Procession and Continuity: A Nineteenth-Century View of an Eighteenth-Century Ceremony

Abstract

The Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Collection (SVIKV) holds an illustrative mid-century example of Ottoman commemorative lithography, large in format (63 x 41 cm; 71 x 49 cm including its frame) and enhanced with hand-applied colors (fig. 1). According to its trilingual inscription—printed in English, Ottoman Turkish, and French—the scene shows an imperial procession held for the bayram holiday holiday of 1176 H / 1762, passing through the First Court of the Topkapı Palace.

Keywords

• lithography
• Topkapı Palace
• Mustafa III
• Bayram Alayı
• Ceremony

References

1. 1 Alois Senefelder invented the lithographic process in Bavaria in 1804, but the technology for chemically preparing stones did not arrive in the print centers of the Ottoman Empire, including Istanbul and Smyrna (today’s Izmir), until the 1830s. It took until the middle of the century for Istanbul’s presses to come into their own.
2. 2 This refers to one or both of the two major Islamic holidays: Ramazan Bayramı, or Eid al-Fitr, and Kurban Bayramı, or Eid al-Adha.
3. 3 Topkapı Palace Museum (TSM), 121/679 (formerly 17/169).
4. 4 For a study of trilingual captions in French, Ottoman Turkish, and Greek appearing in a collection of twenty-five hand-colored engravings and lithographs produced in Ottoman Smyrna in the 1830s, see Gwendolyn Collaço, ed., Prints and Impressions from Ottoman Smyrna: the Collection de costumes civils et militaires, scènes populaires, et vues de l’Asie-Mineure Album (1836–1838) at Harvard University’s Fine Arts Library (Istanbul: Orient-Institut Istanbul, 2019).
5. 5 This piece was acquired by Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation, Istanbul in 2018 from the Yılanlı Yalı collection.
6. 6 “It is the official view of the bayram procession of the reigning Sultan Mustafa III between the Imperial Gate and the Middle Gate in the year 1176 H.”
7. 7 The Middle Gate is more typically known in Turkish as the Ortakapı or the Bâbü’s-selam (Gate of Salutation).
8. 8 In both English and French, “Sublime Porte” was used as a metonym for the Ottoman central government, named after the gate to the grand vizier’s offices.

9. 9 This follows the description in Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Tableau general de l’Empire othoman (Paris, 1788–1824), 7:129–131. For an inter-cultural analysis of this monumental work, see Carter Vaughn Findley, Enlightening Europe on Islam and the Ottomans (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
10. 10 For Surnâme-i Hümayun, see Nurhan Atasoy, Surnâme-i Hümayun 1582: An Imperial Celebration (Istanbul: Koçbank, 1997).
11. 11 For Surnâme-i Vehbî, see Esin Atıl, Levni and the Surname: The Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Festival (Istanbul: Koçbank, 1999).
12. 12 Antoine Ignace Melling, Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des Rives du Bosphore (Paris, 1819).
13. 13 John Auldjo, Journal of a Visit to Constantinople (London, 1835), 36. Miss Julia Pardoe criticized the Kurban bayram processions of 1836 specifically because of the “frightful fèz” worn by participants. Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1836 (London, 1838), 1:169.
14. 14 Alison Terndrup, “The Sultan’s Gaze: Power and Ceremony in the Imperial Portraiture Campaign of Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II (r.1808–1839)” (PhD diss., Boston University, 2021), ProQuest (28417144). For the role of innovation in Ottoman official ceremonies of the nineteenth century, see Hakan Karateke, Padişahım Çok Yaşa!: Osmanlı Devletinin Son Yüzyılında Merasimler (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2004).