Michael Polczynski

A Microsoft Excel Application for Automatically Building Historical Geography GIS Maps

The ability to visualize location and time information on satellite-generated maps using geographic information systems (GIS) such as Google Earth has enabled researchers with limited mapping expertise to use GIS for a wide range of applications. GIS holds special benefits for research in historical geog- raphy involving visualization of events and time-based changes in geographical information. This article describes a Microsoft Excel VBA application which automatically converts information contained in a Microsoft Excel workbook into a .kml (Keyhole Markup Language) file suitable for display by mapping systems such as Google Earth. The application requires no knowledge of KML or Excel VBA. An example illustrates how the application can be used to trace the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe.

Seljuks on the Baltic: Polish-Lithuanian Muslim Pilgrims in the Court of Ottoman Sultan Süleyman I

The unique authorship of the Risâle-i Tatar-i Leh, created in 1558 for Ottoman Grand Vezier Rustem Pasha and Sultan Suleymân i by Polish-Lithuanian Muslim pilgrims and members of the Ottoman ulema, brings to light critical issues faced by one of early modern Christendom’s largest integrated Muslim populations. This document encourages further exploration of several aspects of the Muslim population of early modern Poland-Lithuania: the stratification of Muslim society, the ways in which both Ottoman and Polish-Lithuanian myths of origin and legitimizing narratives were combined to justify conflict between fellow Muslims and the loyalty of Muslim settlers to non-Muslim rulers, Polish-Lithuanian Muslims as a branch of the greater Islamic ecumene, the legal status and social hierarchies of Muslims in an emerging early modern republic, and the role of the Ottoman Sultan as the facilitator of the hajj and millenarian world-conqueror vis-a-vis Muslims residing outside of the dâr al-Islâm.

The Relacyja of Sefer Muratowicz: 1601–1602 Private Royal Envoy of Sigismund III Vasa to Shah ‘Abbas I

Armenian merchant and Ottoman subject Sefer Muratowicz emigrated to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late sixteenth century. Soon after, he appeared before Safavid Shah ‘Abbas I as the personal envoy of King Sigismund III Vasa on a royal diplomatic mission unsanctioned by the Commonwealths parliament. Though the trajectory of Sefer Muratowiczs life is not without precedence in the heterogeneous social milieu of Poland-Lithuania, his documented involvement in the private royal embassy of 1601–1602 to Safavid Persia presents an exceptional view into the critical role of the diasporic Armenian population in the diplomatic and economic relations between Europes largest republic and the Islamic world in the early modern period.

A Microsoft VBA Application for Generating Heat Maps

A choropleth map is a form of thematic map used to portray the structural characteristics of some particular geographical distribution not apparent in data presented in tabular form. Preparation of a choropleth map starts with the assignment of map features to classes based on the value of a specific feature attribute followed by the association of classes of features with appropriate map colors or symbols. Map features are often geographical regions with naturally or artificially defined boundaries, but choropleth maps can also be prepared by segmenting the area to be mapped into a regular grid of regions. Maps prepared with each grid shaded in an intuitive manner such as blue for grids with the lowest attribute values to red for the highest values can be termed “heat maps”. This technical note describes the HeatMap Microsoft Excel application which converts information contained in a worksheet into a heat map, and then converts the heat map into a file suitable for display using mapping systems such as Google Earth. An example illustrates how the application can be used to visualize the seventeenth century frontier between the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire.