This 1848 map of the Middle East and parts of Central and South Asia is by the French cartographer and engraver Pierre M. Lapie (1779-1850), a colonel in the French army and head of the topographical section in the Ministry of War. Accurate and beautifully detailed, the map reflects the high quality of French cartography, and military cartography in particular. The territory covered includes the Nile Valley and the Nile delta, Cyprus and present-day Turkey, the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, Persia, Afghanistan, and Bukhara and other khanates in Central Asia that within a few decades were to come under Russian rule. The map provides scales of distance in no fewer than nine different units: myriameters (10,000 meters), leagues, English miles, German miles, nautical miles, Turkish agachs, Persian fersangs, hours of walking or marching required to cover a given distance, and Russian versts. Paris is given as the prime meridian. The map at one time belonged to the Geographic Section, U.S. Department of State, but was transferred to the Library of Congress.