Illustrated Ottoman Cosmographies, c. 1550–1700

This book explores the unprecedented Ottoman interest in illustrated cosmographies and their representation of the world and its inhabitants. It analyses fifteen illustrated manuscripts of four cosmographical texts on the Old and New Worlds (in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish) produced in the capital Istanbul and the Ottoman provinces of Egypt, Syria and Baghdad, c. 1550–1700. Overall, dozens of richly illustrated cosmographies were copied across the span of six hundred years, from the late thirteenth until the nineteenth century, in different artistic centres and by different political entities in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and India. This study points to an unprecedented and unparalleled production of illustrated cosmographies in the Ottoman period, in particular during the second half of the sixteenth century. It explores the changes introduced into Ottoman cosmographical manuscripts, including representations of holy geography, popular medicine, the dangers of seafaring, Egyptian antiquities, portraits of the Ottoman sultans and depictions of the Orthodox Christian and European.