The twin books for two Ottoman Princesses :|an examination on the Mataāli'ü's-saʻāde manuscripts (1582)

Abstract

The sultanate of Murād III (1574-1595) was an era of artistic advancement in terms of book production. The Mataāliʻü’s-saʻāde (Paris BnF Suppl. Turc 242 & New York Morgan M. 788), as a compendium that includes astrology, physiognomy, oneiromancy and prognostication, is one of the products of this period. These twin books titled Maṭāliʻü’s-saʻāde (The Ascensions of Felicity) must be the Ottoman Turkish adaptation of the fourteenth-century Arabic miscellany, the Kitāb al-Bulhān (Bodl. Or. 133), as their text and illustrative cycles are identical. The Maṭāliʻü’s saʻāde copies must have been produced as a result of a cumulative Ottoman imperial household interest in the fields that the book presents as well as a contemporary atmosphere surrounded by millenarian fears. Apocalyptic excitements and anxieties were highly influential throughout the sixteenth century. Alongside the impact of this phenomenon and of social-political dynamics on contemporary literary genres and book arts, this thesis also considers the commission of the Maṭāliʻü’s-saʻāde manuscripts in relation to the image making process of the sultan Murād III. Twin copies of the Maṭāliʻü’s-saʻāde are dedicated to the daughters of the sultan, whereby both princesses are directly mentioned with their names in these manuscripts. This thesis explores the attribution of the books to the sultan’s daughters as a sign of Ottoman royal women’s interests in occult sciences.