Ottoman Istanbul Website

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THE ART
AND
ARCHITECTURE
OF
O TTOMAN I STANBUL
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THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF O TTOMAN I STANBUL
RICHARD YEOMANS
arnet
P U B L I S H I N G
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THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF OTTOMAN ISTANBUL
Published by Garnet Publishing Limited 8 Southern Court South Street Reading Berkshire RG1 4QS UK www.garnetpublishing.co.uk www.twitter.com/Garnetpub www.facebook.com/Garnetpub blog.garnetpublishing.co.uk Copyright Richard Yeomans, 2012 Image copyright Richard Yeomans, 2012 (unless otherwise stated) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. First Edition ISBN: 978-1-85964-224-5 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design Samantha Barden Jacket design David Rose Cover photo Used courtesy of iStockphoto.com/Gordon Dixon Printed and bound in Lebanon by International Press: interpress@int-press.com
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TO
THE MEMORY OF
GALOR HOLNESS
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Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PREFACE
ix xv
INTRODUCTION
The Turks, the Ottomans and the Conquest of Constantinople
CHAPTER SIX
Consolidation and Decline Architecture in the Seventeenth Century
123
CHAPTER ONE
Mehmet the Conqueror and the Rise of Istanbul
CHAPTER SEVEN
Between East and West Ottoman Baroque and Rococo Architecture in the Eighteenth Century
149
CHAPTER TWO
Forming a Classical Style The Architecture of Beyazit II and Selim I
35
CHAPTER EIGHT
Calligraphy, Illumination and Miniatures
175
CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER THREE

