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Lot Essay
This large and heavily illuminated firman of Sultan Mahmud II concerns the acquisition of gold by agents (mübayaacılar) for the minting of new coins by the Imperial Treasury (darbhane-i amire). It is dated the 5th of Shawwal AH 1249 (15 February 1834). It is that very same year that the Ottoman Treasure took its first step towards de facto bimetallism by accepting gold and silver as legal tender, in an attempt to join global trends towards bimetallism and gold standard (Ali Coşkun Tunçer, Şevket Pamuk, Ottoman Empire: from 1830 to 1914, Bank of Greece, 2014, p.2)
The firman is signed by the illuminator as follows: dhahabahu hezargradi-zade al-sayyid ahmad ata 1250 (“Hezargradizade al-Seyyid Ahmed Ata illuminated it [in the year] 1250’).
This is the signature of the master illuminator Hezargradizade Ataullah who is attributed with inventing a specifically Ottoman rococo style to which he gave his name and which is known as Atâ yolu (‘the Way of Atâ’). See F. Çiçek Derman, “The Art of Tezhip (Guilding) in the Ottoman Centuries with its Styles and Artists”, in Kemal Çiçek (ed), The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation: Culture and arts, Vol. 4, Ankara, 2000, p. 686. Seyyid Ata is credited to have ‘Ottomanized’ the foreign rococo style by adding local decorative elements. As discussed in Derman, he had ‘a careful and patient way of working on shaded flower designs. [..as result] not so many works were created in this style’. A Qur’an illuminated by Seyyid Ata is in the Istanbul University Library (no.K.A. 54) and is dated to AH 1252, two years after our firman. At that date, he was the chief bookbinder of the Palace.
Firmans with a similar composition and decorated with tughras within sun-like medallions appear to be more common in the second part of the 19th century. See for instance a berat of Sultan ‘Abd al-Majid dated AH 1264/1848 AD or one of Sultan ‘Abd al-‘Aziz dated AH 1290/1873 AD (Yusuf Sarinai (dir.), Ottoman Fermans, Ankara, 2003, pp.354-357). Most firmans of the period of Sultan Mahmud II are in a distinct style which very much belong to the 18th and early 19th century tradition as shown in a firman dated AH 1249/1834 AD (Sarinai, 2003, pp.342-343). The importance of our firman cannot be understated for our knowledge of Ottoman illumination during the reign of Mahmud II. It adds a dated piece to the small corpus of works by this illuminator as well as being an impressive work of art.
The firman is signed by the illuminator as follows: dhahabahu hezargradi-zade al-sayyid ahmad ata 1250 (“Hezargradizade al-Seyyid Ahmed Ata illuminated it [in the year] 1250’).
This is the signature of the master illuminator Hezargradizade Ataullah who is attributed with inventing a specifically Ottoman rococo style to which he gave his name and which is known as Atâ yolu (‘the Way of Atâ’). See F. Çiçek Derman, “The Art of Tezhip (Guilding) in the Ottoman Centuries with its Styles and Artists”, in Kemal Çiçek (ed), The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation: Culture and arts, Vol. 4, Ankara, 2000, p. 686. Seyyid Ata is credited to have ‘Ottomanized’ the foreign rococo style by adding local decorative elements. As discussed in Derman, he had ‘a careful and patient way of working on shaded flower designs. [..as result] not so many works were created in this style’. A Qur’an illuminated by Seyyid Ata is in the Istanbul University Library (no.K.A. 54) and is dated to AH 1252, two years after our firman. At that date, he was the chief bookbinder of the Palace.
Firmans with a similar composition and decorated with tughras within sun-like medallions appear to be more common in the second part of the 19th century. See for instance a berat of Sultan ‘Abd al-Majid dated AH 1264/1848 AD or one of Sultan ‘Abd al-‘Aziz dated AH 1290/1873 AD (Yusuf Sarinai (dir.), Ottoman Fermans, Ankara, 2003, pp.354-357). Most firmans of the period of Sultan Mahmud II are in a distinct style which very much belong to the 18th and early 19th century tradition as shown in a firman dated AH 1249/1834 AD (Sarinai, 2003, pp.342-343). The importance of our firman cannot be understated for our knowledge of Ottoman illumination during the reign of Mahmud II. It adds a dated piece to the small corpus of works by this illuminator as well as being an impressive work of art.