists involved). Karina Vamling, in her article “Identifying the Caucasus as a region in a historical perspective…”, dates the map to 1760 as well, but provides no explanation, and Heinrich Rohrbacher’s Georgien Bibliographie des deutschsprachigen Schrifttums also mentions this map as printed in “Vienna? 1760?”.

GIM (State Historical Museum, Moscow) dates it to 1796-97, Universitätsbibliothek Dresden’s copy is dated 1790, and SUB Göttingen’s catalogue lists the map separately without further details. We could find no other separate copies of the map, and there is no indication that these are various editions: we believe there was only one edition, and that the attribution to 1760 is unlikely, as the engraver who signed the work, the prominent German artist Johann Christian Nabholz, was born in 1752 and lived in St. Petersburg from 1784 until his death in 1797.

Finally, we could find no other copies of this map at auctions worldwide, and only one example of Reineggs’s book in recent decades, sold more than 10 years ago.

Bibliography

Bilbasov, Vasilii, Istoriia Ekateriny Vtoroi, tom 12, chast 1, 1896, p. 558, “very good map”; Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, “Reineggs, Jacob”, Band: 25 (1873), ab Seite: 200; Vamling, Karina. ‘Identifying the Caucasus as a region in a historical perspective. A corpus-based study on the uses of the concept ‘Caucasus’. Materials of the International Congress of Caucasian Studies. October 3-5, Tbilisi. Tbilisi State University’s Ivane Javakhishvili Institute of History and Ethnology, 2023.