From the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, cosmographical treatises dominated Ottomans’ understanding of geography. This genre of scholarship served as an encyclopedia of its time and its impact continued well into the seventeenth century, influencing the works of Ottoman intellectuals like Mustafa Ali, Mehmed A??k and Katip Çelebi. Katip Çelebi’s translation of one of the first European atlases, Atlas Minor, introduced the new geographical genre to the Ottoman intellectual world. This paper traces the introduction of atlas to the Ottoman Empire and its rise in the seventeenth century, focusing on change and continuity in approaching and presenting geographical knowledge. This paper demonstrates that atlas presents a new way to organize geographical knowledge regarding the shift from four elements (anas?r-? erbaa) to continental geography (k?ta co?rafyas?), while maintaining aspects of cosmographical tradition. The history of atlas parallels the change in audience, readership and accessibility of knowledge, which is greatly in line with the relationship between text and image. Accordingly, representations of the world, such as the Typus Orbis Terrarum (a two sphered depiction of the old and new world), or the integration of the three-dimensional globe to the two-dimensional atlas epitomizes the text and image issue in the European and Ottoman copies of Atlas Minor. Approaching atlas from the lens of genre provides broader conversations with other geographies, as well as academic disciplines. Moving beyond Ottoman particularism, it contributes to the history of geographical thought as well as intellectual history and the history of the book.