In her “Piece of Stuff” section of this week’s podcast – Episode 5: Ancient Divination and Ottoman Whining and Pining, Ashley talked the Harem at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and the slave-to-queen life of Roxelana aka Hürrem Sultan. Topkapi Palace was more than just the place that the Ottoman Sultan lived, it was the administrative center of the Ottoman Empire, and a canvas for showcasing Ottoman wealth and style. Construction of the Topkapi palace began just six years after the Ottoman conquered Constantinople in 1453.

In order to think about the cosmopolitan splendor of the Topkapi Palace I want to look at just one tile in the out of the way Circumcision Room. This tile is discussed by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay in a video created for SmartHistory, which has the evocative title “Blue at the Center of Empire.”[i] The tile is part of a set of five which make up a panel on the wall, four of which are identical and this is one of those.

The first thing to note about the tile is its size, at around a meter or 40 inches tall it is quite the feat of firing. These tiles are known as Iznik tiles as they come from the city of Iznik, a famous Turkish center for tile making. The next thing to notice is the extraordinary, otherworld of blueness. Several shades of blue and a dash of turquoise make the beautiful scenes depicted on the tile possible, and one would be quite correct to be reminded of Chinese porcelain painting.

The style of the painting on the tiles is called the International Timurid Style, referring to the Timurid Empire which was founded in 1370 by the Turco-Mongolian warlord Timur (better known in the West as Tamerlane) and lasted until 1507. The Timurid Empire was vast, encompassing modern Iran. Iraq, Afghanistan, much of Central Asia and the South Caucasus and parts of Pakistan, Northern India and Turkey. Timur saw himself as the restorer of the Mongolian Empire and one of the things he did that was like the Mongols was to invest in connecting the various parts of Eurasia and we can see this is the Timurid style of this tile.

Timurid art took influences from Persia and China, as well as other parts of the empire, and it was displayed in manuscript art, architecture, metalwork, jade carving and ceramics. The style continued to be influential after the end of the Timurid Empire and can be seen reflected in the styles of Safavids in Persia, the Mughals in India as well as in the Ottoman Empire.

In this tile we can see a style that originated in China, but then was filtered through the Timurid style and was then used by the Ottomans. Typical of this style are these fantastical landscapes of serrated or saw-toothed leaves and lotus blossoms and rosettes, which art historians call the Saz or Haytai style. These landscapes are inhabited by real and imaginary creatures like the birds and dragons seen on this tile.

Picture Credit: R. Prazeres in the public domain accessed 26 July, 2023 at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Topkapi_circumcision_room_tiles_DSCF2278.jpg and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Topkapi_circumcision_room_tiles_DSCF2352.jpg

[i] https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-islam/chronological-periods-islamic/islamic-art-late-period/v/topkapi-palace-tiles