Flowers in the culture of the Ottoman Empire and their way to Europe
Flowers played an important role in Ottoman culture . They were cultivated in gardens and were popular subjects in the visual arts. In literature, flowers and gardens are often given a symbolic meaning.
Crusaders and European travelers in the 16th century first brought roses, tulips, hyacinths, carnations and many other plants to Europe. Trade with the Ottoman Empire brought large quantities of bulbs and seeds of flowering plants on the classic trade routes via Venice and Rome to Europe, where they have since become part of European gardening culture.
Tulips
Wild tulips still grow today in Asia Minor and Central Asia, as well as in South and Southeast Europe. As bulbous plants, they are typical representatives of the steppe flora .
In addition to the hyacinth, rose and carnation, tulips are among the four flowers that are part of the classic decor of ceramic goods and tiles made of İznik ceramics . For the first time a tulip is mentioned by the Persian poet Hafiz . The Persian name "lāle" is also adopted by the Ottomans. During the reign of Ahmed III. the enthusiasm for tulips in the Ottoman Empire reached its peak. This period was later known as Lâle Devri (" Tulip Time "). On behalf of the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pascha , his tulip gardener Şeyh Mohammed wrote two treatises on tulip cultivation between 1728 and 1730. Ahmed III. owned famous tulip meadows on the summer pastures (Yayla) in Spil Dağı above Manisa .
Hyacinths
Another group of bulbous plants of importance to the Ottoman culture are the hyacinths . Busbecq writes that the plain between Edirne and Istanbul was full of blooming hyacinths. In Ottoman art, the hyacinth is always shown with only a few open flowers, so the flower differs from the cultivated forms known today. The plant known from Ottoman art very likely corresponds to the violet-blue wild type of the hyacinth, Hyacinthus orientalis . This can still be found today growing wild in Turkey, Syria and Palestine.
Roses
Roses played an important role in Islamic culture, including the culture of the Ottoman Empire. Busbecq wrote:
“Sed nec rosarum folia humi iacere patiuntur, quod ut veteres rosam ex sanguine Veneris, sic isti ex sudore Mahometis natam sibi persuaserint.”
“You won't allow rose petals to lie on the floor either. For like the ancients made the rose from the blood of Venus, the Turks believe it was made out of Mahomet's sweat.
Roses in Ottoman poetry
Under the influence of Sufi mysticism , fixed pairs of images emerged first in Persian, followed by Ottoman literature, such as that of Nachtigall ( Ottoman بلبل İA bülbül ) and Rose ( Ottoman ﮔل İA gül ), or world ( Ottoman جهان İA cihan ; Ottoman عالم İA 'âlem ) and Rose Garden ( Persian ﮔﻠﺴﺘﺎن, DMG gülistan ; Ottoman ﮔﻠﺸﻦ İA gülşen ):
A verse by the 19th century Ottoman qadi and poet Hayatî Efendi reads:
« بر گل مى وار بو گلشن ﻋالمدﻪ خارسز »
«Bir gül mü var bu gülşen-i 'âlemde hârsız»
"Is there a rose in the rose garden of this world without thorns?"
The rose stands on the one hand for the passionate love for God as the highest source of love and loved one at the same time. The image of the rose can also describe the profane and erotic love of a human couple. In the pair of images, the beloved rose is regularly confronted by the nightingale as the image of the lover, who approaches the rose out of love and lifts its thorns ( Ottoman خار hâr ) is hurt.
In a comparable way, the image of the “world” relates equally to the real world and symbolically to the world as a place of suffering and instability, which the “rose garden” faces both as a real and as a paradise garden . "The nightingale", or the suffering lover, is often portrayed as literally or figuratively "in the world", while "the rose", the beloved, is in the "rose garden".
Economical meaning
The rose oil production was of economic importance. Rose oil is obtained from the vinegar or Gallic rose ( Rosa gallica ) and several varieties of Damascus roses ( Rosa damascena ). Another old oriental rose of the Rosa foetida variety, which has been mentioned by Arabic writers since the 12th century, was probably brought to the Netherlands by Charles de l'Écluse in 1583 together with Rosa hemisphaerica .