The Architecture of Sinan
207
49
The Triumph of Europe Westernization in Nineteenth-Century Architecture
CHAPTER FOUR
Ottoman Ceramics
79
LIST OF OTTOMAN SULTANS GLOSSARY SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
243 245 251 257
CHAPTER FIVE
Ottoman Textiles
97
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List of Illustrations
INTRODUCTION: THE TURKS, THE OTTOMANS AND THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE
The Sahn Richard Yeomans Akdeniz Medrese Richard Yeomans Court of Karadeniz medrese Richard Yeomans
29 29 29 31 32 32
Anadolu Hisar Richard Yeomans The Theodosian Walls Richard Yeomans
5 7
The tabhane Richard Yeomans The trbe of Mehmet II Richard Yeomans Glbahars tomb Richard Yeomans
CHAPTER ONE: MEHMET THE CONQUEROR AND THE RISE OF ISTANBUL
CHAPTER TWO: FORMING A CLASSICAL STYLE THE ARCHITECTURE OF BEYAZIT II AND SELIM I 10 11 12 15 16 17 18 18 18 19 20 21 22 22 23 24 24 25 27 28 Plan of Haseki Hrrem Klliye Haseki Hrrem hospital Richard Yeomans 51 52 CHAPTER THREE: THE ARCHITECTURE OF SINAN Plan of Beyazits mosque A view of Beyazits mosque Richard Yeomans The prayer hall Richard Yeomans A tabhane room Richard Yeomans The tabhane wing of Beyazits mosque Richard Yeomans The front portal facade to the sahn Richard Yeomans The sahn Richard Yeomans The medrese of Beyazits mosque Richard Yeomans The trbe of Beyazit Richard Yeomans The interior of Beyazits trbe Richard Yeomans The mosque of Selim I Richard Yeomans The trbe of Selim I Richard Yeomans Tilework flanking the entrance to Selims trbe Richard Yeomans 36 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 46 47 47
The Haghia Sophia Richard Yeomans Rumeli Hisar Richard Yeomans Yedikle Richard Yeomans Mehmet II by Gentile Bellini National Gallery, London The inili Kiosk Richard Yeomans The entrance to inili Kiosk Richard Yeomans A tile mosaic at the inili Kiosk Richard Yeomans The trbe of Mahmut Paa Richard Yeomans A tile mosaic on the trbe of Mahmut Paa Richard Yeomans Bab-l-Hmayn Richard Yeomans Orta Kap, or the Middle Gate Richard Yeomans Plan of the Middle Court (Court of the Divan) The Divan Richard Yeomans The old treasury Richard Yeomans Plan of the Third Court The Pavilion of the Holy Mantle Richard Yeomans Rear wall of the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle showing Mamluk marble panelling Richard Yeomans The new treasury Richard Yeomans Plan of Mehmets klliye Entrance to Prayer Hall Richard Yeomans
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Haseki Hrrem imaret Richard Yeomans The Mihrimah Sultan Klliye Richard Yeomans Views of the prayer hall of the ehzade mosque Richard Yeomans The ehzade mosque Richard Yeomans The sahn of the ehzade mosque Richard Yeomans The trbe of ehzade Mehmet Richard Yeomans ehzade medrese Richard Yeomans Plan of the Sleymaniye Plan of the prayer hall The Sleymaniye mosque Richard Yeomans The side elevation, Sleymaniye mosque Richard Yeomans The trbe of Sleyman Richard Yeomans The interior of Sleymans trbe Richard Yeomans The trbe of Roxelana Richard Yeomans The interior of Roxelanas trbe Richard Yeomans The Tiryaki Meydan Richard Yeomans The hospital Richard Yeomans The imaret Richard Yeomans The tabhane Richard Yeomans Sinans sebil and trbe Richard Yeomans The Rab medrese Richard Yeomans The baths of Roxelana, or Haseki Sultan Hamam Richard Yeomans The entrance to Rustem Paa mosque Richard Yeomans The tile panel flanking the mosque entrance Richard Yeomans Interior views of the Rustem Paa mosque Richard Yeomans The mihrab tiles Richard Yeomans The mosque of Sokollu Mehmet Paa Richard Yeomans The sahn, fountain and medrese of Sokollu Mehmet Paa mosque Richard Yeomans The interior of the Sokollu Mehmet Paa mosque Richard Yeomans The Mihrimah mosque Richard Yeomans Plan of the Mihrimah mosque Richard Yeomans The interior of the Mihrimah mosque Richard Yeomans The Atk Valide Klliye Richard Yeomans The fountain of Atk Valide Klliye Richard Yeomans Sinans kitchens at the Topkap Palace Richard Yeomans
52 53 54 55 55 56 57 59 60 61 62 63 63 63 63 64 65 65 65 66 66 67 69 69 70 70 71 72 72 73 73 74 75 75 75
Murats bedroom in the Topkap Palace Richard Yeomans Murats bedroom in the Topkap Palace showing the wall foundation Richard Yeomans
77 77
CHAPTER FOUR: OTTOMAN CERAMICS
Window lunette from Haseki Hrrem Hospital, c.1540, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Cuerda seca tilework in the Yeil trbe, Bursa Richard Yeomans Cuerda seca tilework in the Yeil trbe, Bursa Richard Yeomans Cuerda seca tiles on the throne room of the Topkap Palace Richard Yeomans Blue and white Miletus bowl, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Dish, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Blue and white plate, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Blue and white mosque lamp, c.1512 The Trustees of the British Museum Cut-down flask from Ktahya, 1529 The Trustees of the British Museum Ewer from Iznik, 1530 The Trustees of the British Museum Tilework on the Circumcision Kiosk, Topkap Palace Richard Yeomans Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem Richard Yeomans Mosque lamp, 1549 The Trustees of the British Museum Damascus-ware dish, 155060 The Trustees of the British Museum Damascus-ware dish, 1550 The Trustees of the British Museum Mosque lamps, c.1570, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Tankard The Trustees of the British Museum Decorative hanging object, 155560, photograph Richard Yeomans, image reproduction for non-commercial purposes, courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum Polychrome pitcher, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk
80
81 81 81 82 82 82 83 84 84 85 86 87 87 87 89 89 89
89
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Polychrome plate, c.1575, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Polychrome plate showing rock and wave pattern around the rim, c.1575 The Trustees of the British Museum Polychrome plate, c.1585, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Polychrome plate, late sixteenth/early seventeenth century, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Tile representing the Kaba at Mecca, Rustem Paa mosque Richard Yeomans Tilework in one of the two rooms in the kafes Richard Yeomans Tile panel in the Golden Road of the Topkap harem Richard Yeomans Yumurta, photograph Richard Yeomans, image reproduction for non-commercial purposes, courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum Ktahya Ewer, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Ktahya plate, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk anakkale dishes, photographs Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk Late nineteenth-century anakkale jug, photograph Richard Yeomans, courtesy of inili Kiosk
90 90
Boha The Textile Museum, Washington. Gift of Yavuz Smer Detail of Sultan Fatmas kaftan Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Prayer cloth The Textile Museum, Washington. Gift of Jale Colakoglu Bindalli dress The Textile Museum, Washington. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers Hereke upholstered furniture in the Kksu Palace Holbein I rug National State Museum, Berlin
105 108 109 109 110 112 112 113 113 114
90 90
91 91 91 93
Lotto carpet Victoria and Albert Museum, London Holbein III rug The Museum of Islamic Arts, Berlin Holbein IV rug Star Uak carpet 2011. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence Persian medallion carpet Sixteenth-century medallion Uak Victoria and Albert Museum, London Court prayer rug 2011. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence Columned prayer rug 2011. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/ Scala, Florence Bird carpet Victoria and Albert Museum, London Transylvania rugs Victoria and Albert Museum, London
114 115 116
93 93 94 95
116
117 118 119
CHAPTER FIVE: OTTOMAN TEXTILES
Village rug 2011. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence 99 100 100 101 CHAPTER SIX: CONSOLIDATION AND DECLINE 101 101 102 102 103 104 ARCHITECTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Salting carpet Victoria and Albert Museum, London Typical Hereke carpet and upholstered furniture in the Kksu Palace
Kaftan with tiger stripes Victoria and Albert Museum, London Saz pattern Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Shehzade Korkuts ceremonial kaftan Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Ogival tulip pattern Victoria and Albert Museum, London Ogival medallion pattern Victoria and Albert Museum, London Crown motifs Talismanic shirt Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Talismanic shirt detail Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Bridal coverlet Nour Foundation.Courtesy of the Khalili Family Trust atma cushion cover Nour Foundation. Courtesy of the Khalili Family Trust
119 120
The Sultan Ahmet mosque Richard Yeomans Plan of sahn and prayer hall, Blue Mosque Views of the sahn of Sultan Ahmet mosque Richard Yeomans Arcades for ablutions Richard Yeomans Dome structure, Sultan Ahmet mosque Richard Yeomans
124 125 126 127 128
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Prayer hall of Sultan Ahmet mosque Richard Yeomans External access to the Sultans loggia Richard Yeomans Tile work and stained glass in the two rooms in the Kafes Richard Yeomans Sultan Ahmets library Richard Yeomans Revan Kiosk Richard Yeomans Antique marbling Richard Yeomans Baghdad Kiosk Richard Yeomans Interior of Circumcision Kiosk Richard Yeomans Iftariye Kameriyesi Richard Yeomans Interior of inili Klliye Richard Yeomans Entrance to Valide Han Richard Yeomans View of large court with modern Shiite mosque on left Richard Yeomans Views of Yeni Valide mosque, Eminn Richard Yeomans The sahn of Yeni Valide mosque, Eminn Richard Yeomans Interior of Yeni Valide mosque Richard Yeomans Domed ceiling inside the Yeni Valide mosque Richard Yeomans The trbe in the Koprl Klliye Richard Yeomans Vizier Han emberlita Richard Yeomans emberlita Hamami Richard Yeomans The Kprl Yals Richard Yeomans
128 130 132 132 134 134 135 137 137 138 139 139 139 140 141 141 143 143 143 145
eme outside Sultan Ahmet III library Richard Yeomans Sultan Ahmet III fountain Richard Yeomans Decoration on the base of the fountain Richard Yeomans Decoration on the eaves Richard Yeomans Yeni Valide mosque, skdar Richard Yeomans Sahn fountain, Yeni Valide mosque Richard Yeomans Open trbe, Yeni Valide mosque Richard Yeomans eme of Yeni Valide mosque Richard Yeomans Mahmuts fountain outside the Hagia Sophia Richard Yeomans Interior of Mahmuts fountain Richard Yeomans Hekimolu fountain Richard Yeomans The Haci Mehmet Emin Aa cemetery Richard Yeomans Plan of Nuruosmaniye Stepped entrance to the mosque Richard Yeomans Nuruosmaniye Klliye Richard Yeomans Side elevation of qibla wall Richard Yeomans Entrance and passage to Sultans log Richard Yeomans Interior of Nuruosmaniye mosque Richard Yeomans Hall of the Throne Richard Yeomans Dance floor and music gallery in the Hall of the Throne Richard Yeomans Door showing rococo decoration Richard Yeomans
154 155 155 155 156 157 157 157 158 158 158 159 160 160 161 161 161 162 163 163 163 164 165 165 166 167 167 167 168 169 169 171 171 171
CHAPTER SEVEN: BETWEEN EAST AND WEST OTTOMAN BAROQUE AND ROCOCO ARCHITECTURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Osmans pavillion, Topkap Palace Richard Yeomans Hekimbailarin at Kandili Richard Yeomans Fetih Ahmet Paa Yal Richard Yeomans
The Sofa Kiosk Richard Yeomans Interior of the Sofa Kiosk Richard Yeomans The Fruit Room Richard Yeomans Rococo refurbishments to the Divan Richard Yeomans Gilded rococo decoration in the Divan Richard Yeomans Sultan Ahmet III library Richard Yeomans Interior of Sultan Ahmet III library Richard Yeomans Rococo decoration in Sultan Ahmet III library Richard Yeomans
151 151 152 152 153 153 153 154
Hekimolu Ali Paa Klliye Richard Yeomans Hekimolu Ali Paa sebil Richard Yeomans Hekimolu Ali Paa eme Richard Yeomans Hekimolu Ali Paa library Richard Yeomans Laleli mosque over covered market Richard Yeomans Laleli trbe Richard Yeomans Laleli sebil Richard Yeomans Mosque at Beylerbey Richard Yeomans Beylerbey mosque: arcaded portico and royal apartments Richard Yeomans Interior of Beylerbey mosque Richard Yeomans
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Domed ceiling in the reception room of Sultan Valide apartments Richard Yeomans Reception room of Sultan Valide apartments Richard Yeomans Selimiye mosque Richard Yeomans Valide Sultans bedroom Richard Yeomans Interior of the Selimiye mosque Richard Yeomans Mihriah Sultans fountain Richard Yeomans
172 172 173 173 173 174
Levha by Mahmut II Sakp Sabanc Collection, Istanbul Mensur of Abdlhamid II Sakp Sabanc Collection, Istanbul Hunters, Fatih album Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Portrait of a Painter in Turkish Dress Freer Gallery, Washington, DC Gentile Bellini, A Portrait of a Seated Turkish Scribe or Artist Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
189 190 192 193 193 194 195 196 197 198 200 202 204
CHAPTER EIGHT: CALLIGRAPHY, ILLUMINATION AND MINIATURES
Mehmet the Conqueror by Sinan Bey Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Selim II hunting Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul The Battle of Mohacs by Osman Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul World map by Piri Reis Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Imperial Procession, Lokmans The Book of the Festival Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul The Prophet Muhammad commending Ali, Huseyn and Hasan Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Levni, Procession of Nahils Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Ibrahim Paa watching dancers and clowns (detail) Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul
eyh Hamdullahs inscription in the entrance portal to Beyazits mosque in Istanbul Richard Yeomans Murakkaa by eyh Hamdullah Sakp Sabanc Collection, Istanbul Quran by eyh Hamdullah Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Ahmed Karahisari, tiled roundel in Sleymaniye Richard Yeomans Illuminated Quran by Ahmed Karahisari Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul Vakfiye of Roxelana Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul Divan-i-Muhibbi Topkap Saray Museum, Istanbul The tura. Tura of Sleyman the Magnificent The Trustees of the British Museum, London Quran by Hafz Osman Sakp Sabanc Collection, Istanbul Hilye by Yedikle Seyyid Abdullah Effendi Sakp Sabanc Collection, Istanbul Calligraphic lion by Ahmed Hlmi Nour Foundation. Courtesy of the Khalili Family Trust Entwined lam-alif Ruzname Nour Foundation. Courtesy of the Khalili Family Trust Mahmut Is tura Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul zzet Efendis roundels in the Haghia Sophia Richard Yeomans Quran by Mustafa zzet Efendi Nour Foundation. Courtesy of the Khalili Family Trust Mustafa Rakms inscriptions in the Nusretiye mosque Richard Yeomans
177 178 179 179 180 181 182 182 183 184
CHAPTER NINE: THE TRIUMPH OF EUROPE WESTERNIZATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
Nusretiye mosque Richard Yeomans 185 186 186 186 187 188 188 189 Sebils outside the Nusretiye mosque Richard Yeomans Interior of Nusretiye mosque Richard Yeomans Sultans loggia Richard Yeomans Nakedil Valide Sultan trbe Richard Yeomans Trbe of Mahmut II Richard Yeomans Sebil of Mahmut II Richard Yeomans Dolmabahe Palace Richard Yeomans Dolmabahe Palace, Mabeyn Apartments Richard Yeomans Selamlk entry/exit hall Richard Yeomans Dolmabahe Palace, crystal staircase Richard Yeomans Dolmabahe Palace, crystal staircase detail Richard Yeomans
210 211 211 212 212 213 213 214 215 216 216 216
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Ambassadors Waiting and Reception Rooms Richard Yeomans Upper landing behind the balustrade Richard Yeomans Zulveeyn Room Richard Yeomans Imperial baths Richard Yeomans Blue Room Richard Yeomans Harem entry/exit room Richard Yeomans Exterior of the Audience Hall Richard Yeomans Interior of the Audience Hall Richard Yeomans Dolmabahe Bezmialem Valide Sultan mosque Richard Yeomans Interior of Dolmabahe Bezmialem Valide Sultan mosque Richard Yeomans Byk Mecidiye mosque, Ortaky Richard Yeomans Interior of Byk Mecidiye mosque, Ortaky Richard Yeomans Hrkai-Serif mosque Richard Yeomans Interior of the Hrkai-Serif mosque Richard Yeomans Window grills Richard Yeomans The entrance to the mosque of Valide Sultan Pertevniyal Richard Yeomans Mosque of Valide Sultan Pertevniyal Richard Yeomans Beylerbey Palace Richard Yeomans Selamlk entrance to Beylerbey Palace Richard Yeomans
217 217 217 218 218 219 219 219 220 221 221 221 222 222 223 223 223 225 225
The Blue Room, Beylerbey Palace Richard Yeomans The Blue Room, showing Moorish capitals to the columns Richard Yeomans The selamlk staircase Richard Yeomans Reception room above the selamlk staircase Richard Yeomans Pavilion at Beylerbey Palace Richard Yeomans The Kksu Palace Richard Yeomans The Kksu Palace, stair detail Richard Yeomans The iraan Palace Richard Yeomans The iraan Palace Richard Yeomans Afif Paa yal Richard Yeomans Sait Ali Paas yal Richard Yeomans House at Yeniky Richard Yeomans Late nineteenth-century yals at Yeniky Richard Yeomans The Mabeyn apartments, Yldz Palace Richard Yeomans ale Pavilion: Yldz Palace Richard Yeomans Mother-of-Pearl Room in the ale Pavilion Richard Yeomans Malta Pavillion Richard Yeomans Inside the Hamidiye mosque Richard Yeomans The Hamidiye mosque Richard Yeomans Kocatepe mosque, Ankara Richard Yeomans
226 226 226 226 227 228 228 229 230 232 232 233 233 234 235 236 237 238 238 241
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Preface
y rst visit to Istanbul, in 1965, marked the last stage of a long journey that had taken
I encountered, which was Islamic in culture with a sensational skyline dominated not by Byzantine monuments but by Ottoman domes and minarets. Very soon the Byzantine splendours of the Haghia Sophia, the Theodosian walls and church of St Saviour in Chora were eclipsed by the Blue Mosque, Sleymaniye and treasures of the Topkap Palace and the Museum of Islamic and Turkish Art. These buildings and artefacts excited my imagination and I found myself, for the rst time in many weeks, looking at art with a feeling of deep visual engagement. My unfettered eye responded initially to Ottoman art on a purely formal and sensual level, responding to its beauty of colour, geometric clarity and spatial organization. I admired the oral intricacies of the arabesque, the elegance of its immaculate calligraphy and the sumptuousness of its textiles. I also delighted in the informality of the Topkap with its leisurely arrangement of pavilions in parks. It was a welcome antidote to the symmetry, pomposity and monumentality of some of the European palaces I had recently encountered. In general, Ottoman art presented an exhilarating alternative to what I had seen in Greece and Italy. It contained none of the rhetoric, symbolism, didactics, myth and religious narrative that permeates so much Italian and, to a lesser extent, Graeco-Roman art. The meaning of Islamic art seemed to reside in its form rather than in any symbol system or narrative. It did not appear to preach, teach or indoctrinate, and it was not a vehicle for propaganda, like the paintings in the Doges Palace. Islamic art did not bombard me with images of martyrdom, mortality or
me across Italy and Greece. I was an art student at the time and this grand tour marked the climax of a year studying painting and attending courses on Greek and Roman sculpture and Italian Renaissance art. Fortied with that knowledge, I visited most of the major galleries, museums, buildings and archaeological sites of Italy and Greece, arriving in Istanbul with a mind saturated with images of Renaissance and classical art. When I reected on that experience, I recognised that what I had learned over the year had probably impaired my vision. Instead of looking at works of art and appreciating them for what they were, I had spent most of my time in Italy and Greece checking my knowledge against them, trying to remember what I had read and what I had been told. It was obvious that I had not been engaged in serious looking and thinking, and I realized that I should have spent my time drawing works of art with probity rather than testing my knowledge of them. In appreciating the visual arts, it is sometimes necessary to look rst and hold academic knowledge in reserve. The opposite situation applied in Istanbul, where I faced an Islamic culture in a state of complete ignorance. My innocence and unfamiliarity, however, enabled me to absorb Istanbul with a fresh eye and open mind. I knew a little about the fall of Constantinople, but nothing about the rise of Istanbul. My Eurocentric education had prepared me for the glories of Byzantine art, and impressed in my mind were images of Constantinoples ancient churches and walls. None of this prepared me for the dynamic city
