Cover Illustration: Lala Mustafa Paşa Visits the Shrine of Jalal al-Din Rumi Nusretnâme, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, H. 1365 Istanbul, 1584, fol. 36a Roderick Grierson In his admirable history of Ottoman painting, Ivan Stchoukine describes the Ottoman commander Lala Mustafa Paşa receiving a copy of the Nusret­ nâme, or ‘Book of Victory’, from the hands of his secretary.1 The book was a history of the campaign that Lala Mustafa Paşa fought in 1578 and 1579 against Safavid forces in the Caucasus. The secretary who wrote it now pre- sents it to his patron while the two of them sit beside the sarcophagus of Jalal al-Din Rumi in the presence of Mevlevi musicians and semazens: Fol. 34. Muṣṭafā ʿAlî remettant son ouvrage à Muṣṭafâ Pâshâ (H. 0,325 x L. 0,198). La présentation a lieu à une réunion de der- viches mevlevîs. On remarquera l’historien vêtu de blanc, assis en face du commandant en chef auquel il vient d’offrir le récit de ses conquêtes.2 Stchoukine was mistaken, however. Lala Mustafa Paşa was already dead when the book was written, and it could not have been presented to him in this way. Furthermore, Stchoukine had not read the account of the incident that the book itself contains.3 The pilgrimage to Konya and its shrines oc- curred not after the campaign but before it. The visit to the Kubbe-i Hadra in particular, the famous ‘Green Dome’ within which the body of Rumi had 1 Similar introductions to the life and career of Mustafa Ali Efendi, along with titles and descriptions of his various writings in poetry and prose, can be found in B. Kütükoğlu and Ö. F. Akün, ‘Âlî Mustafa Efendi’, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. II, pp. 414–21 and K. Süssheim and R. Mantran, ‘Alī, Muṣtafā b. Aḥmād b. ‘Abd al-Mawlā Čelebi’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. I, 2nd ed., pp. 380–81. 2 I. Stchoukine, Le Peinture turque d’après les manuscrits illustrés (Paris: Librairie Orien- taliste Paul Geuthner 1966), pt. 1, pp. 75–76. 3 The description of the pilgrimage to the shrines of Konya appears on folios 35b–36b of Hazine No. 1365. Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 01:42:53PM via free access 8 roderick grierson lain for three centuries, was an attempt to seek his blessing and indeed to learn from him if the campaign would be victorious. The book that Lala Mustafa Paşa holds is therefore not the Nusretnâme but the Mathnawi-yi maʿnawi, in whose pages he hopes to find a sign that his enemies at court were mistaken when they predicted disaster. It should not be imagined that Stchoukine has been alone in mis­ understanding the painting. An even more surprising description appears­ in one of the fundamental accounts of Ottoman, Persian, Indian, and Euro- pean illustrations of the Mevlevi. Its author, Şahabettin Uzluk, would have been able to consult the manuscript itself in Tokapı Sarayı rather than rely­ ing on a photograph of a painting that he could never hope to see, and he certainly knew Ottoman well enough to read the inscription on the left sleeve of Lala Mustafa Paşa, in which the hero of the Nusretnâme is clearly identified. Nevertheless, he believed that the three figures depicted were Süleyman the Magnificent, the Çelebi Efendi of the day, and a Mesnevihan: Mevlâna’nın huzurunda, Türbede (Kanunî Sultan Süleyman, vaktin Çelebi Efendisi, Mesnevihan, semağ eden Dervişler. Top- kapı Sarayı Hazine Kütüphanesi).4 In the presence of Mevlana, at the Tomb (Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver, the Çelebi Efendi at the time, a Mesnevihan, and Der- vishes performing the sema. Topkapı Sarayı Treasury Library). Even if the suggestion is mistaken, it may not be inexplicable. Süleyman is known to have been devoted to the Kubbe-i Hadra and to have provided in 1565 a large marble sarcophagus for Rumi and his son Sultan ­Valad, placing the original wooden sarcophagus made in 1274 over the brick and ­mortar sarcophagus of Rumi’s father, Baha al-Din.5 In other words, the scene de- picted in the painting had been shaped by his patronage. Furthermore, Süleyman was known to have stopped at Konya to seek the blessing of a famous Sufi while he was on his way to war in the east, and also to have been given a book, even if the Sufi was the Bayrami-Melami ShaykhPir Ali Aksarayi and the book was Al-ʿAnqāʾ al-mughrib (The Fabulous Gry- phon) of Ibn al-Arabi.6 However, the photograph that Uzluk has included 4 Ş. Uzluk, Mevlevilikte Resim, Resimde Mevleviler (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu ­Basımevi 1957), p. 163. 5 N. Bakırcı, Konya Mevlana Museum (Istanbul: Bilkent Kültür Girişi 2010), pp. 50–51. 