additions to illustrated manuscripts 147 ZEREN TANINDI ADDITIONS TO ILLUSTRATED MANUSCRIPTS IN OTTOMAN WORKSHOPS The royal workshop at the Ottoman palace functioned scripts which found their way into the Topkapi treas- as a center not only for the production but also for ury in unknown ways. The aim in examining these the conservation and repair of manuscripts. Like other manuscripts is to understand the diversity and the patrons of art in the Islamic world, Ottoman patrons richness introduced to Ottoman painting by these were well aware of the activities of workshops in neigh- acquisitions and through the additions to them by boring states—what and how much they produced, their new owners. the caliber of their artists, and the amount of pa- In 1567 Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524–76) sent Shah Quli tronage extended by their ruler. Historical documents Khan from the Ustajlu Turkmans as his ambassador tell us that conquest did not lead to the destruction to represent him at the enthronement of Sultan Selim of royal or commercial workshops; when a city fell II (r. 1566–74). Shah Quli Khan was attended by 720 the best manuscripts in its workshops were simply people, requiring 1,700 pack animals. When the en- gathered up and taken to the conqueror’s library or voy and his entourage arrived in Istanbul, however, kept in the treasury.1 The new patron would take care they learned that the sultan was in Edirne, so they con- of them, and if need be have them repaired. The tinued on, entering the city in a spectacular proces- artists of his workshop would fill in any spaces left sion. The gifts for the the sultan were so numerous blank for illumination or paintings. If a manuscript that it took forty-four camels to carry them.3 They were was unbound, it was given a binding in accordance presented to the sultan on 17 Sha{ban 975 (16 Feb- with the taste of the new owner. Not just the sultan, ruary 1568). One of the most outstanding of them was but all the members of the Ottoman court— sehza- a manuscript of Firdawsi’s Sh¸hn¸ma with 259 illus- des, hanim sultans, and bureaucrats—were patrons of trations. Ahmed Feridun Bey (d. 1583), the ni×anci art and took great interest in the manuscripts that (chancellor) of the grand vizier Sokullu Mehmed were presented to them by visiting princes and am- Pasha (d. 1579), a close friend of patrons of the arts bassadors.2 Through these diplomatic gifts, the pal- of book in the palace and the son-in-law of the grand ace’s manuscript treasury was enriched by outstand- vizier Rüstem Pasha (d. 1561), was an eyewitness to ing works by Ilkhanid, Jalayirid, Timurid, Turkman, this ceremony and describes this remarkable book in Mamluk, Safavid, and Uzbek artists. his chronicle, Nuzhet (al-asr¸r) al-ahb¸r der sefer-i Zigatv¸r Manuscripts that were presented by ambassadors (Topkapi Palace Library, H. 1339, fol. 246b).4 This sent to negotiate peace treaties or to represent their Sh¸hn¸ma or Sh¸hn¸ma-yi Sh¸hº had been made by rulers at circumcision or enthronement ceremonies, skilled artists in Tabriz in the first half of the sixteenth enriched not only the treasury but also the culture century for Shah Tahmasp.5 Ahmed Feridun Bey re- of the Ottoman court. The abundance of illustrated ports in his chronicle that when the Sh¸hn¸ma was pre- books in the Topkapi Library today shows that the sented to Sultan Selim II it impressed the high-rank- illustrated Perso-Islamicate classics, especially Firdawsi’s ing courtiers and bureaucrats in the palace. In less Sh¸hn¸ma and Nizami’s Khamsa, were particularly cov- than a year, Seyyid Lokman from Urmiya, who was eted by the Ottoman elite. close to Sokullu Mehmed Pasha and Ahmed Feridun This paper begins with the appearance of some six- Bey, was appointed official court poet to write a dy- teenth-century Safavid ambassadors and refugee nastic history of the Ottomans. Beginning in 1569, the princes at the Ottoman court who brought with them Sh¸hn¸mas of the Ottoman sultans were written in the objects that enriched the Ottoman royal treasury. It style of Firdawsi’s text; a decade later they began to concludes with an analysis of a group of royal manu- be illustrated.7 148 zeren tanindi The son of Shah Quli, Toqmaq Khan, was in his fifteenth century.15 The number of Aqqoyunlu scribes turn sent to Istanbul as ambassador from Shah increased significantly after the Ottomans conquered Tahmasp, this time for the enthronement of Murad the Aqqoyunlu Turkmans in 1473. Among them we III (r. 1574–95) in 1576. His entourage totaled 250 can identify the ni×anci of Uzun Hasan, Sayyid people supported by 500 pack camels. His audience