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the Last Judgement. There was no Niobe grieving for her children or Laocoon in his death agony, and none of the theatricality of Tintorreto, Caravaggio or Bernini. The rejection of such content in Islamic art, and the formal alternatives it offered, was a revelation particularly for an art student who painted abstract pictures at the time and was schooled in the belief that only signicant form could provoke aesthetic emotions. My initial response to Islamic art on a formal and sensual level served its purpose, but I soon realized that it was not just about formal values. It was far more complex than that. I discovered that in the religious domain it has much the same content as any other sacred art. What is different is that it conveys it largely by non-gurative means. For instance, the Quran has a visionary text replete with sublime images of the Last Judgement and Paradise. These subjects are not illustrated, but are called to mind and contemplated through the mediation of calligraphy and illumination. Doctrine is also a part of religious art, conveyed not through pictures but through calligraphy that takes iconic, and occasionally monumental, form on the walls of mosques. Notions of Gods plenitude, creation and the nearness of paradise are expressed in the tilework and oral arabesques that grace the mosque, palace and home. In the secular domain of Islamic art there is a very strong gurative tradition. Miniature paintings contain a wealth of literary, mythological, historical, social, anecdotal and factual content even occasionally bending the law to allow the representation of religious subjects. Meaning and content abound in Islamic art on many levels, but they cannot generally be read in a linear way or understood through iconographies like those used in Christian, Hindu or Buddhist art. Meaning is often conveyed diffusely and holistically through an expression of harmony and unity, with several art forms working together within a continuum. The sense of the sublime and transcendent is conveyed in the mosque through an interplay of architectural space, geometric form, polychrome marble, painted arabesques, calligraphy, tilework and
patterned carpets. Colour is autonomous and vibrant, suffusing and articulating the various elements with clarity and resonance. It is an uncluttered environment of worship that unfocuses the mind and renders it susceptible to contemplation and prayer. Likewise in the Ottoman palace, power, majesty and courtly splendour are expressed through a similar continuum. Here the same motifs and materials are often used, showing the close proximity between religious and secular life in Muslim society. Gilded and painted arabesques ll the domes, pious inscriptions grace bedroom walls, and the immense oral repertoire of mosque tilework appears on plates, dishes, vases, embroidered bedspreads, cushions, velvets and ceremonial silk kaftans. After many visits to Istanbul I have now learned to appreciate more the manifold complexities and subtleties of Ottoman art. The experience has been like peeling an onion and constantly discovering new layers. Each visit has opened up new vistas and brought fresh discoveries. In recent years my attention has been drawn to the beauty of Istanbuls eighteenth-century rococo fountains and the breathtaking delights of the Bosphorus with its palaces and yals (waterfront houses). That most despised century the nineteenth is also capable of yielding unexpected pleasures, such as the Hrkai- rif mosque, e and the beautiful wooden houses that give the towns and villages of the Bosphorus and Princes Islands so much character and distinction. I also now realize that, handled sensibly, academic knowledge need not get in the way of appreciating and looking at art. In recent years it has given me an interest in nineteenthcentury Ottoman art and architecture, despite the fact that much of it is not to my taste. These recent discoveries have made me aware that I have only scratched the surface in many respects. The writing of this book has served to heighten awareness not only of the enormous gaps in my own knowledge but also in the eld of Ottoman art as a whole. What has been written in English remains very patchy. It is generally polarized between highly specialized books, catalogues and papers, and supercial coffee-table picture books. Some books are
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absurdly expensive for what they are, and a number are not easily available outside Turkey. A great deal of material belongs to the self-contained world of academia in the form of published papers for specialist journals. Such papers tend to be written by academics for academics, and they do not address the needs of the general educated reader. At the other end of the spectrum there is a popular genre of books, dealing with the court and harem, that generally sensationalize and misrepresent the Ottoman world, perpetuating the stereotypical image in the West of the lustful and terrible Turk. Of the most useful books on Ottoman art and architecture, one or two should be mentioned. The best introduction is Michael Leveys World of Ottoman Art. It is not just about Istanbul, but deals with the whole of Ottoman art in a short, incisive and immensely readable volume. Godfrey Goodwins magisterial work A History of Ottoman Architecture goes well beyond Istanbul in covering the spectrum of Ottoman architecture. It is the denitive book on Ottoman architecture, but much more information on the nineteenth century has appeared since its publication in 1971. Pars Tug lacis book The Role of the Balian Family in Ottoman Architecture is the authoritative work on Istanbuls nineteenth-century art and architecture. Also, Splendours of the Bosphorus: Houses and Palaces of Istanbul, by Chris Hellier and Francesco Venturi, is a readable introduction to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architectural developments along the Bosphorus. Zeynep eliks excellent book The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century is also an invaluable contribution to this period. Of the age of Sleyman the Magnicent, much more is now available on the architect Sinan. Among others, there is now Godfrey Goodwins own book Sinan: Ottoman Architecture and its Value Today and Aptullah Kurans clear analysis Sinan: The Grand Old Master of Ottoman Architecture. With many of the decorative arts one has to look to exhibition catalogues rather than books. Books on Ottoman calligraphy are thin on the ground and the best material has come from exhibitions of
specic collections. Letters in Gold: Ottoman Calligraphy from the Sakp Sabanc Collection, Istanbul by M. Ug ur Derman is an excellent book and catalogue produced for the exhibition of the Sakp Sabanc Collection held in 1998 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Likewise, the catalogue Empire of the Sultans, by J. M. Rogers, contains invaluable information on calligraphy in the Nasser Khalili Collection (London), exhibited at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London in 1996. Very little information was available on the sultans monogram, the tug ra, until the catalogue Imperial Ottoman Fermans, edited by Aysegl Nadir, came out in 1987 to accompany the exhibition of the same name. In the case of Ottoman embroidery, two of the best books relate to specic collections. Flowers of Silk and Gold, by Sumru Belger Krody, is about the collection in the Washington Textile Museum, and Ottoman Embroidery, by Marianne Ellis and Jennifer Wearden, contains useful technical information on the embroidery in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In addition to ground-breaking works like Arthur Lanes Later Islamic Pottery, there are now some informative books on Iznik ceramics. Most notable is Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, by Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, as well as John Carswells concise introduction to the eld Iznik Pottery. An excellent brief guide and introduction to the ceramics collection in the inili Kiosk, Istanbul is Turkish Tiles and Ceramics: inili Kk, by Alpay Pasinli and Saliha Baliman. Weaving and carpets are generally better served, and two very substantial books have now been published in Istanbul. These are Nevber Grsus The Art of Turkish Weaving: Designs through the Ages and Otkay Aslanapas One Thousand Years of Turkish Carpets. One noteworthy paper providing a concise introduction to the carpets in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London is Michael Franses and Robert Pinners The Classical Carpets of the 15th to 17th Centuries, published in the journal Hali. Two useful Arts Council of Great Britain exhibition catalogues, relating to exhibitions held at the Hayward Gallery (London) in the 1970s, are The Arts of Islam and Islamic Carpets from the Collection of Joseph V. McMullan.
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Godfrey Goodwins Topkap Palace is a readable guide to the palace with a lot of interesting contextual material, and the book Topkap, edited by Ilhan Aksit, provides a useful introduction to its various collections. Dealing with the Topkap collections much more thoroughly and systematically is a series of scholarly books by J. M. Rogers covering architecture, the contents of the treasury, albums, illuminated manuscripts, carpets, costumes, embroideries and other textiles. J. M. Rogers is one of the most distinguished scholars in the eld, and he was responsible, with Rachel Ward, for the catalogue and exhibition Sleyman the Magnicent, held at the British Museum in 1988. His work on albums, miniatures and illuminated manuscripts has been particularly useful. It is a subject that has received little attention, with information consisting of either brief introductions or detailed catalogues and scholarly papers. Two good but slim introductions are Meredith-Owenss Turkish Miniatures and Richard Ettinghausens Turkish Miniatures: From the 13th to 18th Century. Museum catalogues, such as those produced by the British Museum or the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, tend to list and describe the collections without comment or analysis. Of scholarly papers, Esin Atls Ottoman Miniature Painting under Sultan Mehmed 11 (Ars Orientalis 9) is excellent, as is her magnicent book Levni and the Surname: The Story of an EighteenthCentury Ottoman Festival. Finally, in this review of literature, John Freelys Blue Guide: Istanbul must be acknowledged as an informative and invaluable work for both practical and reference purposes. Among this heterogeneous and imbalanced literature there is no single book that deals specically with the Ottoman art and architecture of Istanbul in one accessible comprehensive volume. This is what I have attempted to provide here. As with my other books, I have tried to bridge the gap between the specialist scholar and the general reader. I am indebted to all the above scholars, whom I have used and acknowledged throughout this text. This book is also a distillation of my own observations and experiences of a city that has been so much a part of my life over the years. It is also the product of
shared experiences with colleagues and groups of students who have accompanied me on numerous study tours to Istanbul. Their reactions, observations and questions have partly inuenced the selection of material and issues considered. My intention is to provide the reader with the background knowledge and understanding to appreciate and enjoy Ottoman art not only in Istanbuls mosques, palaces, houses and museums but also where it appears in museums throughout the world. Certain decisions had to be made regarding the range and scope of the book and what constitutes the art of Istanbul. I have adopted a liberal interpretation of this, choosing works of art that best manifest the citys Ottoman culture rather than those manufactured only in Istanbul. Some arts like calligraphy, miniatures and luxury goods were produced in Istanbul, but those that most effectively contributed to the splendour and majesty of the city were commissioned and imported from Iznik, Ktahya, Bursa and various towns in Anatolia. Ceramics came from Iznik and Ktahya, carpets from Anatolia and silks and velvets from Bursa. Iznik tiles and Anatolian carpets lined the walls and covered the oors of mosques and palaces. Bursa silks and velvets provided splendid ceremonial court dress as well as the soft furnishings of palaces and houses. These works dened the environment of the mosque, the palace and home, and have since formed the content of Istanbuls many museums. Museum collections have also guided the selection of material. Certain works of art, such as the pre-Ottoman carpets in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul and elsewhere, fall outside the Ottoman period, but they have to be considered because of the light they shed on subsequent carpet developments. They are also beautiful works in their own right and should not be missed on any visit to those museums. Likewise, some works of art not necessarily Ottoman have received attention because they are important museum items. For example, in the Topkap Saray Museum there are some miniatures in the Fatih Album, attributed to the artist Mehmet Siyah Qalam. These are not Ottoman, but they are
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outstanding works of art and reveal something about the court acquisitions of the time. The Italian painting of A Turkish Scribe or Artist, attributed to Gentile Bellini, is discussed at some length for what it reveals about Mehmet the Conquerors taste, his patronage and its inuence on Turkish painting at the time. Also, exported works of art that would not have been seen in the palaces and houses of Istanbul are examined for what they tell us about trade and cross-cultural contacts. Mention has also been made of European works of art that contributed so much to the character of the nineteenth-century Ottoman palace interior. Decisions on the selection of architectural material were less problematic until the nineteenth century was reached. Here I chose to discuss buildings produced under Ottoman, rather than European, patronage. This seemed logical for a book on Ottoman art, but it is questionable for a book on Istanbul.
Apart from problems of length, I felt it was beyond the scope of this book to deal with the building activities among the European communities of Galata, Pera and elsewhere. Ignoring these architectural developments was not easy because they were both signicant and fascinating. It produced such tantalizing architecture as the church of St Stephen of the Bulgars, assembled in Istanbul out of pieces of prefabricated cast iron made in Vienna. Another enticing building that recently caught my eye is the Crimean Memorial Church, built in the Gothic style by George Edmund Street between 1858 and 1868. This small pocket of Victorian England in the midst of Peras steep narrow streets represented yet another delight and another possible line of investigation. All of this, however, is another story another book and it simply goes to show that Istanbul is inexhaustible. It is an onion that can never be completely unpeeled.
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I NTRODUCTION
The Turks, the Ottomans and the Conquest of Constantinople
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n the course of the ninth and tenth centuries, fundamental changes occurred in the Muslim
Mamluks ruled Egypt from 1250 to 1517 before the Ottoman Turks took control). Thus, the initial impact of the Turks was that of a signicant administrative and military class within a world dominated by Arabs. The Turks were essentially a tribal nomadic people who for centuries had moved their herds from one pasturage to another across the inhospitable steppes, deserts and mountains of Central Asia. They were formidable warriors who exercised weaponry skills, expert horsemanship and swift mobility with great discipline and courage. This was why they made such desirable troops and bodyguards. In their homelands they operated as tribes, but under the occasional leadership of a khan, they could unite with devastating effect. Earlier in their history, from the third to the fth centuries
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world as its political leadership gradually passed from the Arabs to the Persians and the Turks. During the ninth century the Abbasid Empire, with its capital in Baghdad, was the political centre of the Muslim world; but after the death of the caliph Haroun al-Rashid in 809, a war of succession, followed by political and religious insurrection, precipitated its slow decline. In order to combat growing instability, the caliphs of Baghdad replaced regular Arab and Persian forces with slave troops of Turks conscripted from the Caucasus and Transoxiana. Because these slaves were independent of the factional interests of the Arabs and the Persians, they proved to be far more loyal and reliable. In addition to soldiers, Turkish slaves were also recruited into the civil service and, like their military counterparts, they rose through the ranks to achieve the highest ofces of state. A slave meritocracy was thus established which became an administrative and military lite, and over the course of time the weakened caliphate gradually surrendered political control to its Turkish generals, bureaucrats and grand viziers. Because of the weakness at the centre, the Abbasid Empire lost its territorial sway in both the east and the west. In the east, aristocratic Persian families, such as the Tahirids, Saffarids and Samanids, established their rule in Khorasan and parts of Central Asia. In the west, a surviving member of the Umayyad family, Abd al-Rahman I, created, in 756, an independent dynasty in Spain which later established a caliphate to rival that of Baghdad. In 800 the Aghlabid governors of Tunisia also established autonomy, paying only lip service to Baghdad. Egypt became independent in the ninth century when a Turkish slave from Samarra (the new Abbasid capital), Ahmed ibn Tulun, was sent there as governor by the caliph al-Muatazz. He built up a formidable army and carved out an empire for himself in Egypt, Palestine and Syria which lasted over thirty years. Although Egypt briey returned to Abbasid control, Ibn Tulun set a precedent for Turks becoming the ruling class of Egypt (later, slave dynasties of Turkish
the Turkish Huns had ravished China, Russia and Central Europe, penetrating as far as Italy. During the tenth century they were constantly engaged in border skirmishes and incursions against the Arabs and the Persians, but in the eleventh century the Turks went on the offensive and invaded Persia and Iraq.1 In 1040, a branch of the Og uz tribe known as the Seluks invaded eastern Persia under their leader Tgrl Beg. They conquered Khorasan, where Tgrl Beg proclaimed himself sultan. In the course of the next fteen years he occupied the rest of Persia, invaded Iraq and took Baghdad at the invitation of the vizier Ibn al-Muslima. Later, Isfahan in Persia was chosen as the capital of the Seluk Empire and the caliph in Baghdad was reduced to a symbolic religious gure with no political power. Tgrls successors, Alp Arslan (r.106372) and Malikshah (r.107292), placed government administration in the hands of the vizier Nizam al-Mulk, who held that ofce for twenty years. He was a brilliant administrator and political philosopher, and his book The Book of Government is a classic of Islamic literature. He also had a profound inuence on the intellectual life of Islam by creating the rst Sunni theological colleges (medreses), known as Nizamiyas, in Baghdad and elsewhere. The great Persian philosopher al-Ghazali (10581111), who reconciled the divisions between mysticism and Islamic law, was professor of religious sciences at the
