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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Mustafa Ali’s epic deeds of artists a study on the earliest Ottoman text about the calligraphers and painters of the Islamic world

Akin, Esra
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1181502871

Abstract Details

2007, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History of Art.
In contrast to scholars of Western art who can make use of numerous handbooks on aesthetics and technical manuals such as those of Vitruvius, Alberti or Palladio, scholars of Islamic art have available to them only a limited number of pre-nineteenth century vernacular sources in translation. Of these, perhaps the three most important are The Rose-garden of Art (c. 1606), a treatise on calligraphers and painters by the Safavid scholar Qadi Ahmed, the preface (1544) by the court painter Dost Muhammad to an album of calligraphy and painting prepared for the Safavid prince Bahram Mirza, and an Ottoman text, Epic Deeds of Artists (1587), a historical and biographical study of calligraphers and painters by the Ottoman scholar-bureaucrat Âli. For historians of Islamic art, these three texts are key sources for an understanding of not only the artistic techniques and principles used by the artists of the age, but also the art-historical, social and cultural contexts that produced the great artists of the Ottoman, Turkmen, Timurid and Safavid periods. Based on the content and structure of the text, I am arguing in my dissertation that inasmuch as it was a guide to artists, Âli’s treatise was also an intellectual’s response to the changing conditions in the art market. In fact, it was an attempt to bring to the ruling Sultan’s attention the perceived corruption and decadence that was prevailing in his Empire. Whereas Dost Muhammad’s and Qadi Ahmed’s works have both received scholarly attention in the form of published translations with critical apparatus (by Harvard University and by the Smithsonian Institution respectively), studies on Âli’s work are limited to a single 1982 abridged transcription in modern Turkish. In an attempt to make accessible this critically important text, therefore, the purpose of my dissertation is twofold: to explore the text’s socio-historical context and to provide an annotated English translation.
HOWARD CRANE (Advisor)
322 p.
Art History
calligraphers and painters of the Islamic world

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Akin, E. (2007). Mustafa Ali’s epic deeds of artists a study on the earliest Ottoman text about the calligraphers and painters of the Islamic world [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1181502871

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Akin, Esra. Mustafa Ali’s epic deeds of artists a study on the earliest Ottoman text about the calligraphers and painters of the Islamic world. 2007. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1181502871.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Akin, Esra. "Mustafa Ali’s epic deeds of artists a study on the earliest Ottoman text about the calligraphers and painters of the Islamic world." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1181502871

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1181502871
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.