The Territory of Kazakhstan on Guillaume Delisle’s “Map of Persia”: Historical and Geographical Analysis

This article is devoted to the source-based and historical-geographical analysis of the territory of present-day Kazakhstan as represented on the "Carte de Perse" (Map of Persia), compiled by the French cartographer Guillaume Delisle in 1724.The study focuses particularly on the Noghai tribal groups of Yemboiluk and Edisan, recorded for the first time in the European cartographic tradition, as well as on the Kazakhs, Kalmyks, and a number of cities located within the territory of modern Kazakhstan.The article examines the content and structure of Delisle's map, the features of its representation of ethnopolitical and geographical entities, and the potential sources employed in its compilation.The relevance of the study lies in the need for a deeper source-critical and cartographic analysis of Western European maps of the 18th century as independent historical sources reflecting European scholarly perceptions of Central Asia.In particular, the information regarding Noghai confederations, as presented on Delisle's map, remains understudied, especially with regard to their localization and the origins of the data.The research is based on a wide range of sources, including archival materials and the works of Russian and Kazakhstani scholars.This comprehensive approach allows for a re-evaluation of the ethnopolitical transformations that took place in the steppes of present-day Kazakhstan during the 17th-18th centuries.The introduction of Delisle's cartographic data into scholarly circulation and its critical comparison with Russian, Turkic, and Western European textual and cartographic sources help to fill existing gaps in the reconstruction of the region's ethnopolitical landscape and to trace the evolution of geographic knowledge within the Western European cartographic tradition.The analysis demonstrates that the Carte de Perse constitutes a valuable historical source, reflecting the Western European perception of Central Asia in the 18th century, based on a synthesis of Eastern, Russian, and European data.