Muhammad Munshi al-Sultani al-Shirazi, and Ghiyath with the sultan took place in the Chamber of Petitions; al-Din al-Mujallid al-Isfahani.16 Ghiyath al-Din was he came with thirty attendants. Among the gifts he probably one of the attendants of U¯urlu Mehmed, presented were eighteen illuminated Korans and more the governor of Isfahan for a time, who accompanied than sixty dºv¸ns of Persian poets, a Sh¸hn¸ma of him to Istanbul. In his colophons, Ghiyath al-Din iden- Firdawsi, and some illustrated albums (muraqqa{s).8 tifies himself as a scribe and bookbinder, but adds that Shah Muhammad Khudabanda (r. 1577–87) and his he was also trained as a doctor, and copied several son Hamza Mirza (d. 1586) sent as gifts eighteen manuscripts on medicine. He also copied a work by manuscripts, including Nizami’s Khamsa illustrated by the Timurid poet Jami for the Ottoman Prince Cem Bihzad, an illustrated Iskandarn¸ma written in Turk- (d. 1495) (Istanbul Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya ish, and a Sh¸hn¸ma,9 via their ambassador Ibrahim 4009), and thereby introduced this famous poet to the Khan on the occasion of Sultan Murad III’s son Ottoman court.17 Ghiyath al-Din was noted for his Mehmed’s circumcision in 1582.10 Some of the books bindings; he would stamp motifs in high relief on their presented to Sultan Murad III were brought by the center and cornerpieces. He was also the first to ap- ten-year-old Safavid prince Haidar Mirza (d. 1595) and ply landscapes with various animals and plants in his envoy Mahdi Quli Khan in 1590, who had been panels of Turkish bindings.18 As a result of all these sent by his uncle Shah {Abbas (r. 1587–1629) as a contacts between the Ottomans and the Aqqoyunlu, hostage to guarantee peace. All twenty of the books the cultural milieu of the Ottoman court was enriched he brought with him were illustrated and illuminated, and became more diverse in the late fifteenth and early and some had jeweled bindings.11 sixteenth century. In addition to these official gifts were the presen- Badi{ al-Zaman Mirza (d. 1515 or 1517), son of the tations by refugee or captive Safavid, Turkman, and Timurid Husayn Bayqara (r. 1468–1507), lived in Timurid princes, seeking refuge at the court. One of Herat and Astarabad.19 A poet and a bureaucrat in those princes was U¯urlu Mehmed (d. 1477), the eld- Herat, {Ali Shir Nava}i (d. 1501) had protected this est son of the Aqqoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan (r. 1457– prince and wrote eulogies of him in the beginning 78). In the year following the war between Uzun Hasan of some sections of his Khamsa, which he completed and Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) U¯urlu between 1483 and 1485.20 One of the copies of this Mehmed sought refuge at the Ottoman court in Khamsa, which was produced in Herat in the late fif- 1474,12 after having incurred his father’s wrath. We teenth century, was dedicated to the Timurid Prince do not know who came with him, but the informa- Badi{ al-Zaman Mirza. This work was illustrated by an tion provided in the chronicles and in colophons from artist inspired by the style of Bihzad (Oxford, Bodleian books from Mehmed II’s reign tell us that in the one Library, Elliot 287, 317, 339, 408; Manchester, John year U¯urlu Mehmed stayed in Istanbul, he was among Rylands Library 3).21 Badi{ al-Zaman Mirza became the elite who inspired the arts of the court.13 He ruler after Husayn Bayqara’s death, but when Herat married a daughter of Sultan Mehmed II (the cou- was occupied by the Uzbeks in 1507, he fled and took ple had a son, Ahmed Göde [d. 1498], who became refuge in Tabriz. When the Ottomans conquered the ruler of the Aqqoyunlu Turkmans in 1496). Ac- Tabriz in 1514, he was taken captive and brought to cording to the chronicles U¯urlu Mehmed conveyed Istanbul,22 where he died of the plague. Badi{ al-Zaman information about the Arabian and Persian courts to Mirza was a close friend of the poet {Ali Shir Nava}i Mehmed II, and even the walls of Mehmed’s new and probably brought some of his works with him palace were built according to U¯urlu Mehmed’s rec- when he came to Istanbul, because some time after ommendations.14 his arrival, the works of {Ali Shir Nava}i were copied Their nisbas tell us that calligraphers from Shiraz and illustrated in the Ottoman royal nakk¸×h¸ne. The and Isfahan who were under Timurid or, later on, influence of Badi{ al-Zaman Mirza and the Khurasan Turkman rule moved to Ottoman cities such as Bursa, artists brought from Tabriz to the Ottoman court Edirne, and Istanbul, beginning in the first half of the taught the elite to appreciate the works of {Ali Shir.