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Nizamiya in Baghdad. It was also during this period that Islamic architecture achieved some of its most perfect forms of expression in buildings like the Masjid-i-Jami in Isfahan. Perhaps the most decisive event in Turkish history was Alp Arslans victory over the Byzantines at the battle of Manzikert in eastern Anatolia in 1071. For many years, the Seluks of Persia had encouraged the Turkomans to raid Byzantine territory because it suited them to direct the energy of these nomads against an external enemy. Out of self-interest, the nomads served the Seluk sultans well in wars of conquest, but in times of peace they lacked loyalty to the state, and their resistance to centralized government and refusal to pay tax had a destabilizing effect on the settled community. The battle of Manzikert opened up Anatolia to the Turkish nomads and provided new opportunities for conquest and occupation. Under the leadership of Sleyman, most of Anatolia came under Turkish rule and an independent Seluk sultanate was created with its capital at Iznik, the ancient city of Nicaea where, under Byzantine rule, many important ecumenical church councils had been held. What emerged was two discrete empires that of the Great Seluks of Persia and the sultanate of Rum (or East Rome) in Anatolia. Other groups of Seluk Turks advanced into Syria and Palestine, capturing Jerusalem in 1071 and Damascus in 1076. It was the defeat of Christendom at Manzikert and the capture of Jerusalem in the same year that created the momentum in the West for a Christian counter-attack. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade, and the advance force, consisting of Peter the Hermits ragtag army, entered Anatolia by way of Constantinople in 1097. The Crusaders could not have picked a better time to invade the Muslim world because it had never been so divided. Syria and Palestine consisted of a number of rival Seluk principalities and Sleymans successor, Kl Arslan, was engaged in a bitter struggle to keep Seluk Anatolia together. The only thing which united the Seluks was Sunni Islam and their common hatred of the Shiite Fatimid Empire ruled from Cairo. No
sooner had Kl Arslan consolidated his position in Anatolia than a second Crusader army of regulars defeated him at Eskiihir. He lost his capital at Iznik, but fought back with some success and eventually settled on Konya in central southern Anatolia as his new capital. Konya remained the capital of the Seluk Empire until the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Despite the initial setback from the rst Crusade, the Seluk sultanate managed to hold on to most of Anatolia; but as Justin McCarthy has explained, it was a regime aficted by constant instability. The sultanate was often weakened centrally by power delegated to the royal princes, who governed in the provinces. Also, when a sultan died the traditions of inheritance caused conict, as land and spoils, including empires, were divided among his offspring.2 Nevertheless, the Seluks presided over a thriving multicultural empire in which trade, manufacture and the arts ourished. Much of this creative energy was due to nomadic culture, which contributed to the unique character of Seluk art and architecture, particularly in the eld of carpet weaving. During the thirteenth century Marco Polo commented on the great beauty of the carpets produced in the Konya, Kaysari and Sivas regions (although he attributes this manufacture to the Greeks and Armenians).3 When Marco Polo passed through Anatolia, he would also have seen some of the most remarkable architecture in the Muslim world, including the Gk medrese at Sivas, which was completed in the year he was there, 1271. He was in Anatolia at a time when the Seluks were suzerains of the Mongols. The Mongols had invaded Anatolia in 1243, but ruling from Tabriz in western Persia, their hold on the region was slack and the Seluks retained much administrative control. The Seluks loss of sovereignty did not prevent the remarkable owering of architecture, and many great masterpieces were built under Mongol rule and occasionally with Mongol patronage. The great buildings of this period included the Karatay . (1251) and Ince Minare (1258) medreses at Konya, the Gk and ifte Minare medreses at Sivas (1271), as well
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as the ifte Minare medrese at Erzurum (1258). Seluk architecture was a brilliant synthesis of many regional styles, including those of Syria, Persia, Armenia and Georgia. Its inuence spread as far as Egypt and can be seen in the great portal of the Sultan Hasan mosque (135661) in Cairo, which is similar to the entrance to the Gk medrese at Sivas. The tenuous hold the Mongols had on Anatolia was eventually wrested from them by a new breed of Turkoman leaders, known as beys. These warriors, eeing Mongol oppression in Persia, rst settled their tribes in Cilicia and regions on the Black Sea coast. Then they gradually penetrated western Turkey and set up independent principalities known as beyliks. Konya was captured in 1276 by Mehmet Bey, the leader of the Karamanli tribe, who proclaimed Turkish, rather than Persian, as the ofcial language. The Seluks reconquered Konya, but after the collapse of Mongol power in 1337, the Karamanlis returned there and established the powerful beylik of Karaman. Many other Turkoman tribes migrated to western Anatolia, increasing the Turkication of the region and further eroding what was left of the Byzantine Empire. Mindful of more conict with Byzantium, many Turkish beys assumed the title of gazi, meaning holy warrior, and pursued the conquest of Christian territory as a holy war, or jihad. The most signicant beylik to emerge in western Anatolia, at the expense of the Byzantines, was that of the Ottomans. Tradition has it that Osman Bey, the rst of the Ottoman dynasty, was the leader of the Kay tribe of the Og uz Turks. He emerged as a leader in the Sg t area of western Anatolia after a period of power conict between various rival Seluk princes and their Mongol overlords. Rather than struggle against fellow Turks, Osman took on the mantle of gazi and, uniting the nomadic Turkish tribes against Byzantium, he made territorial gains that culminated in the capture of Iznik. His son Orhan Gazi continued the holy war, making Bursa the capital in 1326 and then taking the rest of northwestern Anatolia as far as Scutari and Nicodemia, within striking distance of Constantinople. In 1354 the Ottomans took Gallipoli, and their grip on Europe
was strengthened in 1361 when the city of Edirne (Adrianople) surrendered to Orhans son Murat I. The tribes that united under the rst Ottomans did so because there was wealth to be gained from the spoils of war. However, by appealing to them as Muslims with a duty to extend the rule of Islam, the Ottomans from the outset had a vision of empire that transcended tribal differences. The disunited Christians provided the easiest pickings, and under Murat I the Ottoman Empire rapidly extended into Byzantine and Serbian territory, with the Serbs suffering major defeats at the battles of Maritza (1371) and Kosovo (1389). By the time of Murats death (he was killed at the battle of Kosovo), the rulers of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia had become vassals of the Turks. Turkish control of the Balkans was based on vassalage rather than direct rule because there were not enough Turks to settle and colonize the region. While most of his energy was concentrated on the Balkans, Murat did not ignore Anatolia, and in 1387 he conquered Karaman, the most powerful beylik outside the Ottoman domain. Murat was succeeded by Beyazit I, known as the Thunderbolt, and living up to his nickname, he stormed across the Balkans and Anatolia in a new wave of conquest. He pushed into Wallachia and southern Hungary, captured more of Thrace and laid siege to Constantinople, where he built on the Bosphorus the fortress of Anadolu Hisar. Unlike his predecessors, he concentrated his efforts on the east, and within a year of coming to the throne he had conquered south-western Anatolia with the help of Christian troops. One of the reasons why his forebears had delayed attacking the beyliks was the difculty of persuading Turks that it was in their interests to ght fellow Turks. This was not the case with the Christians, and Beyazit adopted the strategy of using Christian armies, raised in the Balkans, against the remaining beyliks in Anatolia. In so doing he also established a signicant innovation in raising an army of Christian slaves. With these forces at his disposal, he conquered Sivas and the east and even occupied Malatya within the border of the Mamluk Empire (ruled from Egypt).
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Anadolu Hisar
Beyazits aim was to rule an empire, with centralized control, through a powerful civil service and military lite. He wanted a standing army and a treasury and bureaucracy that could raise taxes. Like the Abbasid caliphs before him, Beyazit preferred an army and civil service comprised of loyal slaves rather than Turkish warlords and aristocrats. The slaves were products of a system of conscription known as the devirme. This involved enslaving the most able and intelligent Christian youths, converting them to Islam and giving them an education and training that prepared them for the highest ofces of state.
As in the Abbasid and Mamluk empires, this form of slavery produced a ruling class, and the term devirme also denotes a class as well as a system. It produced a military corps dlite, known as the Janissaries, and a body of civil servants that included grand viziers. As a consequence of this, the Turkish aristocracy experienced the erosion of their power and did not welcome the rise of the devirme. Although Beyazit did not live to see these reforms in place, it was his radical thinking that made possible a system of government that served the Ottoman dynasty for centuries.4
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Beyazits penetration into eastern Anatolia quickly brought him into conict with Tamerlane, the most powerful and ruthless gure to appear in the East since Genghis Khan. Tamerlane destroyed Beyazits army at the battle of Ankara in 1402 and Beyazit was taken prisoner and paraded in an iron cage. His dramatic downfall, humiliation and death subsequently caught the imagination of the West, inspiring paintings, plays and operas, such as Christopher Marlowes Tamerlane the Great, and Handels Tamerlano. Tamerlane restored the beyliks to their former independent status and the rest of the Ottoman domains were divided among Beyazits sons, . Mehmet, Isa and Sleyman. The Ottoman Empire in Anatolia reverted to the territory it once occupied under Murat I, but the European territories remained intact. There followed a period of interregnum, with the sons ghting each other until Mehmet I emerged as the winner. After the turbulence of this period, Mehmet chose to consolidate what was left of the empire rather than attempt any campaign of reconquest. Despite his peace-loving nature, Mehmets successor, Murat II, had to be vigilant in holding on to the Balkans, as well as in dealing with a number of rebellions in Anatolia. Internally, he struggled against factions of insubordinate nomads led by Dzme Mustafa, who claimed to be Beyazits son. Murats principal European enemies were Hungary and Venice, but he also had to contend with Vlad Drakule, who declared independence in Wallachia.
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After his victory at Varna, Murat abdicated and retired to Manisa, where he sought a more contemplative life among the Sus. Mehmet II was only twelve years old when he came to the throne, and it was soon apparent that he was too young to rule such a volatile empire. Mehmet was obliged to abdicate in favour of his father, and as soon as Murat resumed his reign, another crusade was launched, led by Stanislas IIIs general John Hunaydi. This crusade was routed in 1448 at Kosovo the second major defeat a Christian army had suffered on that soil. Three years later Murat died at Edirne, and Mehmet II returned to the throne in 1451, an older and wiser man, after gaining political experience as governor of Manisa. Murat left Mehmet with a secure, united and governable empire, and taking advantage of this stability Mehmet concentrated on his overriding ambition to conquer Constantinople. He wasted no time in preparing for this, and in 1452 he built the fortress of Rumeli Hisar on the European side of the Bosphorus, opposite Beyazit Is fortress of Anadolu Hisar. These two fortresses gave him complete command of the Bosphorus. In 1452, all that was left of the Byzantine Empire was the city of Constantinople, the territories around Trebizond and Mistra in the Greek Peloponnese. Constantinople stood like a wedge, dividing the European and Anatolian halves of the Ottoman Empire, and its conquest was essential in order to unify and bind the empire together. As the Romans and Byzantines had understood, its location made it a perfect capital for an empire that straddled east and west. It was also of great economic signicance, a natural port and the bridge between the Mediterranean and Asia where all the main land and sea trade routes met. Above all, the capture of Constantinople was a symbolic act, and Mehmet was very conscious of stepping into the shoes of the Roman and Byzantine emperors. Its conquest meant the ultimate triumph of Islam over Christian territory, and as a gazi, Mehmet wanted the satisfaction of achieving what his illustrious predecessors had failed to do. Having secured his command of the Bosphorus, cutting Constantinoples supplies from
Murat had further to face an alliance of Christian powers when Pope Eugenious IV called for a crusade against the Turks. This call to arms was partly the outcome of Emperor John VIIIs (the Byzantine emperor) successful diplomatic activity. In order to rally Christendom against the Turks, John VIII agreed to proposals, negotiated at the Council of Florence in 1439, to unite the Greek and Latin churches under the partial authority of the Pope. The crusade, led by King Ladislas III of Poland and Hungary, was crushed at Varna in 1444, and the plan to unite the churches collapsed when the Greek clergy, who rst approved it, later repudiated it on their return to Constantinople.
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the Black Sea, Mehmet positioned his army against the citys walls in the spring of 1453. The offensive began with Mehmets artillery pounding the city walls with devastating effect. His eet was less successful, and it failed to penetrate the harbour the inlet of water that separated the city from the districts of Galata and Pera known as the Golden Horn. An iron chain protected the mouth of the Golden Horn, but Mehmet overcame this obstacle and reached the harbour by hauling his galleys on wheeled cradles over the hills of Pera. The artillery and infantry attack on Constantinoples walls lasted for seven weeks, but the resilient Greeks, led by Constantine XI, effectively patched up the damage after each bombardment. Mehmet sent a message to Constantine saying that if he surrendered the city, the safety of its citizens would be guaranteed. If not, they faced three days
of plunder, with no protection against the ensuing mayhem. Constantine refused to surrender, hoping for a miracle or help from his Christian allies. Neither was forthcoming. The angel of deliverance did not appear, and the Christian communities closest to hand, like the Genoese of Galata, had been forced to surrender and remain neutral. The Theodosian Walls were nally breached near the present Topkap gate on May 29th, and the infantry, followed by the Janissaries, were the rst to get through. Constantine died bravely in the ghting, but by the end of the morning all effective resistance had come to an end. There followed three days of looting, and despite Mehmets orders that no buildings should be destroyed, many were, and it was estimated that 4,000 civilians died. According to Ritter J. von Hammer-Purgstall:
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[L]ooting started, a looting which nothing was to stop, neither weeping women and girls, nor cries of the children nor the oaths of the wounded. No restraint could curb soldiers intoxicated with victory. The only criteria that affected the fate of trembling creatures were those of youth, beauty and fortune. Without any distinction of rank or sex, prisoners were tied two by two with their belts or veils. Next it was the turn of the churches: pictures of saints were torn from their walls and cut up; sacred vessels were destroyed; vestments were turned into coverings; the crucix capped by a Janissarys helmet, was carried around the streets; altars were profaned and used as dining-tables, or as beds to violate girls and boys, or as stalls for horses. Aya Sophia, [Haghia Sophia] says Phranzes, Gods sanctuary, the throne of His glory, the marvel of the earth, was transformed into a place of horror and abominations.
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1 2 3 McCarthy, J., The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (London and New York: Longman, 1997), p. 4. McCarthy, J., op. cit., p. 13. Polo, M., The Travels (London: Penguin, 1958), pp. 4647. Marco Polo attributes these carpets to the Greeks and Armenians but his observations have been questioned. He does not seem to recognize the difference between the nomadic and settled Turk and refers to the Turkoman as a worshipper of Mahomet who spoke a barbarous language and bred horses and mules. Owing to his anti-Muslim feelings and ignorance of the Turkish language, his contacts in the region were Christians. For these reasons his observation that the Greeks and Armenians were the sole producers of carpets may be unreliable. In another contemporary source, El Muhtasar fi tarihi l-basar, the Arab historian Abu al-Fida (12731331) states that according to Ibn Said, There [Aksaray] Turkoman carpets are made and exported to all countries in the world. Quoted in Aslanapa, O., One Thousand Years of Turkish Carpets (Istanbul: Eren, 1988), p. 33. 4 McCarthy, J., op. cit., p. 48. Vlad Drakule is better known as Vlad the Impaler, the infamous tyrant who provided the inspiration for Bram Stokers book Dracula. 6 According to Ritter J. von Hammer-Purgstall, when similar plans for uniting the churches were discussed in the Haghia Sophia in 1452, they were bitterly opposed by Patriarch Gennadius, and Grand Duke Lucas Notarus said he would prefer to see in Constantinople not the hat of a cardinal but rather the turban of a Turk. Quoted in Kelly, L., Istanbul: A Travellers Companion (London: Constable, 1987), p. 83. 7 8 Quoted in Kelly, L., op. cit., p. 166. Compare Edward Gibbons account of the desecration of the Haghia Sophia in 1204 by the Crusaders. His account is also published in Kelly, op. cit., pp. 7576. 5
The horror, destruction and violation of the city and its people was no worse than that inicted by the Crusaders in 1204, but as we shall see in the next chapter, after the destruction came rebuilding and reconciliation on an unprecedented scale.8
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Mehmet the Conqueror and the Rise of Istanbul
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he rst thing Mehmet did upon entering his newly conquered city was to head straight for
century and moved to the Blachernae Palace. Further aeld, on the fourth hill of the city, the great Justinian Church of the Holy Apostles was also in a ruinous state. It was handed to Gennadius, the newly appointed Greek Patriarch, but its condition was so bad, and the area so depopulated, that Gennadius sought permission to use another church, and was given the monastery of St Mary Pammakaristos as the headquarters for the Greek Patriarchate. What was left of the Church of the Holy Apostles was later demolished, and its site and recycled fabric were used to build Mehmets new mosque and klliye (mosque complex). The city was badly depopulated, and the reconstruction process was planned in tandem with a radical resettlement policy. Those who abandoned the capital before the conquest were encouraged to return, and those taken prisoner and enslaved in the course of the conquest were resettled in the city and given property. Some populations within the empire, such as the Greeks of Morea, were forcibly transplanted to Istanbul, where they were settled in the area of Fener near the Greek Patriarchate. Greeks, Italians and Jews were brought in from western Anatolia and from the Aegean islands of Thassos, Samothrace, Euboa and Mytilene. Christians and Muslims were brought from Konya, Aksaray and Bursa.3 The Jews, with their mercantile acumen, were particularly encouraged to settle and, leaving Thessalonika and places as far aeld as Italy and Germany, they joined the existing community of Jews in Balat under the leadership of their chief rabbi Moshe Capsali. Across the Golden Horn in Galata, the Genoese community was guaranteed its trading rights and religious freedom as a reward for its prompt surrender and neutrality throughout the siege. Each non-Muslim community formed a millet (nation) with its own religious leader answerable to the authority of the sultan. Thus the social, religious and, within limits, the legal practices of the various ethnic groups were respected and maintained under Ottoman rule.4 According to a census in 1477, the population of the city was between 60,000 and
