Ottoman Sultans and Art: 6 Fields from Architecture to Music

The Ottoman sultans left their mark not only through campaigns and conquests but also through the mosques they built and the poets, calligraphers and painters they patronized. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, most of the sultans were poets; some were accomplished composers or students of calligraphy. In this article we explore the relationship between the Ottoman sultans and art, from architecture to literature, through examples.

Quick Summary

The foundations of the Süleymaniye were laid in 1550, and the mosque opened for worship in 1557.
Mimar Sinan called the Süleymaniye “my journeyman work”; the Selimiye in Edirne is considered his greatest work.
Mehmed the Conqueror wrote poetry under the pen name “Avni”, Bayezid II as “Adli” and Suleiman the Magnificent as “Muhibbi”.
Bayezid II encouraged his teacher Şeyh Hamdullah to seek a new calligraphic style.
The office of şehnameci (court poet-historian) was created around 1550 under Suleiman.
Selim III was both a poet with the pen name “İlhami” and a composer.

Architecture and complexes
Mimar Sinan
The poet sultans
The art of calligraphy
The nakkaşhane and miniature painting
Music
Cultural heritage
Frequently asked questions

How Did the Ottoman Sultans Support Architecture?

The sultans’ most visible contribution to art was the complexes that bore their names. These groups of buildings, made up of a mosque, a madrasa, an imaret, a hospital and a bathhouse, were kept alive by waqf revenues. In this way a complex became at once a center of worship, education and social aid. We explained how this system worked in our article on the waqf system.

The tradition of patronage began in the beylik period. According to the encyclopedia, the first madrasa was the one Orhan Gazi founded in İznik in 1331. Later sultans adorned Bursa, Edirne and Istanbul with great complexes.

The Conqueror’s Palace and Complex

After the conquest of Istanbul, Mehmed the Conqueror gave the city a new center together with a new palace. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, construction of the New Palace, known today as Topkapı, probably began in 1465. The inscription over the Imperial Gate (Bab-ı Hümayun) bears the date 1478. The Sahn-ı Seman madrasas, completed in 1470 within the Fatih Complex, long remained among the highest-ranking Ottoman madrasas.

We described these levels of the madrasas in our article on the education system.

The Süleymaniye: A Sultan’s Signature

According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the foundations of the Süleymaniye were laid in 1550 at a ceremony attended by Suleiman the Magnificent himself. 13 June 1550 is accepted as the day the foundations were laid. The first foundation stone was laid by Shaykh al-Islam Ebussuud Efendi. The mosque opened for worship seven years later, on Friday, 15 October 1557.

According to the encyclopedia, the main dome had been closed a few months before the opening, on 16 August 1557. When the sultan died on the Szigetvár campaign in 1566, Mimar Sinan also built his tomb. We discussed why Suleiman was remembered as “the Magnificent” in a separate article.

Mimar Sinan and Court Architecture

According to the encyclopedia, during the Moldavian campaign of 1538 Sinan built a bridge over the Prut for the army. Lutfi Pasha appreciated his work and appointed him chief architect, a post left vacant by the death of Acem Ali in 1537. Sinan is known to have lived for nearly a hundred years, and some handbooks attribute around 350 works to him.

The master described the Süleymaniye as “my journeyman work”. The Selimiye Mosque he built in Edirne for Selim II, on the other hand, is cited as his greatest work. According to the encyclopedia, some of the solutions he developed in these two mosques reached, through his students, as far as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque and the New Mosque in Eminönü.

You can find the general lines of the classical style in our article on the features of Ottoman art and architecture.

The Poet Sultans of the Ottoman Empire

According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, most of the Ottoman sultans were poets. Mehmed the Conqueror wrote poems under the pen name “Avni”, and the encyclopedia highlights his fluent style and clear expression. Bayezid II used the pen name “Adli”; his small divan, made up mostly of ghazals, has been published.

The divan of Selim I, containing his Persian poems, has also been published. Suleiman the Magnificent left a divan under the pen name “Muhibbi”; he also used the pen names “Muhib” and “Meftuni”. The sources note that he showed esteem to scholars and poets and patronized them. Murad III, too, wrote religious and mystical poems under the pen name “Muradi”.

Şehnamecis: The Palace’s Poet-Historians

According to the encyclopedia, the office of şehnameci was created under Suleiman the Magnificent around 1550. The şehnameci, a permanent salaried official, recounted the events of the period in literary language. The first to be appointed was the poet Arifi Fethullah Çelebi. Five authors held the office within fifty years, and permanent appointments came to an end after 1601.

