Picturing Ancient Remains, Past Times at the Ottoman Court, 1574–1603
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
7:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS, Phillips Building
- Room
- Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT)
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
In the final decades of the sixteenth century, corresponding to the reigns of Murad III (r. 1574–95) and Mehmed III (r.1595–1603), the Ottoman court atelier illustrated several Turkish prose works on marvels, miracles and magic, for the first time.
Such books and their paintings remained marginal to the study of Ottoman painting, in part, because they conjure up a vision of the world that is long forgotten in our “disenchanted” world. Engaging with this material thus requires us to move away from our post-Enlightenment empiricist ways of thinking about ‘reality’ vs. ‘fantastic.’
Through an unstudied Ottoman book of wonders now held in the British Library under the shelf mark Harleian 5500 (ca. 1595–1600) and a related corpus, this talk will highlight that when viewed in this way, Ottoman books of wonders are far from just nice-looking pictures of bizarre beliefs. Instead, they emerge as crucial sources to better understand the little-known religious beliefs and intellectual practices of the Ottoman court.
Focusing on the images of ancient monuments in Ottoman books, Dr Günseli Gürel will demonstrate how late sixteenth-century artists and writers emphasized the compatibility of occult cultures of pre-Islamic pasts with Islam and with Ottoman traditions and presented Ottomans as heirs to ancient culture and learning.
The lecture will be chaired by Professor Scott Redford.
About the speaker
Dr Günseli Gürel is a Barakat postdoctoral fellow. She studied Islamic Art and Architecture at University of Oxford, Khalili Research Centre. She is working on her first monograph, tentatively entitled Picturing Marvels, Magic, Monsters and Miracles at the Ottoman Court, 1574–1603, based on her recent DPhil thesis.
Her research and publications focus on various topics, including Ottoman interests in the Americas, the occult, natural philosophy and the pre-Islamic past, as well as the conversion of Byzantine religious buildings in Constantinople.
Contact
Email: rw51@soas.ac.uk.
Image: British Library, Harleian 5500 (ca. 1595–1600), fol. 30a: columns of Hippodrome in Constantinople.
