In this book, Patricia Blessing explores the emergence of Ottoman architecture in the fifteenth century and its connection with broader geographical contexts. Analyzing how transregional exchange shaped building practices, she examines how workers from Anatolia, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Iran and Central Asia participated in key construction projects. She also demonstrates how drawn, scalable models on paper served as templates for architectural decorations and supplemented collaborations that involved the mobility of workers. Blessing reveals how the creation of centralized workshops led to the emergence of a clearly defined imperial Ottoman style by 1500, when the flexibility and experimentation of the preceding century was levelled. Her book radically transforms our understanding of Ottoman architecture by exposing the diverse and fluid nature of its formative period. It also provides the reader with an understanding of design, planning, and construction processes of a major empire of the Islamic world.
Author(s): Patricia Blessing
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 296
City: Cambridge
Introduction Material Politics of Architecture in a Fluid Empire
Pasts, Presents, Futures: Architecture and Sources
Shifting Architectures, Changing Actors
The Ottoman Empire and the Renaissance
Styles, International and Otherwise
Chapter Summaries
ONE Imperial and Local Horizons: Looking East and West
Timurid Style in Ottoman Lands?
Moving toward Constantinople
The Çinili Köşk: Between Constantinople and Khurasan
Between Persianate and Byzantine Architecture
Epigraphic Artifice and Poetic Cosmology
The Tile Decoration of the Çinili Köşk
Istanbul beyond the Çinili Köşk
Mahmud Pasha’s Patronage
Transfer to Skopje: Tile Work on the Move
Mid-Fifteenth-Century Aesthetics: Istanbul and Beyond
Two Immersive Space: Empire Building and the Ottoman Frontier
Shifting Styles: Constructing Past, Present, and Future
Mehmed I’s Mosque-Zāviye Complex in Bursa
Dynastic Memory in Bursa
Tiles: Timurid, Saljuq, Aqqoyunlu?
Building Innovations: Creating Immersive Space
The Masters of Tabriz: Tiles and Origin
The Saljuq Past: Stone and Pre-Ottoman Anatolia
The Timurid Present: Bursa, Tabriz, and International Timurid Style
Entangled References
Three Under the Influence: Creating Cosmopolitan Architectures
Mamluk Style in Ottoman Amasya: The Bayezid Pasha Mosque-Zāviye
Construction Sites: Workers and Designers
Paper and Architectural Design
Consolidating a Style: The Yörgüç Pasha Mosque-Zāviye
New Directions in Stone Carving: From Plasticity to Surface
Connecting the Mamluk and Ottoman Realms: Scholarship and Language
Mamluk Aesthetics on the Move in Western Anatolia and Thrace
Transmission and Design
Blue-and-White Tiles: A Shared Aesthetic?
The Masters of Tabriz beyond Bursa
The Virtual Kitabkhāna
Mobile Artists and Imperial Aspirations
Four Building Paradise: Afterlife and Dynastic Politics
Funerary Space and Dynastic Memory
The Sultan’s Mausoleum
From the Written to the Built Space of Murad II’s Death and Afterlife
Paradise in the Funerary Space
Ottoman Funerary Landscapes
Princely Burials in Bursa’s Muradiye
Intertwined Spaces
Five An Ottoman Aesthetic: Consolidation circa 1500
Centralizing Design on Paper
Centralizing Design beyond Paper
Design in the Age of Bayezid II: Amasya
Extending into the Balkans: Serres and Skopje circa 1490
Emerging Architects
Patronage for Sufi Communities in Contested Anatolia
Anatolia and Cilicia beyond the Ottoman Realm
An Ottoman Aesthetic
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
