The Illustrated Oğuznāme at the Beginning of Yazıcızâde Âlî’s Tevârîh-i Âl-i Selçûk (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Ms. Or. Quart. 1823)

Abstract

This study focuses on the presentation of the sole illustrated copy of the work Tevârîh-i Âl-i Selçûk by the 15th-century historian Yazıcızâde Âlî, dedicated to Murad II, held in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Ms. Or. Quart. 1823), and on the relationship between the miniatures it contains and the book’s ideological concept. Drawing on the translations of Ibn Bîbî’s el-Evâmirü’l-ʿAlâʾiyye fi’l-umûri’l-ʿAlâʾiyye and Râvendî’s (d. 1207) Râhatü’s-sudûr ve âyetü’s-sürûr, Yazıcızâde Âlî produced a Seljuk history. By adding an Oğuznâme at the beginning of his work and a brief account of the founding of the Ottomans at the end, he produced a rare work on Turkish history. Of the eight copies of the work that have survived to the present day, the two double-leaf miniatures in the Berlin copy are found in the Oğuznâme at the beginning of the book. Two miniature scenes from the Oğuznâme, which recounts the origins, tribes and struggles of the Oğuz Turks in fluent Turkish, depict the victory celebrations following Oğuz Khan’s battles. The ceremonial narrative, which contains iconographic details reflecting the Turkic-Mongol tradition, is reminiscent of scenes on similar themes found in the illustrated copies of the Câmiü’t-Tevârih. Whilst the depictions of nature, the figures’ imagery and their attire indicate a connection with illustrated books produced in Edirne during the second half of the 15th century, this group of works differs from them in places. The Berlin manuscript contains no record of the work’s date of composition. However, the process by which the work came into being, the illustration programme and the style of the miniatures suggest that it was produced in the first half of the 15th century, during the lifetime of Murad II. This is because the purpose for which the work was commissioned, its place of production, its composition, and the style and iconography of the miniatures are linked to the cultural evolution of the Ottomans following the “Battle of Ankara”. The political crisis that followed the defeat at the hands of the Timurids gave rise to a problem of legitimacy, and the Ottomans sought ways to overcome this crisis. During this period, the Ottomans turned to cultural activities to secure their political legitimacy. The work Tevârîh-i Âl-i Selçûk was dedicated to linking the legitimacy of the Ottomans to the Seljuks through succession, and to the Kayı tribe in terms of lineage and origin. The structure of the work was shaped accordingly. The Illustrated Oğuzname (Resimli Oğuznâme) was designed as the visually richest first twenty pages of the work, as a result of this quest by the Ottomans. The work’s bold political theses regarding the founding of the Ottoman Empire, along with its content unfound in any other source on Turkish cultural history have made it a popular work. However, whilst this work provides material for numerous fields such as history, ethnography and literature, it has not been the subject of study from the perspective of art history. In this study, the organisation of the content based on the work’s political thesis has been evaluated, and the relationship between the miniatures and this thesis has been discussed.