the Haghia Sophia, the most renowned cathedral in Christendom. As he entered Justinians great church, he encountered one of his soldiers breaking up the oor with an axe. Provoked by this act of vandalism, Mehmet admonished him with his symetar and declared that the building belonged to him. After the looter was dragged away by his feet, Mehmet ordered the proclamation of the shahada (the Muslim creed), and the Haghia Sophia was formally rededicated as a mosque the Ayasa Cami Kabir, or Great Mosque of Haghia Sophia.1 According to Tuman Bey, the following day Mehmet climbed up to the dome of Haghia Sophia and, surveying the ruins of the surrounding buildings, recited the following verse:
The spider serves as a gatekeeper in the halls of Khrosraus dome. The owl plays martial music in the palace of Afrasiyah.2
The dereliction around the Haghia Sophia was not the result of the siege or the looting but a symptom of the long, slow decline the city had experienced since the fourth crusade and subsequent Latin occupation of the city in 1204. Nearby, the Great Palace, a vast complex of buildings stretching from the Hippodrome to the sea of Mamara, had long been in ruins since the imperial family abandoned it in the thirteenth
The Haghia Sophia
70,000 people, but it is worth bearing in mind that
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Rumeli Hisar
the population of Constantinople at its height, just before the Latin conquest and occupation of 1204, was probably 400,000. Mehmets own contribution to the rebuilding of the city consisted principally of two fortresses, two palaces, the bedestan (market) and his klliye, as well as the repair of roads, bridges and fortications. Because his reign was dominated by wars of conquest, it comes as no surprise that his rst two buildings were fortresses of monumental scale. As we have already noted, the rst, Rumeli Hisar, was completed before the conquest in 1452 in preparation for the siege. It commands the narrowest point of the Bosphorus where, in ancient times (512
BC),
Mehmet designed the layout of the fortress and ordered each of his senior viziers, Saruca Paa, Halil Paa and Zaganos Paa, to build the three main towers. The waterfront tower, with its sea gate and surrounding barbican, was built by the grand vizier, Halil Paa; the Black Tower, on the northern side, was built by Saruca Paa; and the southern, Rose Tower, was built by Zaganos Paa. Mehmet took responsibility for the curtain walls with their thirteen minor towers and bastions. This delegation of responsibility induced a spirit of competition, which made possible the completion of the whole project within four months. Rumeli Hisar presents an impressive, rambling chain of architectural masses slung along the steeply raked contours of the site. Viewed from the water, the heavy, imposing cylindrical masses of the Black and Rose towers rearing up on the hill behind contrast with the lighter multifaceted, angular forms of the duodecagonal waterfront tower and the projecting pentagonal tower at the lefthand corner. The tops of the towers would originally have been conical wooden structures covered with lead, similar to that seen today on the Galata tower.5 Enclosed within the curtain walls were a mosque
Darius
built his bridge of boats during his campaign against the Scythians. Situated opposite the smaller fortress of Anadolu Hisar (built by Beyazit I in 1390), Rumeli Hisar secured Mehmets grip on the Bosphorus, enabling him to levy taxes on passing ships as well as to prevent the besieged city from receiving grain supplies from the Black Sea. The fortress ensured that, if necessary, his Janissaries could aim their heavy artillery and destroy any ships passing through the strait.
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Yedikle
and a circular water cistern, as well as less substantial wooden buildings providing accommodation for four hundred ofcers and men. All that remains of these interior features is the stump of a brick minaret now set among trees within a pleasing park landscape. After the siege, Mehmets priority was to repair and strengthen the walls of the city and, in so doing, he extended the fortications at the southern end of the Theodosian land walls and built the fortress of Yedikle (the Castle of Seven Towers). Pentagonal in plan, the fortress consists of an Ottoman extension (145758) inside the existing Theodosian wall (built by Theodosius II in 447) made up of three towers connected by a curtain wall. The longest side of the fortress is the Theodosian section, consisting of four towers, the central two of which form pylons astride the bricked-in, triple-arcaded Golden Gate of Theodosius I (390). Like Rumeli Hisar and Galata Tower, the towers were surmounted
with wooden conical caps, similar to the somewhat fanciful picture the artist Matraki painted of them in the sixteenth century.6 This fortress never played a signicant defensive role and was initially used as a treasury. Up until the early nineteenth century, it served as a prison in which many foreign merchants and ambassadors were incarcerated. It was also a notorious place of execution. One sultan, Osman II, was cruelly executed here at the age of seventeen in 1622. Rumeli Hisar and Yedikle are dramatic and impressive pieces of military architecture they are tting monuments to the age of conquest and express something of the vigorous personality of their creator. However, Mehmet was a complex gure and more than just a ruthless conqueror. He was a rened and learned man who enjoyed intellectual debate, and he was fully conscious of his imperial role and destiny. Immediately after the conquest he was described by one of the Venetian envoys, Giacomo Languschi, as follows:
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The sovereign, the Grand Turk Mehmet Bey, is a youth of twenty six (sic), well built, of large rather than medium stature, expert at arms, of aspect more frightening than venerable, laughing seldom, full of circumspection, endowed with great generosity, obstinate in pursuing his plans, bold in all undertakings, as eager of fame as Alexander of Macedonia. Daily he has Roman and other historical works read to him by a companion named Ciriaco of Ancona, and another Italian. He has them read Leartius, Herodotus, Livy, Quintus Curtius, the chronicles of the popes, the emperors, the Kings of France, and the Lombards. He speaks three languages, Turkish, Greek, and Slavic. He is at great pains to learn the geography of Italy and inform himself of the places where Anchises and Aeneas and Antenor landed, where the seat of the pope is and that of the emperor, and how many kingdoms there are in Europe. He possesses a map of Europe with the countries and provinces. He learns of nothing with greater interest and enthusiasm than the geography of the world and military affairs; he burns with desire to dominate; he is a shrewd investigator of conditions. It is with such a man that we Christians have to deal ... Today he says the times have changed, and declares that he will advance from East to West as in former times the Westerners advanced into the Orient. There must he says be only one empire, one faith, one sovereignty of the world.
7
already possessed those of gazi and khan. Gazi conferred the role of holy warrior, khan asserted his claims on all Turkish lands and caesar now gave him the authority to rule over Christendom.8 In many respects Mehmet was following Alexander the Great and the rst Umayyad caliphs in assuming the rank of king of kings. Because of his territorial ambitions in the West, Mehmet made it his business to understand European culture and Christianity in particular. Legend has it that his wife, Glbahar, a Christian slave of Albanian origin, never relinquished her Christianity. He asked the Greek patriarch Gennadius to teach him the history and doctrine of the Greek Church, consulted clerics of other faiths and even observed the Mass.9 According to Brother George of Muhlenbach, Mehmet visited the Franciscan monastery of Pera:
The Franciscan brothers living in Pera have assured me that he came to their church and sat down in their choir to attend the ceremonies and sacrice of the Mass. To satisfy his curiosity, they ordered him an unconsecrated wafer at the Elevation of the Host, for pearls must not be cast before swine.10
It would be wrong, however, to attribute his interest in Western culture entirely to ulterior motives. Foreign intelligence was an important factor, but he also had a genuine appreciation of Western art, literature and learning. His library contained a number of important inherited, acquired and commissioned works. In view of the comparisons made between him and Alexander the Great, two signicant Greek books in his library included The History of Mehmet the Conqueror by Kritoboulos and a copy of Arrians The Anabasis of Alexander the Great and the Indica. One of the themes in Kritobouloss commissioned history is Mehmets similarity to Alexander the Great, and these volumes, copied by the same hand, were designed to complement each other. Mehmet also had a copy of the Iliad, and when campaigning near Mytilene in 1462, he made a special detour
This statement alerts the Christians to Mehmets territorial aspirations and his identication with Alexander the Great. His interest in European history and geography was not entirely cultural, but indicative of his longer-term ambitions to extend his empire further west even as far as Rome. Mehmet was conscious that in capturing Constantinople he had taken on the mantle of the Byzantine emperors and now in effect ruled the territories of the former eastern Roman Empire. He felt he could legitimately claim the title of caesar, a title that he added to those he
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to visit the site of Troy. His interest in geography and astronomy prompted him to acquire a number of European maps and copies of the Geography, Cosmographia and Almagest by the Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer and physicist Claudius Ptolemy (lived c.150
AD).
through his friendship with the humanist Robert Valturio, established contact between Mehmet and Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini. This led to a curious diplomatic liaison in which Sigismondo Malatesta attempted to pass military intelligence to Mehmet via the artist Matteo de Pasti. Mehmet asked Sigismondo to recommend an artist to paint his portrait, and the choice fell on Matteo de Pasti, who had established his reputation in Rimini as the master of works for the humanist and architect Leon Battista Alberti. Matteo was also a famous medallist and maker of illuminated manuscripts. He set out for Istanbul in 1461 with a letter from Sigismondo and gifts which included detailed maps of Italy and a copy of Robert Valturios handbook on warfare De re militare lib. XII (Twelve Books on the Art of War, c.1450). The Venetians, who were no friends of Sigismondo, got wind of this venture and, recognizing the import of such sensitive intelligence in the hands of their Turkish enemy, captured Matteo in Crete.13 He was brought before the Council of Ten in Venice, but he was eventually released and sent back to Rimini with a warning not to go to Istanbul nor to have any contact with the sultan. He didnt, but according to Babinger, a medal attributed to Matteo de Pasti and the Burgundian artist Jean Tricaudet was, nevertheless, eventually struck.14 Another curious diplomatic incident, which resulted in the striking of a portrait medallion, concerns Mehmets relationship with Lorenzo de Medici. In 1478, Lorenzo narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on him in the Duomo (cathedral), Florence by members of the Pazzi family and their hired assassins. His brother Guiliano was killed in the mle while Lorenzo escaped to the sacristy. All the conspirators were rounded up and executed except Bernado Bandini Baroncello, who escaped to Istanbul, where his relatives gave him refuge. Mehmet had him arrested and, following an audience with Antonio de Medici, he was returned to Florence and publicly hanged. A commemorative medallion, designed by Bertoldo di Giovanni, was struck in memory of Guiliano, and as a token of
The copy of Geography contained sections from Hero of Alexandrias Pneumatica, a treatise on engineering and military science. Also in Mehmets library was Mariano Taccolas treatise on military engineering De Machinis (1449). Such works contributed enormously to the Ottoman armys military superiority in eld artillery. Mehmet was also interested in medical science, but in this case it was Muslim sources that attracted his attention. For his Jewish physician Jacopo da Gaeta, Mehmet acquired a Latin translation of Canones (Qanun Tibb or Canon of Medicine) by the great Persian philosopher and physician Ibn Sina (d.1037). Other medical . treatises included Isa ibn Jazlas Takwin al-Abdan, a work on drugs and remedies, and Sharaf al-Dins illustrated treatise on surgery Cerrahye-i Ilkhaniye. Mehmets interest in theology, both Christian and Muslim, is demonstrated by numerous volumes on Islamic mysticism, philosophy and jurisprudence, as well as by Christian texts in Greek and Latin, including The Testament of Solomon, the Book of the Prophet Daniel and Thomas Aquinass Summa contra Gentiles.
11
The number of Italian scholars Mehmet cultivated in his court made this collection of books possible. In his assessment of Mehmet, Giacomo Languschi mentioned the presence of Ciriaco of Ancona (c.13901455) in Mehmets retinue. He was a noted merchant, traveller and antiquarian who studied ancient monuments in Greece, the Aegean islands, Anatolia and Egypt. He made drawings, collected gemstones, medallions and manuscripts and was one of those remarkable early humanists who contributed to the Renaissance rediscovery of the ancient world.
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Not only did they enrich his court
but also a number of visiting humanists, scholars and artists proved useful in securing European diplomatic links for Mehmet. One such humanist in Mehmets court was the Italian Angelo Vadio of Casena, who,
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his gratitude, Lorenzo ordered another to be struck in honour of Mehmet. This medal shows on the obverse side a portrait of Mehmet, and the reverse displays an allegorical scene depicting the sultan riding triumphally in a chariot with three nude females in the rear representing the vanquished empires of Asia, Trebizond and greater Greece.15 According to Michael Levey, Mehmet, who was preoccupied with building the Topkap Palace at that time, exploited Lorenzos debt of gratitude by asking him to send Florentine craftsmen to Istanbul skilled in intarsia work (a form of inlay made up of different woods).16 There is no trace of any response to this request, and the only record of a prospective visit to Istanbul by an Italian architect occurred long before the Pazzi conspiracy. This was in 1465, when the Florentine architect and sculptor Antonio Filartete planned a visit, but it is unlikely it ever occurred.17 Undoubtedly the most celebrated artist invited to Mehmets court was Gentile Bellini, who was sent in 1479 as part of a diplomatic initiative. The result was a number of paintings by Bellini, including the portrait that now hangs in the National Gallery, London. He was recommended partly on account of his mural restorations in the Hall of the Great Council at the Doges Palace in Venice, and he was supposed to have spent much of his time in Istanbul painting erotic murals in the Topkap. These were removed by Mehmets successor, Beyazit II.18 Bellini was awarded a knighthood for his services to the sultan, and in his painting St Mark Preaching in Alexandria (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) he includes a portrait of himself wearing a red robe proudly displaying his gold chain of knighthood.19 Mehmet also requested an architect and a bronze caster, but they were not sent, although two assistants did accompany Bellini. The only evidence that Italian craftsmen might have been involved in the Topkap Palace is the Italian-style marble oor in what later became the camekan, or disrobing room of the baths (hamam) of Selim II.
20
Mehmet II by Gentile Bellini National Gallery, London, 2010
Western art was concerned, Mehmet was a dilettante, but within his own cultural eld he was a great connoisseur. Apart from possible Italian inuence in the marble oor of the hamam, there is nothing in the Topkap Palace, or in any of his other buildings, that remotely suggests Western inuence they are manifestly Ottoman. Culturally the Turks looked back to their roots in Central Asia and towards the Persian values they assimilated during the rst waves of conquest in the eleventh century. Since the rule of the Great Seluk Turks in Persia, Persian rather than Turkish had been the language of the court, and Mehmet spoke this uently (something Giacomo Languschi missed from his list of Mehmets linguistic attributes). Arabic was the language of theology but Persian was the language of literature, and the great classical works of Firdawsi and Nizami were promoted in the Turkish court as models for imitation. Mehmet lavishly patronized contemporary Persian poets and philosophers, and many Persians were appointed to the highest ranks in the court.
Mehmets interest in, and appreciation of, Western art was genuine, but it has to be balanced against the overwhelming weight of his Muslim identity, background, taste and culture. As far as
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The inili Kiosk
Mehmet also took a great interest in Shiism the branch of Islam followed by the Persians prompting speculation regarding his own religious convictions. His interest in Christianity had led to rumours that he had converted to Catholicism, and by the same token, his regard for Persian literature and Shiism prompted the comment that A man who reads Persian loses half his religion. While publicly maintaining orthodox Sunnism, it is possible that his own religious convictions were somewhat ambivalent. His pious son Beyazit was more forthright in asserting that his father did not believe in the Prophet Muhammad at all. Mehmets ecumenical mind guaranteed religious freedom and tolerance, and within the Islamic sphere he nurtured regular theological debate in which his own participation was never supercial. For example, the work of the twelfth-century Persian theologian al-Ghazali stimulated a long-standing debate in his court regarding the differences between theologians and philosophers. He appointed scholars, known as
preceptors, to inform him on intellectual issues, and it was their regular duty to choose, read and comment on theological texts. His cultural bias towards Persia can clearly be seen in the architecture of the earliest building in the Topkap Palace complex, the inili Kiosk (1472). The Topkap Saray was the second of two palaces established by Mehmet. The rst, later known as the Eski Saray (Old Palace), was built in the area now occupied by Istanbul University on the third hill. The Topkap occupies the high triangular promontory where the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn meet. It forms the rst hill of Istanbul, and the original acropolis of Byzantium once stood there. Byzantine walls already enclosed the site and Mehmet marked out the boundaries of the new palace when he completed the wall behind the Haghia Sophia on the south-western side. The gate of Bab-l-Hmayn (the Gate of Majesty) pierces this. Within this enclosure Mehmet established a division between the public (selamlk) and the private (harem)
