Harmony of Line and Color

Surviving examples demonstrate that the first artistically produced books in the Islamic world were Korans. Soon after Korans began to be produced in the form books rather than scrolls, the pages began to be illuminated with painted decoration.

One of those who contributed to the spread of the words of God was Ali, the nephew and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, who created the script style known as Kufic and applied it in its most beautiful form. Ali was also the first person to illuminate the words of God and so open the way for illumination as a profession.

Motivated by this belief, for centuries patrons of the arts supported the writing of the Koran's text by calligraphers, the decoration of its pages by skilled illuminators and the binding of its pages by master binders in covers usually made of leather and sometimes adorned with gold or silver plaques mounted with precious stones.

Calligraphic compositions consisting of a description of the physical characteristics of the Prophet Muhammad were known as Hilye-i Şerif. In addition to this text, such compositions also included prayers, Koranic verses, diagrams, pictures of Mecca, Medina and sometimes Jerusalem, and occasionally poems and talismanic formulas written in diverse script types on large sheets of paper, usually pasted onto thick cardboard, and decorated with illumination and halkar gilding.

These were framed and displayed on the walls of homes.

Collections of single page works by calligraphers, miniature painters and illuminators were compiled into albums known as murakka, the production of which became a specialised branch of Islamic arts of the book. Foremost among the subjects of pictures in these albums are figures of women and men and portraits of rulers.

It appears that these figures and portraits were produced and sold singly by the artists, since there are examples that have not been pasted onto album pages.

Portraits of the sultans are the earliest examples of portraiture in Ottoman art.In no other Islamic country have so many portraits been painted of the sultans as in the Ottoman Empire. Sadberk Hanım Museum has two albums — without an accompanying text —consisting of series of portraits inside oval medallions of the Ottoman sultans up to Sultan Mahmud II in one album and up to Sultan Abdülmecid in the other.

These portraits are probably the work of a painter educated in western-style art and they date from the mid-nineteenth century.

Documents such as vakfiye (endowment deeds), mülkname (property deeds), ferman (royal edicts), berat (warrants) and menşur (patents) are valuable sources of information about Ottoman social and economic history, architecture and art.

Vakfiyes could be either in scroll or book form, while mülknames, fermans, berats and menşurs were always in the form of scrolls. At the top of most of these documents was the sultan's tuğra (imperial cipher), which was usually illuminated.

When calligraphy students were judged to have mastered their art, they were awarded a diploma known as icazetname.

Illuminated tuğra, which were symbols of the Ottoman sultans, are principally found on official documents, seals and coins, but there are also some examples of royal tuğra written as independent works of art on paper more than two metres in length and illuminated by master artists. One exceptional example of a tuğra composition in the form of a panel for display is the work of Mir İdris Ali.

This masterpiece in Sadberk Hanım Museum is executed in cut-paper work using brightly coloured paper. The tuğra is that of Sultan Selim III (r. 1789-1807) and consists of the words, “Selim Han bin Mustafa, may he always be victorious”.

The decorative character of the work is further enhanced by a colourful cut-paper picture of an arbour over a pool surrounded by flowers, set in the space between the shafts and projections of the tuğra.