A Persian Epic, Perhaps for the Ottoman Sultan (original) (raw)

"The Illustration of History in Persian Manuscripts"

Iran 56.1 (2018), pp. 47-67

Many medieval manuscripts are illuminated with paintings and other graphic elements, one purpose of which may have been to reinforce the significance of the work in question with a pictorial gloss, and perhaps also as a visual aid to convey its message for the benefit of readers who may not always have been literate. Reading the text through pictures is a matter of particular interest in the case of historical literature, as chronicles often commissioned at court lend themselves especially well to a deliberate programme of enhancing the image of the ruler and celebrating his deeds according to the political concepts and ideological imperatives of the time. This paper addresses the question of the illustration of historical texts within the Persian tradition of book art, focusing on the Jami' al-tawarikh of Rashid al-Din and its impact on later productions.

The Tazkira Literature in the Ottomans and the Unique Illustrated Ottoman Tazkiras

Osmanlı'da Dil ve Edebiyat, 2018

This paper will give a brief history of the Ottoman tazkira literature focusing primarily on the poet biographies (tazkira al-shu'arâ) and present two unique illustrated tazkiras, displaying both the verbal and visual traditions of the empire through the course of the political and social environment of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The tazkira genre will be discussed in terms of its valuable contribution to the Ottoman historiography and the illustrated manuscripts in question will reveal the paradigm shift in Ottoman painting. The general scope of the paper deals with two major texts and their unique illustrated copies: Âşık Çelebi’s (d. 1571-72) Meşâ'irü'ş-Şu'arâ (1568) in İstanbul Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Tarih 772 and Taşköprîzâde's (d. 1560-61) Tercüme-i Şakâ'ikû'n-nû'mânîye (1558), an abridged translation by Muhtasibzâde Mehmed Hâkî (d. 1567), in Topkapı Palace Museum Library H. 1263. Meşâ'irü'ş-Şu'arâ has eighty-eight portraits including the three tazkira writers, first eleven Ottoman sultans and seventy-four poets. The portraits of this undated copy seem to follow the style of the court painters. Tercüme-i Şakâ'ikû'n-nû'mânîye, on the other hand, was prepared during the reign of Osman II (r. 1618-1622) and has forty-nine paintings showing the scholars and shaykhs as well as the sultans together with them. The painter of this manuscript is known as Nakşî Bey. While the texts of Taşköprîzâde and Âşık Çelebi provide critical information on the life of the poets and men of religion (in other words the Ottoman intellectuals), their illustrated copies give the representations of these people in their intimate, social or royal environments. Although many studies were conducted on these and other unillustrated biographical works in terms of historical, literary and art historical context, the concept of illustrated texts always enables the social scientists approach them from a holistic aspect considering their verbal and visual value. This paper will present the differences of these two works in a comparative manner, discussing their importance both for the history of art and literature while the visual image of the Ottoman world of culture is displayed.

Persianate Models in the Pictorial Representation of Architecture within 16th-Century Ottoman Illustrated Manuscripts

In: Symposia Iranica, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, 11–12 April 2017, Cambridge. 2017. The pictorial representation of architectural structures fundamentally shaped the aesthetics of a great many Persianate and Ottoman book illustrations. Facilitated by a cultural, literal and architectural connectivity, acquisitions of Persianate manuscripts and the mobility of Persian painters into the Ottoman court workshop, the formative period of Ottoman book painting was marked by an inspiration from the Persianate idiom and style. This paper will demonstrate, using selected examples, how the compositional layout of the buildings and settings portrayed, their architectural form and elements, the decorative repertoire in the revetment of the façades and dados, and the visual means of their pictorial representation, evidence continuity in a considerable number of early Ottoman book illustrations. An 'autonomous' Ottoman approach developed in the second half of the 16th century and some of these Persianate models vanished. However, many were emulated and appropriated, eventually undergoing gradual alterations over the course of time, but remaining as a long-lasting vestige of the Persianate actuality in Ottoman book painting.

An Ottoman Album of Drawings with European Engravings (TSMK, H. 2135)

Thirteenth International Congress of Turkish Art Proceedings, editors: Géza Dávid-Ibolya Gerelyes, (Budapest, 03-08 September 2007), Hungarian National Museum, Budapest , 2009

This paper revises an album (muraqqa) (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, H.2135) which was compiled at the end of the 18th century for a bibliophile Ottoman bureaucrat named Mehmed Emin Efendi who was the youngest son of shaykh-ül islâm Veliyyüd-dîn Efendi. The dimensions of the album’s binding are 37 x 26 cm. Its front and back had been covered by an European seraser fabric dating to the mid 18th century. The album has twenty seven folios which are at the same dimensions of the binding and all of these folios had been arranged by the compilation of various flat-coloured and marbled papers using the vassale method. Further the illumination works in Safavid and Ottoman styles in this album had also been aligned with the same method. At these folios there are sixty five drawings, three of them are European engravings, one belonging to Hans Brosamer who was a German painter, draughtsman, engraver and woodcut designer. He worked in Fulda from c. 1520 to the mid-1540s, as is known from a series of dated paintings and copper engravings. The rest of drawings are qalem-i siyahî works, most of which are tinted. These works had been drawn in Timurid Herat and Safavid Meshed, Horasan (Herat), Isfahan styles during the late 15th and 16th-17th centuries. This album also contains Ottoman drawings dating to the 17th and 18th centuries. This paper will deal with the content of the album H.2135 trying to clarify the connection between European engravings and Islamic drawings according to the interactions of cultures, their subject matter, medium and provenance.