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domains of the palace, and like the palace in the former Ottoman capital at Edirne, it functioned as a private residence, a centre of government and a place for education and training. The inili Kiosk is a unique structure and undoubtedly the most Persian of Ottoman buildings. Its cuboid form and symmetry of proportion makes it the most classical and self-contained of all the Topkaps buildings. Built of brick and stone its plan and elevation echoes the Persian garden pavilion of the Timurid period known as a hasht bihisht (eight paradises). In Persia and Central Asia these pavilions were built of less substantial materials, and few fteenth-century examples survive. Traces of a contemporary cruciform plan, similar to that of the inili Kiosk, can be found in the summer palace of the Shirvanshahs at Nadaran, near Baku in Azerbaijan. In Persia these pavilions were essentially pleasure domes placed in quadripartite garden settings known as charah baghs (four gardens). The inili Kiosk was not set in a formal garden, but overlooked a park at the back and a stadium at the front. The loggia served as a grandstand for viewing wrestling matches, polo, lion tamers and parades of animals brought from the menagerie nearby. In the evenings it served as a pleasure dome, with musical entertainment by the women of the harem. It is a two-storeyed building, and the plan on the second oor consists of a central domed cruciform hall, the arms of which lead to outward-facing, open-vaulted halls, known as iwans, on the north-eastern and south-western sides. The north-western arm leads to a projecting hexagonal room overlooking the park, and the axis of the south-eastern arm is made up of the vestibule and entrance iwan. In addition to the room overlooking the park, four rooms clustered around the central hall complete the suite of royal apartments. These rooms are decorated with octagonal navy blue and turquoise tiles, forming bold angular patterns, with some displaying gilded arabesques like those in the Yeil Cami (Green Mosque) in Bursa. The lower storey consists of rooms for the grand vizier, as well as utility rooms and servants quarters. The loggia in the facade, made up of an arcade supported on fourteen
slender stone columns, is the buildings most elegant and imposing feature. The columns date from the eighteenth century, when they replaced the timber originals. Their form is Persian, and one can see similar columns made of timber in the talas (the columned halls and verandas) of the Ali Qapu and Chihil Sutun palaces in Isfahan, Iran. Halls of columns, like these, have pre-Islamic origins in the adapanas, or audience halls, of ancient Persian Achaemenid architecture. The inili Kiosk, meaning Tiled Pavilion, is so called because of the use of glazed brick and tile mosaic. The style of decoration, like the rest of the building, is Persian. According to Blair and Bloom, there is some evidence that tile cutters from Khorasan were involved with the work.21 Here and in the contemporary trbe (tomb) of Mahmut Paa (1474), we witness the last use in Ottoman architecture of tile mosaic and glazed tiles, known as bannai work. The extensive use of tile decoration in the loggia owes much to Timurid architecture, in which widespread areas of interior and exterior brick walls and vaults are covered in tiles. In Ottoman architecture the principal
The entrance to inili Kiosk
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A tile mosaic at the inili Kiosk
The trbe of Mahmut Paa
building material is stone, and ceramic tiling is used sparingly in selective areas of the interior, such as on the qibla wall (the wall orientated towards Mecca). The most noticeable feature of the inili Kiosks decoration is its geometric character something it shares not only with contemporary Timurid design but also with earlier Turkish Seluk art. The colours are dense and resonant, despite being restricted to turquoise blue, dark blue, white and yellow. Framed by a narrow band of scrolling arabesque, the entrance iwan is packed with diagonal patterns in the tympanum and with kuc inscriptions in the vault. This geometry is offset by the cursive rhythms of the white and yellow sls calligraphy that runs horizontally around the three sides of the iwan vault. The inscription praises the palace in the following words:
This pavilion, which is as lofty as the heavens, A tile mosaic on the trbe of Mahmut Paa was so constructed that its great height would
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seem to stretch its hand up to the Gemini themselves. Its most worthless part would adorn the most precious part of Saturns crown. Its emerald cupola sparkles like the heavens and is honoured with inscriptions from the stars. Its oor of turquoise with its varied owers reminds one of the eternal vineyards of Paradise.
22
facing we see today is the work of Sultan Abdlaziz, who restored and altered the gate in 1867. The central iwan is pierced by a door, with a shallow arched lintel of joggled voussoirs (interlocking wedge-shaped stones), leading to a domed passage with anking rooms that once housed fty guards. The second storey, which was dismantled by Abdlaziz, originally consisted of a wooden structure with a hipped roof. A central window lighted it with three smaller lights on either side, and over the years it served a number of functions, including a depository, treasury, pavilion and viewing platform for the women of the harem.23 The Bab-l-Hmayn, sometimes called the Gate of Justice, was also used to exhibit the severed heads of traitors and criminals. The use of monumental gates for this gruesome display of law enforcement was commonplace across the Muslim world. Passing through the Bab-l-Hmayn one enters the rst court of the Topkap Palace, where the ancient church of St Irene stands. This court
This kind of Arabian Nights hyperbole is typical of literature associated with palace architecture across the Muslim world. The inili Kiosk is not a lofty pavilion, and it is worth noting the modesty of scale generally displayed in most of the Topkap buildings. This palace complex was the seat of government for a powerful empire, but most of the buildings do not exceed one storey. Among those that do are the two gates built by Mehmet. The rst, the Bab-l-Hmayn (1478), is like a triple-arcaded triumphal arch with a lofty iwan in the centre anked by two niches. The marble
Bab-l-Hmayn
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Orta Kap, or the Middle Gate
was known as the Court of the Janissaries because it served as their parade ground, and the barracks of the Janissary cadets were located there. This was very much the public domain of the palace, but nothing from the period of Mehmet survives here except the next gate, variously known as the Gate of Peace, Orta Kap, or the Middle Gate. If justice was displayed on the Bab-l-Hmayn, it was here that justice was dispensed. Prisoners were kept in the two anking octagonal towers, and in front of the gate stood the executioners block. The Middle Gate leads to the second court, the Court of the Divan, where most of the ceremonial
activity took place. It is a landscaped space with cypress trees, plane trees and rose bushes, and throughout Ottoman times gazelles, peacocks and ostriches were allowed to roam here. The most important building in this court is the Divan, where the Imperial Council of State met four times a week. It consists of the Council Chamber, the Public Records Ofce and the Ofce of the Grand Vizier. The Divan was rebuilt in the 1520s and restored by Murat III (157495) after it was badly damaged by re in 1574. Later, Ahmet III (170330) refurbished the rooms in the gilded rococo style we see in the Public Records Ofce and the exterior of the building
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today. Nothing survives from the time of Mehmet the Conqueror except the treasury building next door. This sturdy structure consists of a vestibule and hall made up of eight domed units of equal height supported on piers. They are simple domed cubes with octagonal zones of transition (the intermediary structure that makes the transition between square
bay and circular dome) pierced by window lights on each side. On the outside the zones of transition break through the rooine carrying the lead-sheathed domes with their shallow, saucer-shaped proles. The level, uniform array of domes and the exterior prominence of the zone of transition is characteristic of early Ottoman architecture.
2 3
4 5
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Key 1. Middle Gate 2. Gate of Felicity 3. Outer Treasury 4. Divan 5. Public Records Office Plan of the Middle Court (Court of the Divan)
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The Divan
The old treasury
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Plan of the Third Court Key 1. Disrobing room (ibid.) 2. Pavilion of the Conqueror / Inner Treasury 3. The Pavilion of the Holy Mantle
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More imposing are Mehmets pavilions in the third court, the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle (Hirka Saadet Dairesi) and the Pavilion of the Conqueror (Inner Treasury). The Pavilion of the Holy Mantle of the Prophet, which now contains holy relics, was once Mehmets private residence. It consists of a square symmetrical complex of four domed halls, plus a smaller domed annexe that once served as the circumcision room. The far room on the right-hand side, which now contains the Holy Mantle, was Mehmets bedroom. The interior decoration of this suite of rooms dates from the time of Murat III, who lined them with Iznik tiles and used them as reception rooms for a selamlk (mens public domain).
The most unusual decorative feature in this building is the polychrome marble panelling in the Egyptian Mamluk style on the outside rear wall. Here, in an elegant cloistered arcade, are rectangular marble patterns forming a dado supporting horizontal panels of Iznik. Compared to Mamluk dados this is low and shallow, playing a subordinate role to the tiles above. The date of this feature is uncertain, but we know that Selim I (151220) brought Egyptian craftsmen to Istanbul after his conquest of Egypt in 1517.24 He also brought with him Egyptian marble taken from the oor and interior walls of the Citadel mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad, as well as marble from a number of Mamluk palace buildings on the Citadel.25 Goodwin attributes the work to the beginning of the reign of Sleyman the Magnicent.26 The new treasury, which originally served as a selamlk, is the most imposing pavilion built by Mehmet. Like the inili Kiosk, it is a two-storeyed building, but here the rooms below functioned principally as a treasury. The royal apartments consist of four lofty rooms and a loggia overlooking the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. Two of the rooms are domed and a shallow hipped roof covers the rest. The two domed rooms are identical, but one is separate from the main body of the pavilion, and served as the camekan, or disrobing room, for the hamam of Selim II (156674) next door. Selim
The Pavilion of the Holy Mantle
built his hamam in the 1570s, but the Hall of the Expeditionary Force (now the museum of costumes) later replaced the main structure the hot and cold rooms in 1719. Because the camekan is a part of the hamam complex, questions arise as to whether this is the work of Mehmet or Selim. Goodwin suggests that it is the work of Mehmet, who constructed the rst hamam on this site, and Selims contribution was probably limited to repaving the oor.27 The other domed room marks the rst of a suite of lofty reception rooms that now display the contents of the treasury. The proximity of the hamam next door, with its constant steam and smoke, eventually rendered this building unsuitable as a selamlk, and during the seventeenth century it was converted into storerooms.
Rear wall of the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle showing Mamluk marble panelling
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The new treasury
A long, arcaded portico fronts the courtside of the pavilion with columns capped with antique capitals. From the other side, the pavilion overlooks the park, the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. It is from this side that both storeys are revealed, and viewed at a distance from the seashore below, its clarity of form and dignied proportions can best be appreciated. Domes supported on octagonal zones of transition break the rooine, like that of the old treasury in the second court. The weight of its mass is relieved on the rst storey by a horizontal band of windows, and on the second by two tiers of windows and the double-arched openings that pierce both sides of the loggia in the corner. In the centre, breaking the at surface, is a projecting balcony resting on corbels surmounted by a triangular sloping roof. Architecturally more signicant than the Topkap is Mehmets klliye on the fourth hill. This
undoubtedly was his most important architectural contribution to Istanbul. As conqueror of the city, it was incumbent upon him to build his own mosque, and he would have been very conscious of the fact that what he built had to equal in magnitude the Haghia Sophia. Since before the conquest, Mehmet had coveted the Haghia Sophia, and its conversion into the principal mosque of the city was an expression of his regard for that sacred building. However, Mehmet had to demonstrate that Ottoman architects could build a new city with a different identity. The Haghia Sophia with its complex dome structure was, and continued to be, a challenge to Ottoman builders until the reign of Sleyman the Magnicent. It inuenced the subsequent development of Ottoman architecture, but it must be emphasized that the Ottomans had already achieved a distinct architectural style of some maturity and sophistication well before the conquest.
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It can be seen in the mosques of the former Ottoman capitals at Bursa and Edirne, where a century of architectural development had produced a remarkable synthesis of Seluk, Persian and Byzantine forms. He chose to build his mosque on the fourth hill over the ruins of the Church of the Holy Apostles. It was a prestigious site, for the Church of the Holy Apostles had been the second most important church in Constantinople. It was famous for its funerary chapel containing the royal mausolea in which various Byzantine emperors and empresses, including Constantine and his mother St Helena, were interred. As well as the royal burials, it also housed the bodies of saints John Chrysostom, Polyeuctus, Spiridon and Gregory Nazianzen, as well as the relics of several saints and Apostles, including saints Andrew, Luke and Timothy. The church also contained two sacred pillars: one at which Christ was scourged and the one where Peter wept after his denial of Christ. The church was also of great architectural signicance, and its cruciform plan, surmounted by ve domes, provided the architectural model for the great Apostles churches of St John at Ephesus and St Marks in Venice. During the fourth Crusade (1204) the Franks, searching for holy relics, ransacked the church and funerary chapel. These precious objects were eagerly sought, not only for their material wealth their jewel-encrusted gold and silver mounts, rock crystals and oriental silks but also for their religious value and miraculous powers. Transported to the West, famous relics attracted pilgrims, thus transforming the status and economies of recipient churches and monasteries. Most of the churches in Constantinople were looted for that purpose. Gnther of Pairis, in his Historia Constantinopolitana, gives a vivid account of how Abbot Martin enriched the monastery of Pairis in Alsace with a hoard of relics which he obtained (by means of armed robbery) during the pillage of Constantinople. Throughout the Latin occupation,
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tradition, went to Rome.29 The sacred pillars were also broken up and fragments transported to the West. Constantinople never recovered from the despoliation of the Latin conquest. By the time of the Ottoman conquest, the Church of the Holy Apostles was in a ruinous state and the whole area depopulated, and, as already noted, Gennadius, the patriarch, was only too willing to relinquish it as his headquarters and move to St Mary Pammakaristos. In 1463 Mehmet demolished what was left of the Church of the Holy Apostles and used its fabric in the building of his new mosque. The royal sarcophagi were removed to the Topkap Palace, where they can still be seen on display outside the Archaeological Museum. According to Babinger, Mehmet also demolished the neighbouring church of Constantine Lips.30 This amount of demolition was necessary because Mehmet needed to clear an enormous space, 320 metres square, not only for his mosque but also for all the ancillary buildings that make up the klliye. In terms of scale and complexity, the klliye was very much an Ottoman invention, and in building it on such an ambitious scale, Mehmet set a precedent that was to transform the architectural landscape of Istanbul. Many of his successors were to follow his example. A klliye is a major urban plan consisting of many of the following buildings: a mosque (cami), mausolea (trbes), theological colleges (medreses), a college for the study of tradition, or hadis (darl-hadis), a Quran school (darl-kurra), a Quran school for boys (sibyan-mekteb), library (ktphani), hospital (bimarhane), asylum (timarhane), a combined hospital and asylum (daruifa), soup-kitchen (imaret), hospice (tabhane), caravansarai, market (arasta) and baths (hamam). The klliye extends and embodies the functions of the mosque that the Prophet Muhammad established in Medina. The original Prophets mosque was not just a place of prayer but a centre of government, education, jurisprudence, welfare and hospitality. It embodied the spirit of Islam, which does not separate the religious and secular domains. All these functions, except government, were later to develop within the precincts of the
the relics and sacred remains in the Church of the Holy Apostles were sent west, including the bodies of St Helena, and those of saints John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazienzen, which, according to Western
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4 6
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Plan of Mehmets klliye 1. Mosque 2. Courtyard 3. Trbe 4. Medreses 5. Caravanserai 6. Library
mosque, and across the Muslim world during the thirteenth century discrete buildings and multipurpose complexes evolved. They can be seen in such works as the Seluk mosque and hospital at Divrig i (1228) in eastern Anatolia or in Sultan Qalauns mosque, medrese and hospital in Cairo (1284). However, what makes the Turkish klliye unique and extraordinary is its urban scale and complexity.
With eight medreses accommodating a thousand students, what Mehmet built between 1463 and 1470 was a university city. Little of the original mosque remains because it was destroyed by earthquake in 1766, and what we see today is the new mosque, totally different in plan, built by Mustafa III in 1771. The only record we have of the original mosque is an engraving by M. Lorichs
