A Note on the Location of the Royal Ottoman Painting Ateliers

Author(s): Alan W. Fisher and Carol Garrett Fisher

Source: Muqarnas, Vol. 3 (1985), pp. 118-120
Published by: BRILL
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 ALAN W. FISHER AND CAROL GARRETT
A NOTE ON THE LOCATION OF THE
ROYAL OTTOMAN PAINTING ATELIERS
Where was the royal Ottoman atelier? Ever since Rifki
Melul Meric's publication of the sixteenth-century Ot-
toman pay records listing court artists and their
salaries,' scholars have assumed that, because artists
appear on the court lists, they must have worked
together in a common atelier or ateliers in or near the
palace. The question then asked was where this atelier
was located, and that question remained unanswered.
But it now seems possible that the question posed was
the wrong one. For if the question is instead asked
whether a royal Ottoman atelier ever existed inside or
near the Topkapi, at least a tentative answer can then
be produced.
Several pieces of evidence suggest that the palace,
and more specifically the palace library, may have
served as a gathering and collating place for sections of
manuscripts that were either written or decorated at
various locations, both in Istanbul and elsewhere in the
Ottoman empire. If so, this would broaden the implica-
tions of Marianna Shreve Simpson's recently published
suggestion that pieces of the sixteenth-century Safavid
Haft Aurang were produced at various places in the
Safavid state and then brought together at the kitdb-
khdna of its patron, Sultan Ibrahim Mirza.2 Our
hypothesis would extend this production practice to the
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman empire.
The first piece of evidence is really the absence of
evidence in an unpublished 1686 translation of a
description of the Topkapi Sarayi found in the papers of
Girardin, the envoy of Louis XIV to Istanbul. It is a
French translation of Serai enderun sic, cio, penetrate
dell'seriio detto nuovodei G. sri e re ottomani written by
Bobovi in 1657.3 Bobovi was a slave and music instruc-
tor in the palace until he was ousted for drunkenness.
His description of the Topkapi Sarayi circulated
throughout the European community in Istanbul.
Bobovi's description of the palace, aside from the
harem, is detailed. It describes virtually all the rooms in
the first three courtyards, including the laundry, baths,
FISHER
dormitories, kitchens, schoolrooms, and the treasury.
He tells us about the training of the palace func-
tionaries, includes lists of textbooks, and notes that
some of the palace pages were taught various
calligraphic styles and could study famous examples of
calligraphy in the palace. But Bobovi does not say ex-
actly where the now famous Ottoman manuscriptswere
produced, or whether any of these pages were trained in
illumination, painting, or any other aspect of the art of
the book. Because of the detail in which he described
the palace and the education and functions of those in-
side it, the question arises whether the books were pro-
duced in the royal palace at all.
Bobovi paints a different picture of the city of Istan-
bul. He refers to tutors, deaf-mutes, and merchants
"from the bazaars" who come and go from the city to
the palace. He says that some of the best craftsmen
work near the bazaar. It is clear from this description
that by the mid-seventeenth century the palace was cer-
tainly not completely removed from Istanbul, as it is
said to have been in the early sixteenth century.
