OTTOMAN TURKEY, DATED JUMADA II AH 1014/ OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1605 AD

Sultan Ahmed I reigned from 1603 until his death in 1617. Notably he broke with the Ottoman tradition of royal fratricide by not ordering the execution of his brother Mustafa, and henceforth, Ottoman sultans would no longer systematically execute their brothers upon accession to the throne. His legacy is marked by the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, also known as the Blue Mosque, considered a masterpiece of Ottoman architecture.
The contents of this waqfnama relate to a firman also produced in the reign of Sultan Ahmed I which was recently sold in these Rooms, 28 October 2021, lot 77. Like that document, this manuscript deals with the revenues of the village of Qatana in Wadi al-‘Ajam in the area known as Darraya in the Damascus region. Here, it states that the whole revenue falls under the supervision of the Saray Aghasi. A third of these revenues had already been assigned to the Holy Places in Mecca and Medina. The remaining two-thirds were then purchased by Sultan Ahmed I for 1000 gold coins before the establishment of the waqf. The revenues from these two thirds were to be used for the upkeep of the tomb and dervish lodge attached to the shrine of al-Shaykh Hasan al-Qatanani al-Rifa’i al-Dimashqi. The manager (mütevelli) is to be appointed from his descendants and it is then stipulated that whatever is remaining should be sent to the Holy Places under the management of the Saray Kethüdasi Mustafa Agha bin ‘Abd al-Rahman.
It is authorized by the Chief Military Judge of Rumelia, later Chief Mufti, Yahya bin Zekeriyya, whose authorization and seal impression appear twice within the document. As is typical of such documents, it bears the witnesses of various men of the state, including the viziers Hizir Pasha, Da'ud Pasha, Husayn Pasha, Mustafa Pasha, and Hasan Pasha, as well as by Kamal al-Din Efendi, Chief Military Judge of Anatolia, and Süleyman Agha, the Head Chavush. The final part also states that it was drawn up in Istanbul in the presence of Sinan Pasha.
The illumination of the tughra on this document is closely comparable to the treatment of the tughra of the associated firman in which a palette of blue and gold predominates with highlights of red. The folio also bears a note in the hand of the Sultan above the tughra (hatt-i humayun), stating "This document belongs to me, act accordingly" (vaqifnameyi humayunumdur, mucibince amel oluna).
Only a handful of similar documents from the rule of Ahmed I have appeared on the market or are preserved in museum collections. Among them, two firmans of Ahmed I with similarly illuminated tughras to the present lot were sold by Isabelle Aufauvre SVV, Le Mans, 14 May 2011, formerly part of the collection of Baron Alexandre Forth-Rouen (1806-1886), one of which is now housed in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (MAO 2237). A monumental illuminated tughra of Ahmed I is housed in the Topkapi Palace Library (The Anatolian Civilisations III: Seljuk/Ottoman, Istanbul, 1983, p.227, no.E193). A similarly laid out waqfnama manuscript from the rule of Sultan Murad III was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 25 April 2018, lot 44.