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dating from the sixteenth century. All that has survived of the original complex is the sahn (courtyard), the entrance portals to the sahn and prayer hall, parts of the hospice and sections of the minarets. The most striking aspect of this grand urban plan is its symmetry. The mosque, sahn and cemetery form three adjacent rectangular units occupying the centre of a huge enclosed precinct anked by two broad ranges of medreses known as the Karadeniz (Black Sea) and the Akdeniz (White Sea or Mediterranean) medreses. The precinct once served as a camping ground for caravans, and anking its entrance gates on the north-western side were two small pavilions consisting of a library, which began with a collection of eight hundred books, and a boys Quran school. Outside the precinct, on the south-western side, were the hospital, hospice, imaret, hamam and caravansarai. There was also a saddle market in the vicinity, the rents from which contributed to the upkeep of the mosque and its dependencies. The plans of Ottoman mosques are largely determined by their dome structures. The prayer hall of Mehmets original mosque consisted of a large dome, twenty-six metres in diameter, next to a half-dome of the same diameter extending to the mihrab in the qibla wall. There were three smaller lateral domes on either side. The main dome and half-dome were supported by buttresses within the north-western wall of the prayer hall, two piers and two antique porphyry columns taken from the Church of the Holy Apostles. The central dome was the largest in the Ottoman Empire, but it fell short of the Haghia Sophia, which has a dome thirty-one metres in diameter. Projecting from the main body of the prayer hall of Mehmets mosque are the monumental facades of the sahn enclosure pierced by two tiers of windows and three entrance portals. The prayer hall and the sahn form adjacent spaces, like open and closed boxes, with the former covered with domes and the latter open to the sky. The sahn forms a spatial overture to the mosque, and in this case it occupies a slightly larger space than the prayer hall. This arrangement of sahn and prayer hall is signicant because it establishes the subsequent
grandeur of the sahn in most of Istanbuls classical imperial mosques. The main entrance portal to the sahn on the north-western facade, and that leading to the prayer hall, are on the same axis, and both survive from the original building. Their ne proportions, simple mouldings and disciplined restraint bear witness to the maturity of Ottoman design at that stage in its development. Their composition, consisting of upright framing panels pierced by central niches with conical hoods lled with stalactite clusters, known derived as muqarnas, Seluk present a classical format from architecture. The monochrome austerity of the prayer
Entrance to Prayer Hall
hall
portal offset
is by
beautifully
gilded calligraphy, set against dark green panels, proclaiming the name of Mehmet and the date of the mosques foundation. The generous space of the sahn is relieved by an informal arrangement of tall cypress trees and a centrally placed fountain with a wide conical roof. The domed revaks (arcaded cloisters) surrounding the sahn have arcades supported on antique columns surmounted by muqarnas capitals. In total there are twenty-two bays, and the level array of their domes, breaking through the rooine of the facades, provides a globulous baseline towards which the descending domes of the prayer hall cascade. Inside the sahn, the lunettes above the window grills at each end of the qibla revak contain calligraphic inscriptions in blue, turquoise, green and yellow in cuerda seca tilework. Developed in Central Asia, the cuerda seca technique involved the application of several colours on the tile and separating each on ring with a mixture of wax or oil with manganese. The result was that each colour is left outlined with a thin dark line. It was a technique used by craftsmen from Tabriz in Bursa and Edirne, but whether they were later responsible
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follows tradition, and although the new mosque is essentially eighteenth-century baroque, it is somewhat circumspect and conservative. Its baroque character is dened more by its grandiose use of space than by the details of painted decoration or the bulbous nials that once capped the two minarets (now replaced by conical caps). Next to the mosque, the most important features of this klliye are the eight medreses. It is these buildings, which once formed a major university, that
The Sahn
proclaim the cultural shift taking place in the new city. The two ranges of buildings, the Akdeniz and the Karadeniz, ank the main precinct. Each consists of four medreses and, separated by a passageway, four annexes known as the Tetumme medreses (now destroyed). Each medrese had an arcaded courtyard, around which were arranged nineteen cells for the students, an iwan and a domed derane, or lecture hall. The annexe buildings each contained nine cells. When the student population grew to one thousand, overcrowding became a problem, with up to ve students sharing a cell. The curriculum, in part, was not unlike that of the liberal arts studied in Western universities. The liberal arts, derived from the classical world, consisted of the trivium (rhetoric, logic and grammar) and the quadrivium (music, astronomy, geometry and arithmetic). According to Babinger, the medrese curriculum embraced:
for this work, or played any part in setting up the Iznik ceramics industry, is a matter of conjecture.
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Mustafas reconstruction of Mehmets mosque comes as no disappointment when entering its prayer hall. The interior space is quite awesome, and one wonders how Mehmets original dome construction might have looked in such a vast area. The plan of Mustafas mosque follows Mehmets foundations, but the dome structure is quite different, consisting of a rosette formation of four half-domes clustered around a central dome of the same diameter. Koca Sinan rst used this arrangement in 1548 for his ehzade mosque. It was again used by Sultan Ahmet I in the Blue Mosque (1616) and in Valide Sultan Turhan Hadices Yeni Cami (1666), which follows an earlier design dating back to 1597. In this respect Mustafa
Akdeniz medrese
Court of Karadeniz medrese
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[C]omplete courses in ten sciences: grammar, syntax, logic, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, and the four legal-theological disciplines, dogmatics, jurisprudence, the traditions of the Prophet, and Quranic exegesis.32
cultivable land, and the produce, rents and prots contributed to their upkeep. In Istanbul it was the vakf endowments of successive sultans and grand viziers that produced the great klliye that mark the architectural landscape of the city. Of the other buildings in Mehmets klliye, only the tabhane has survived in several states of restoration. This was a hospice built to accommodate travellers and itinerant Sus (dervishes). In total it has forty-six domes, twenty of which cover the bays of the arcaded revaks surrounding the central court. The columns are antique and no doubt taken from the Church of the Holy Apostles. A large hall on one side, equivalent in size to the deranes in the medreses, served the dual purpose of prayer room and hall for Su ceremonies. The iwans, used for prayer meetings, are supported on piers with corner colonettes similar to those in the entrance portals of the sahn and prayer hall. The colonettes, mouldings and rosette decoration suggest that they date from the time of Mehmet. A kitchen and bakehouse were located on the north-eastern and south-western side, and they also served the nearby imaret (now destroyed). Rooms anking the main hall were used for storage and prayers, leaving accommodation for only about twelve guests. Most travellers were accommodated in cells and lodgings outside the klliye precincts, where they were allowed to stay for up to three days. Visiting merchants stabled their animals and stored their merchandise in the numerous caravansarais, which, according to the seventeenth-century traveller and chronicler Evliya elebi, housed up to three thousand animals.33 The imaret had no dining hall but consisted of two kitchens providing a take-away service. This building alone was totally inadequate to serve all the needs of the klliye, and it must be the case that other catering facilities existed, such as those in the tabhane and hospital. The food in the hospital was particularly noted for its quality. This building was located symmetrically opposite the tabhane and was similarly constructed around a courtyard plan. With its distinctive apse, the derane shows Byzantine inuence, something that occurs in a number of
The inuence of Byzantium is at work here, for Islam since its inception has embraced, preserved and absorbed Greek learning. What we have in this curriculum is the intellectual tools of Greek learning plus the Islamic disciplines of jurisprudence, Quranic exegesis and hadis, or tradition. Often Turkish klliye would have four separate medreses, each devoted to the four orthodox schools of Islamic law, known as madhahib. These schools, developed during the rst two centuries of Islam, are the Maliki, Hana, Shai and Hanbali, named after their founders, Malik ibn Anas (d.795), Abu Hanifa (d.767), al-Shai (d.820) and Ahmed ibn Hanbal (d.855). The study of hadis involved knowledge of the sayings, actions and example of the Prophet. Interpretation of this material, and the quality and reliability of its transmission (isnad), was critically important. This was taught in the building known as the darl-hadis, and Quranic exegesis and commentary was studied in the darl-kurra. Also inuenced by Greek culture is the nature of the klliye itself. Although the Prophets mosque at Medina provided the ultimate model for the klliye, the implementation of this model owes something to Greek pious and charitable institutions known as piae causae. These had long existed in the Byzantine world and they inuenced the development of their Islamic counterparts, the vakf. A vakf was land and property perpetually endowed for charitable purposes by merchants, government ministers, grand viziers, viziers, sultans or valide sultans (mothers of reigning sultans). Their assets would be free from taxation, and endowments not only paid for the building fabric of vakfs but also for the salaries of the imams, muezzins, teachers, doctors, librarians, cooks, bakers, door-keepers, porters and lamplighters who manned them (totalling 383 in the case of Mehmets klliye). Many institutions incorporated shops or had
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The tabhane
Istanbuls early Ottoman buildings. Lectures would take place in this room because the hospital also served as a teaching hospital. In total there were fourteen wards, staffed by Jewish physicians. Jewish doctors were very much valued by Mehmet, and they had long held high reputations in the Muslim world. Saladins doctor was the great Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides. During Mehmets time, Pope Nicholas V denied Jews and Saracens any professional status and Catholics were forbidden contact with them. As a consequence Jews ocked . to Istanbul, and two of them, Isak Paa and Jacopo of Gaetea, became personal physicians to Murat II and Mehmet. The hospital ministered to both the physically and mentally sick, and music, as in Greek medicine, played an important therapeutic role. Every klliye would contain the tomb or trbe of the founder. Those in the cemetery adjacent to the mosque belong to Mehmet and his wife Glbahar, and
both were reconstructed after the 1776 earthquake. Mehmets is in the baroque style and Glbahars is in a simpler classical form. The exterior of Mehmets trbe is octagonal in plan and divided vertically at the corners by heavy, engaged classical pilasters. Its dignied simplicity of form is broken by the undulating spread of the striking baroque canopy over the entrance porch. It is dated 1784 and is the work of Mustafas successor, Abdlhamid I. The screen and opulent baroque interior decoration is in keeping with the status of the trbe and its occupant. Mehmet is revered as one of Islams great holy warriors, and for centuries his tomb has been the focus of pilgrimage. Glbahars tomb, on the other hand, has attracted the veneration of a number of Christians because tradition has it that she never renounced her Christianity. She was originally an Albanian Christian, although there was also a popular belief she was the daughter of a French king.34
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The trbe of Mehmet II
The architect of Mehmets klliye was Atk Sinan, also a Christian by birth, whose original name was Christodoulis. He was a product of the devirme, which produced architects and engineers as well as generals, admirals and grand viziers. Despite his magnicent achievement in building Mehmets klliye, Atk Sinan displeased the sultan when he failed to build a dome as large and high as that of the Haghia Sophia. For this the ungrateful sultan had him mutilated and executed. Some sources say that Atk Sinan was also guilty of cutting down two beautiful antique columns, which had been transported some considerable distance at great expense. His assistant . and successor, Iyas ibn Abdullah, who died a natural death in 1487, was also of Christian descent. However, their Christian backgrounds had no bearing on their architectural design, which is thoroughly Ottoman in spirit. It demonstrates how totally Ottomanized they had become on account of their rigorous
Glbahars tomb
education and training.
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Another klliye established by Mehmet in 1458 was that at Eyp, the burial site of the Prophet Muhammads companion and standard bearer Eyp Ensari. After Mecca and Jerusalem, Eyp, for the Turks, is the third holiest place in Islam. Eyp Ensari was killed just outside the walls of Constantinople during the rst Arab siege of 674 to 678. There is a legend that the ehlislam (chief jurisconsult and leader of the learned authorities known as the ilmiye) miraculously discovered the tomb during the Ottoman conquest. As Freely points out, this story is somewhat apocryphal because there is plenty of evidence that the tomb was known during the Byzantine era.35 Christians who prayed for rain at the tomb during times of drought venerated it. Eyp is now exclusively a Muslim shrine, and it was here that successive sultans were formally invested with the sword of Osman the Ottoman ceremony of coronation. Mehmets klliye at Eyp consisted of a mosque, trbe, medrese, hamam, imaret and market, but nothing of the original buildings remain. They were all pulled down at the end of the eighteenth century and Selim III built the present complex in 1800. According the Godfrey Goodwin, the imaret was still dispensing food to the poor and needy as late as the 1970s.
36
with twenty domes supported on twelve piers. Carved on one of the gates to the Eski Bedestan is a single-headed eagle, the emblem of the Byzantine Comneni dynasty. According to Freely, this has suggested to some scholars that the fabric of the Eski Bedestan may be Byzantine in origin.37 It is more likely to be a piece of recycled fabric in an Ottoman structure, but there is no doubt that Mehmet built the bazaar in one of the commercially vibrant areas of the city. The main thoroughfare of the bazaar, the Avenue of the Long Market, follows the ancient shopping street known as Makro Embolos. Mehmet died of an abdominal disorder in 1481. At the time of his death he had extended and consolidated an empire that brought together most of the various countries and beyliks of the Balkans and Anatolia. Istanbul was now the hub of that empire, and it was Mehmets tight centralization of power in the capital that held the eastern and western wings of the empire together. Its strategic position was crucial, but Mehmet never lost awareness of its history and symbolism, and his architecture reects this on a grand scale and established a model for his successors. Also, wearing the mantle of Caesar, he never lost sight of his ambition to reclaim the Eastern Roman empire, and towards the end of his life his campaigns were directed at the invasion of Italy. To that end he captured a number of Greek islands, besieged Rhodes and invaded Otranto, causing panic in Rome. More signicantly, he became embroiled in a number of disputes with the Egyptian Mamluk sultans over border territories and the custody of the holy sanctuaries in Mecca and Medina. His death lifted the threat to Rhodes and Italy, but the quarrels with the Mamluk Empire (consisting of Egypt, Syria, western Arabia and parts of eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia) continued with his successors, Beyazit and Selim, giving them the opportunity for subsequent territorial gains which permanently changed the face of the Middle East.
Mehmets other lasting contribution to Istanbuls architecture was the grand bazaar, or kapal ar (covered market). Like the klliye, it is an independent entity, although its rents originally went towards the upkeep of the Haghia Sophia. It remains the largest covered market in the world. The market as a whole was not conned to the kapal ar, but extended as an open market down the hill to the Golden Horn, thus linking Beyazit Square with the Yeni Cami and the Egyptian Bazaar. The present covered market, with approximately three thousand shops, occupies the original site. Owing to a number of res, little of Mehmets original structure survives, except the Eski Bedestan (old market), which still sells the precious goods for which it was designed. This structure, in the centre of the bazaar, has fteen domes supported on eight massive piers. Another surviving section, dating from the time of Beyazit II (14811512), is the Sandal Bedestan, which is taller,
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Notes
1 Babinger, F., Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 9495. 2 Other sources state that he said these words while viewing the ruins of the Blachernae Palace. The origin of this verse, according to Babinger, is unknown, but Freely attributes it to the Persian poet Saadi. Babinger, F., op. cit., p. 96 and Freely, J., Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul (London and New York: Viking, 1999), p. 15. 3 Holt, P., Lampton, A., and Lewis, B. (eds), The Cambridge History of Islam Vol. 1A (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 306. 4 Freely, J., Istanbul: The Imperial City (New York: Viking, 1996), p. 183. 5 Goodwin, G., A History of Ottoman Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971), p. 105. 6 See Tanney, D. H., Istanbul Seen by Matraki and the Miniatures of the 16th Century (Istanbul: Dost Yayinlari, 1996), p. 33. 7 Mehmet was 21 at the time of the conquest. Giacomo Languschis account comes from Cronaca by Zorzo Dolfin. It is quoted in Babinger, F., op. cit., p. 112. 8 Inalcik, H., The Rise of the Ottoman Empire in Holt, P., Lampton, A., and Lewis, B. (eds), op. cit., pp. 29697. 9 Babinger, F., op. cit., p. 410. 10 Freely, J. (1999), op. cit., p. 24. 11 Raby, J., East and West in Mehmed the Conquerors Library, Bulletin du Bibliophile, Vol. 3, 1987, pp. 296321. 12 Grendler, P., Ciriaco dAncona, in Hale, J. R. (ed.), A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981), p. 85. 13 Jardine, L., Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 23139. 14 Babinger, F., op. cit., p. 203. 15 Babinger, F., op. cit., pp. 38688. 16 Levey, M., Florence (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), p. 222. 17 Jardine, L., op. cit., p. 405. 18 Babinger, F., op. cit., pp. 37779. 19 Chong, A., Gentile Bellini in Istanbul: Myths and Misunderstandings, published in Campbell, C. and Chong, A. (eds), Bellini and the East (London: National Gallery Company; Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum. Distributed by Yale University Press, 2005). 20 Goodwin, G. (1971), op. cit., p. 134. 21 Blair, S. and Bloom, J., The Art and Architecture of Islam 12501800 (London: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 215. 22 Hillenbrand, R., Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), p. 459. 23 Goodwin, G. (1971), op. cit., p. 132. 24 Goodwin, G., Topkap Palace: An Illustrated Guide to its Life and Personalities (London: Saqi Books, 1999), p. 169. 25 Behrens-Abouseif, D., Islamic Architecture in Cairo: An Introduction (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1989), p. 109. 26 Goodwin, G. (1971), op. cit., p. 325. 27 Goodwin, G. (1971), op. cit., p. 134. 28 Andrea, A. J., The Capture of Constantinople: The Historia Constantinopolitana of Gunther of Pairis (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). 29 Majeska, G., Russian Travellers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1984), pp. 30205. 30 Babinger, F., op. cit., p. 292. 31 Carswell, J., Iznik Pottery (London: British Museum Press, 1998), pp. 2627. 32 Babinger, F., op. cit., p. 296. 33 Mantran, R., Istanbul dans la seconde moiti du XVIIe sicle (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1962), p. 137. 34 Freely, J. (1996), op. cit., p. 189. 35 Freely, J., The Blue Guide: Istanbul (London and New York: Black & Norton, 1991), p. 288. 36 Goodwin, G. (1971), op. cit., p. 125. 37 Freely, J. (1991), op. cit., p. 172.