The third şehnameci, Seyyid Lokman, held the office from 1569 to 1595. According to the encyclopedia, in 1589 the number of artists, calligraphers and illuminators working on the second volume of the Hünername reached sixty-nine. These years coincide with the reign of Murad III, which the encyclopedia regards as the peak of the classical form of Ottoman culture.

The roots of this tradition went back further. In the reigns of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II, works were written that told of the sultans’ heroic deeds in Persian masnavis. Kaşifi’s Gazaname-i Rum and Meali’s Hünkarname are among the first examples. We examined Mehmed the Conqueror’s interest in history and heroic narratives in our article on Alexander the Great and the sultans.

The Art of Calligraphy and Şeyh Hamdullah

According to the encyclopedia, Bayezid II, who understood music and was well versed in Turkish, Arabic and Persian literature, made Şeyh Hamdullah his calligraphy teacher and received a diploma (icazet) from him. The sultan took seven pieces of writing by Yaqut al-Mustasimi out of the treasury and gave them to his teacher, advising him to find a new path different from this style.

According to the encyclopedia, the Şeyh Hamdullah school born of this encouragement became the longest-lived of all the schools of calligraphy. The letter forms that became classic were carried on by the masters who came after him. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam presents Şeyh Hamdullah as the founder of the Ottoman school of calligraphy. For another symbol of palace writing, see our article on the meaning of the tughra.

The Nakkaşhane and Miniature Painting

Inside Topkapı Palace and nearby there were nakkaşhanes, the court ateliers that carried out the palace’s artistic work. According to the encyclopedia, painters, decorative painters, illuminators, bookbinders, gem cutters and glassmakers worked there. Some of the workshops of the ehl-i hiref-i hassa, the court artisans attached to the palace organization, were in the first courtyard of the palace.

Ottoman sultans and art: oil painting of statesmen and servants seated at a table in a palace hall

The palace was not closed to Western artists either. According to the encyclopedia, Mehmed the Conqueror had been asking for a painter from Italy since 1461 to paint his portrait. In the end the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini came and stayed in Istanbul between September 1479 and January 1481. Bellini also decorated the walls of the new palace with frescoes in the Renaissance style.

The şehnames commissioned for the sultan were adorned with many miniatures. According to the encyclopedia, these works contributed greatly to the development of miniature painting, which reached its peak under Murad III. Palace painters such as Nakkaş Osman and Nakkaş Hasan worked closely with the şehnamecis. The first volume of the Hünername, completed in 1584, contains forty-five miniatures, and the second, finished in 1588, sixty-five.

Music: Selim III, the Composer Sultan

According to the encyclopedia, Selim III was a poet who left a substantial divan under the pen name “İlhami”. He is known to have been a Mevlevi and to have patronized Şeyh Galib, the famous poet of the age. He composed works of high artistic value and himself rated his musicianship above his poetry. It was also he who devised and arranged the makam Suzidilara.

We described Selim III’s reforms known as the Nizam-ı Cedid in our article on the sultans and reform movements. The meeting of art and politics in the same sultan shows how wide a field palace culture covered.

The Cultural Heritage of Ottoman Art

The heritage left by this patronage is still visible today. Complexes such as the Süleymaniye and the Selimiye define the skylines of Istanbul and Edirne. The sultans’ divans and illustrated şehnames are preserved in libraries, and the traces of the Şeyh Hamdullah school live on in calligraphy.

The Tulip Era at the beginning of the 18th century is also remembered as a period in which a culture of art and entertainment came to the fore around the palace. You can also watch the video below on the subject.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Ottoman sultans were poets?

According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, most of the sultans were poets. Mehmed the Conqueror used the pen name “Avni”, Bayezid II “Adli”, Suleiman the Magnificent “Muhibbi”, Murad III “Muradi” and Selim III “İlhami”.

When was the Süleymaniye Mosque built?

Its foundations were laid in 1550, and the mosque opened for worship on 15 October 1557.

What is Mimar Sinan’s greatest work?

According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, it is the Selimiye Mosque he built in Edirne for Selim II.

Who was the şehnameci?

He was a salaried court historian who wrote about events in literary language; the office was created under Suleiman around 1550.

Who founded the Ottoman school of calligraphy?

The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam presents Şeyh Hamdullah, the teacher of Bayezid II, as the founder of this school.

Conclusion

The story of the Ottoman sultans and art shows that the sultans were both patrons and practitioners of the arts. Complexes such as the Süleymaniye and the Selimiye, the divans of the poet sultans, Şeyh Hamdullah’s school of calligraphy and the compositions of Selim III are different faces of this patronage. The palace workshops and the şehnamecis, meanwhile, allowed these arts to develop within an institutional order. This accumulated heritage is among the most lasting traces of Ottoman civilization to have reached our day.