Another source makes it clear that Istanbul was full
of craftsmen and artists. Evliya Qelebi, the mid-
seventeenth-century Ottoman gentleman and traveler,
says that Istanbul had more than 1,100 sub-guilds
(esnaf)organized into 57 large guild groups. The group
of artists was headed by the ser nakkas,whose head-
quarters, Evliya says, were in a "manufactory"
(kdrhane).Its members included the gold-beaters (zerkii-
byan),gilders (miizehheb kesan),bookbinders (miicellidan),
booksellers (sahhafan), stationers (kagitcian) who
specialized in Persian and Venetian paper, inkstand
and portfolio makers, clerks, inkmakers, paper cutters,
artificial-palm-treemakers, wax-bird makers, printers,
calico printers, embroiderers, and embroiderersof han-
dkerchiefs.4
In this group were three sections of painters. The
first, the nakkasan,is said to have had one hundred
shops, including one in the upper story of the Lion
 A NOTE ON THE LOCATION
House (Arslan-Han), and to number over a thousand
men. Evliya says these painters "arrange bows, chairs,
and so forth on litters, upon which they place works of
the most famous painters, such as Shah Quli, Veli Jan,
Aga Riza, Murdar Ilik, Bizad, Mani, Frenk Sinor, and
Jan Shah."5 The second group are the portrait painters
(nakkasan-i musaviran), who number forty men in four
shops. Evliya says that while the Prophet Muhammad
gave no one permission to paint any image other than
the lion on his battle standard, the Greek painters "to
exalt the glory of Islam" paint the battles of Hamza and
the heroes of Islam, and that they "paint them like the
ancient heroes, of whom mention is made in the
Shahname." He lists the most famous Turkish portrait
painters as Miskali Solakzade, Teriaki Osman (elebi,
and Tas Baz Pehlivan Ali.6
Finally, the third group of painters comprises the
painter fortune-tellers (falciyan-i miisaviran). Their chief
is Hoca Mehmed Qelebi whose shop was in the district
of Mahmud Pasha and who had once had the honor of
speaking with Sultan Siileyman I. His shop, reports
Evliya, is filled with "pictures and figures of all the
aforesaid heroes and knights drawn with the pen on
coarse paper to be used as soothsaying devices." Those
portrayed include Yusuf and Ziileyka, Majnun and
Leila, Farhad and ?irin, Warka and Gulsah. Evliya
asserts that Hoca Mehmed Qelebi "carried them to the
Sultan, and at the public procession passed as chief of
these painter soothsayers exhibiting his pictures." In
short, according to Evliya there were literally hundreds
of painters in Istanbul in the mid-seventeenth century,
and some of them had dealings with the royal palace.7
Other texts add support to our hypothesis and extend
it back into the sixteenth century. If one examines cer-
tain manuscripts from the reign of Murad III in the late
sixteenth century, it is possible to find a stylistic likeness
between manuscript illustrations assigned to the
"palace ateliers" such as some in the Siyar-i Nabi, a cy-
cle of eight hundred miniatures produced in 1594-95 for
Murad III, and the "tekke style" identified by Atasoy
and Qagman in a group of manuscripts whose col-
ophons indicate they were made in Mevlevi dervish
convents in Baghdad or Konya. Because of their iden-
tification with Sufi convents, scholars have been slow to
connect these manuscripts with the orthodox palace
milieu, but there is evidence that there were connec-
tions. In 1590, for example, Murad III brought
Mahmud Dede, a Mevlevi from Konya, to the Topkapi
Sarayi to have him make a translation of the Manaqib-i
thavaqib. He is said to have returned to Konya to carry
OF THE ROYAL OTTOMAN ATELIERS 119
out this task.8 Further, the Meric pay records note a
piecemeal payment of 300 akces per miniature for the
Siyar-i Nabi miniatures.9 It therefore seems reasonable
to suggest that miniature painters and calli-
graphers-including some working in the tekke
style-may have been supplying these miniatures from
various sources, either by moving artists between tekke
or other ateliers and the palace or by sending job lots to
a central gathering place.
A still earlier piece of evidence can be considered. In
a document recording palace expenses for the period
1552-55, the expenses for the production of the Sehname-
i hassa of Kanuni Siileyman are recorded.10 The total
comes to 21,056 akces. Among the items listed are 161
akces for "the cost of carpenters for construction of par-
titions in the room of the kdtibs of the sehname in the
house of Fethullah Qelebi, the ?ehnameci." It seems
possible in this instance to postulate a separate atelier
for this master in the sixteenth century. As in the later
descriptions of Evliya Qelebi, it seems possible, too,
that this atelier was situated in the city of Istanbul, but
outside the palace.l
Although far from providing a definitive answer to
the question, the evidence does warrant considering the
possibility that in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
tury, the Ottoman empire handled the manufacture of
its memorable manuscripts much as the Safavids did.
The palace served as a gathering point for the artistic
genius of the various workshops of the empire and was
much more closely connected with the art of the city
and of the tekke than has heretofore been perceived.
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
NOTES
1. R. M. Meric, TurkNakisSanatiTarihiArastirmalari: I. Vesikalar
(Ankara,1953).