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THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF O TTOMAN I STANBUL

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THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF OTTOMAN ISTANBUL

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PREFACE

CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER THREE

LIST OF OTTOMAN SULTANS GLOSSARY SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

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INTRODUCTION: THE TURKS, THE OTTOMANS AND THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Anadolu Hisar Richard Yeomans The Theodosian Walls Richard Yeomans

CHAPTER ONE: MEHMET THE CONQUEROR AND THE RISE OF ISTANBUL

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CHAPTER FOUR: OTTOMAN CERAMICS

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CHAPTER FIVE: OTTOMAN TEXTILES

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CHAPTER EIGHT: CALLIGRAPHY, ILLUMINATION AND MINIATURES

CHAPTER NINE: THE TRIUMPH OF EUROPE WESTERNIZATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE

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The Turks, the Ottomans and the Conquest of Constantinople

The Theodosian Walls

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Mehmet the Conqueror and the Rise of Istanbul

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The Haghia Sophia

70,000 people, but it is worth bearing in mind that

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Not only did they enrich his court

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Mehmet II by Gentile Bellini National Gallery, London, 2010

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The inili Kiosk

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The entrance to inili Kiosk

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A tile mosaic at the inili Kiosk

The trbe of Mahmut Paa

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Orta Kap, or the Middle Gate

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