6 H. Şahin, ‘Pîr Ali Aksarâyî’, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. XXXIV, pp. 273–74. The incident is described by C. Fleischer,‘Shadows of Shadows: ­Pro­phecy Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 01:42:53PM via free access Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 01:42:53PM via free access 10 roderick grierson in ­Mevlevilikte Resim, Resimde Mevleviler confirms that he is indeed dis- cussing the Nusretnâme and not another book. The insuperable problem with his suggestion is that Süleyman had been dead for more than a decade when the events described in its pages occurred. The illustration of Lala Mustafa Paşa and Mustafa Ali Efendi in the Kubbe-i Hadra – by which I mean the pilgrimage that the illustration records­ and the illustration itself – is of great interest for the history of the Mev­ leviye. It confirms the place of the Mathnawi in Ottoman culture, as well as the veneration with which Jalal al-Din Rumi continued to be ­regarded and the power that he was seen to display in guiding or shaping­ events of state even after ish death. Lala Mustafa Paşa was not only a soldier and statesman of high rank, he was also the conqueror of Cyprus and a ­generous patron of the Mevlevi in Nicosia, a vizier about whom rather more is known than any comparable figure because he retained as his private secretary­ one of the leading historians of the day, Gelibolulu ­Mustafa Ali. The Nusretnâme was written as a testimony to the role of mili­tary commanders who served as delegates of the sultan by spreading the true faith to lands under heretic or infidel rule. Its author evidently believed that these heroes were joined in their great enterprise by men like himself, scholars who had mastered Persian and Arabic as well as Ottoman, whose eloquence enabled them to correspond with allies or enemies. Their knowledge of ­nakkaş, the ‘arts of the book’,7 also enabled them to climb the ladder of preferment and to make their words heard in the presence of the sultan, whether those who were listening belonged to their own faction or to another.8 * * * and Politics in 1530s Istanbul’, in Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz, ed. B. Tezcan and K. K. Barbir (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 2007), pp. 51–62, esp. p. 57. For the book itself, see G. T. Elmore, Islamic Sainthood in the Fullness of Time: Ibn al-‘Arabī’s Book of the Fabulous Gryphon (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1998). 7 A useful summary of ‘arts of the book’ such as hat (calligraphy), tezhip (illumination), ebru (marbling), nakış (painting), and cilt (binding) can be found in N. Bozkurt, ‘Na- kkaş’, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. XXXII, pp. 326–28. The famous treatise on the subject by Mustafa Ali himself is available in E. Akın-Kivanç, Mustafa ‘Âli’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Critical Edition of the Earliest Ottoman Text about the Calligraphers and Painters of the Islamic World (Leiden: E. J. Brill 2011). 8 An introduction to the circumstances in which such books were produced is provided by Ç. Kafescioğlu, ‘The Visual Arts’, in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. II: The Ottoman Empire as a World Power, 1453–1603, ed. S. N. Faroqhi and K. Fleet (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), pp. 457–547 and by E. Fetvacı, Pictur­ing History at the Ottoman Court (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2013). Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 01:42:53PM via free access cover illustration 11 Despite the fulsome accounts of the later career of Lala Mustafa Paşa, little was recorded about his early life. He was born at Sokol in the Ottoman eyalet or province of Bosnia. Although the date of his birth is not recorded, he was evidently the younger brother of Deli Hüsrev Paşa,9 who served as vizier and who brought the boy to Istanbul so that he could be educated at the imperial palace and begin his career within its walls.10 Mustafa rose in rank between 1553 and 1555, while Kara Ahmed Paşa was sadrazam or grand vizier,11 but he was not regarded with favour by Rüstem Paşa,12 who succeeded Kara Ahmed.13 Hoping that such a responsibility would impede or even ruin his career, Rüstem Paşa appointed Mustafa to serve as lala or tutor to the prince Selim,14 son of Süleyman the Magnificent. He was mis- taken, however. Mustafa was able to use his position to encourage Selim to intrigue against his brother Bayezid, and thereby placed himself within the camp of the future sultan. As Selim and Bayezid were both keen to inherit the throne of their father, they were sent to govern cities far from Istanbul in the hope that distance would reduce the likelihood of insurrection.15 Selim was sent to Konya and Bayezid to Amasya.