Cloves
Carnations are known as early as the 4th century BC. Mentioned by Theophrastus of Eresus . The ancestral form of today's carnations is the five-leaved Dianthus caryophyllus from Dalmatia. The carnations depicted in Ottoman art are already similar to today's carnations, as they are often depicted with a double flower.
The way to Europe
As early as 1555, Pierre Belon reported the Ottoman Society's preference for flowers. Individual flowers would be borne in the folds of the turban, neither expense nor effort would be spared to discover rare or particularly beautiful flowers and plants.
In his "Turkish Letters", Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq reports on fragrant flowers in Rumelia , which he had never heard of before :
“Per haec loca transeuntibus, ingens ubique copia florum offerebatur, Narcissorum, Hyacinthorum & eorum quos Turcae tulipan vocant; non sine magna admiratione nostra, propter anni tempus, media plane hieme, floribus minime amicum. Narcissis et Hyacinthis abundat Graecia miro fragrantibus, sicut, cum multi sint, odorum huiusmodi insuetis, caput offendant. Tulipanti aut nullus aut exiguus est odor; a coloris varietate & pulchritudine commendatur. "
“When we moved through this area, we saw an enormous number of flowers everywhere, daffodils, hyacinths and those that the Turks call Tulipan - to our great astonishment, since this time of year, in the middle of winter, is by no means friendly to flowers. Graecien has such an abundance of fragrant daffodils and hyacinths that the head is completely confused by the unfamiliar fragrances. "
Tulip mania
A tulip was first depicted under the name Narcissus by Pietro Andrea Mattioli in 1565. In 1561 Conrad Gessner drew a tulip that he saw in 1559 in the garden of councilor Heinrich Herwart in Augsburg. Gessner's description was the basis for the description of the Tulipa gesneriana by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. A more detailed description comes from Carolus Clusius , were spreading through the mediation tulips far in Europe. Towards the end of the 16th century, the Netherlands became a center for onion plants, especially tulips. A large number of varieties emerged, including those with double or colored flamed flowers. The coveted tulips became an object of speculation in the tulip mania , the sudden collapse of the tulip market in 1637 is one of the earliest examples of a stock market crash . Joseph de la Vega examines the tulip mania in his book The Confusion of Confusions - one of the earliest works on what happens on the stock exchange .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gustav Schoser, Sofia Benz-Rathfelder: Ottoman flowers - The way of some Ottoman plants to Central Europe and their history in the 16th century . In: Annalize Ohm, Wolfgang Vollbart (Hrsg.): Turkish art and culture from the Ottoman period . Exhibition catalog Museum für Kunstgewerbe, Frankfurt am Main. Aurel Bongers, Recklinghausen 1985, ISBN 3-7647-0369-5 , p. 152-154 .
- ^ John H. Harvey: Turkey as a Source of Garden Plants . In: Garden History , 4/3, 1976, p. 22, JSTOR 1586521
- ^ Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq : Legationis Turcicae Epistolae quatuor. Epistola great. 1595, p. 37 , accessed December 26, 2015 (Latin).
- ↑ İskender Pala (ed.): Divân Şiiri Antolojisi: Dîvânü'd-Devâvîn . Akçağ Yayınları, Kızılay, Ankara 1995, ISBN 975-338-081-X , p. 425 .
- ^ A b Walter G. Andrews, Mehmet Kalpaklı: The age of beloveds: Love and the beloved in early-modern Ottoman and European culture and society . Durham NC 2005, ISBN 0-8223-3424-0 .
- ^ Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq: Legationis Turcicae Epistolae quatuor. Epistola great. 1595, p. 33 , accessed December 26, 2015 (Latin).
- ↑ Liz Dobbs: Tulip . Quadrille Publishing, London 2004, ISBN 978-1-84400-083-8 , pp. 5 .
- ↑ Joseph de la Vega: The Confusion of Confusions (1688) . New edition edition. Stock exchange media, 1994, ISBN 978-3-922669-10-4 .