2. M. S. Simpson,"The Productionand Patronageof the Haft
Aurang by Jami in the FreerGalleryof Art," ArsOrientalis 13
(1982):93-104.
3. Paris,BibliothequeNationale,ms. N.A.F. 4997. Our transla-
tion and annotationof this manuscriptwill appearin Archivum
Ottomanicum (in press).
4. Evliya Qelebi, Seyahatname, 10 vols. (Istanbul, 1896-1928),
1:607-12.Susan Skilliter,Lifein Istanbul,1588: Scenesfroma
Traveller's
Picture
Book(Oxford:BodleianLibrary,1977),andin
privateconversationin June 1981, statesthat in the sixteenth
centurythere was a schoolof paintersin Istanbulwho were
probably European-comparableto the well-documented
China-tradepainters who were both Chinese and Euro-
120 CAROL GARRETT FISHER AND ALAN W. FISHER
pean-who produced genre scenes of the city and countryside
for Europeans. It is important to keep in mind that such official
titles as sernakkas, nakkasbasi, ista, and kethiida found in works
about Ottoman painters were titles commonly used for officials
throughout the Ottoman guild system; they had no special
significance for artists (i.e., they were not equivalent to
"master," "chief painter," and so forth). See Robert Man-
tran, Istanbul dans la seconde moitie du XVIe siecle (Paris, 1962),
pp. 367-89, for an analysis of guild organization. The pay
records in Meric, show that the guild titles, sernakkas, iista, and
kethiida, were used in the palace pay registers as well.
5. Evliya Celebi, Seyahatname, 1:607.
6. Ibid., pp. 610-11.
7. Ibid., p. 611.
8. F. Qagman, "XVI. Yuzyil Sonlarinda Mevlevi Dergahlarinda
Gelisen Bir Minyatiir Okulu," I. Milletler Arasi Tiirkoloji
Kongresi (Istanbul 15-20, X, 1970) (Istanbul, 1979), pp. 651-79;
N. Atasoy and F. (agman, Turkish Miniature Painting (Istanbul,
1974), pp. 58-63; C. Fisher, "The Pictorial Cycle of the Siyer-i
Nebi: A Late-Sixteenth-Century Manuscript of the Life of
Muhammad," Ph. D. diss., Michigan State University, 1981,
pp. 90-99.
9. Meric, Turk Nakis Sanati Tarihi, p. 76.
10. Omer Lutfi Barkan, Istanbul Saraylarina ait Muhasebe Defterleri,
(Tirk Tarih Kurumu Belgeler, vol. 9/13) (Ankara, 1979), pp.
69-70. The expenses (all in akces) included:
gold leaf (178 packets), 2,805
ink, 209
paper (devlet-abade, which was the much valued yellowish
glazed paper): 356 pieces, 3,392 akces
Samarkand paper, 192 pieces, 800
gold leaf and lapis lazuli for the chief grater, 200
lapis lazuli, indigo blue, asi (?), vermillion, white lead,
red lead, yellow, green, camel (l1k), smoke (dide) for
illustrating the Sehname-iHassa, 185
salary for Mustafa, chief katib of the sehname, 4,620
subsistence for the katibs of the sehname (30 persons),
1726 akces
subsistance for the painters (15 persons), 558
cost for katibs for writing the sehname of 45,000 beyts
a. 15,000 beyts 600 akces
b. 30,000 beyts 3600 akces
katib-graters foreman (siibasi), 200
bookbinder, for cardboard and chemicals, 20
scribes for "white writing" (beyaz-i sehname), 1,880
Which Shahnama is involved is unclear. (agman and Atasoy list
two that could conceivably be candidates: Topkapi Sarayi R.
1549, 43 miniatures, c. 1540, and Topkapi Sarayi H. 1522, 55
miniatures, c. 1560-65; but it could, of course, be an entirely
unknown one.
11. Fethullah Arif Qelebi was the sehnamecifor much of the reign of
Sultan Sileyman I. Atasoy and Qagman, Turkish Miniature
Painting, p. 28, state that "this position only became official
during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent. Its main
characteristics were based on the works of Arifi. ... Arifi wrote
his seyname of the Ottoman dynasty in five volumes, of which
the Siileymannama is the fifth and last.