Tulips, arabesques & turbans

The beauty, elegance and variety of Ottoman works of art are the subject of this book. The Ottoman Empire was the last of the great medieval Islamic dynasties. Its power reached from Persia to Vienna and encompassed the eastern Mediterranean. The great imperial city of Constantinople, the nexus between East and West, became its capital--renamed Istanbul--and the center of culture and artistic craftsmanship in the Moslem world. The geographic location and the intensification of trade exposed the empire to a flood of influences from as far as Venice and even China and gave the Ottoman court a taste for luxurious and valuable products, a taste which the Sultans cultivated and sustained by their patronage. In the Classical Ottoman period (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries), the period with which the book is primarily concerned, Ottoman art reached extraordinary heights of perfection.^ Though the court artists working in the nakkashane (imperial workshops) were liberal in their response to outside influences, they never failed to modify them and give their art a uniquely Ottoman quality. Several distinct styles, incorporating influences from all corners of the empire and beyond, emerge