'ART & SOUL
Treasures of the Topkapi

The Topkapi Sarai in Istanbul, a series of museums, is devoted to displays which range from great archaeological finds and eastern antiquities to imperial weapons and costumes, writes B. N. Goswamy

Call it by any name — Byzantium, as the Greeks named it, Constantinople because of its association with the emperor Constantine, Qustantuniya as in the Arabic world, or Takht-i Rum according to the Persians — Istanbul remains one of the most romantic cities of the world: Turkey’s capital and cultural heart, straddling the Bosphorus, studded with countless domes and minarets, home to incredible architectural sites.

Here, in this sprawling city redolent of mystery and power, as the guide-books say, ‘you can tramp the streets where crusaders and janissaries once marched; admire mosques that are the most sublime architectural expressions of Islamic piety; peer into the sultan’s harem; and hunt for bargains in the Grand Bazaar’.

But here also lie untold treasures inside one of the most famous palace-complexes of the world: the Topkapi Sarai, named after what was once the ‘Cannon Portal’. The first palace to be built by the victorious Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, after the conquest of the city in 1453, it had to be a complex whose grandeur and magnificence were in accordance with the Sultan’s imperial ambitions as reflected in the title Ruler of the Two Seas and the Two Continents that he assumed.

But it was not a single monumental structure that was conceived: instead, it consisted of a host of buildings and gardens and pavilions and mosques that spread right to the tip of the historical peninsula.

Changes kept taking place inside the complex — destruction by fire and earthquakes and demolitions took their toll — but it continued to serve as the residence of the great Sultans of Turkey for nearly 400 years: right till the times of Sultan Abdul Mejid who built another palace in the middle of the 19th century and shifted there.

It has been estimated that at one time as many as 8,000 to 10,000 people lived inside the palace, a large number of them guards that kept a watch over the Sultan and his extended family.

In 1924, the Topkapi was converted into a series of museums: a complex network devoted to an astonishing range of displays: from great archaeological finds and near eastern antiquities to Imperial weapons and costumes. Inside the Topkapi complex also is the harem, residence of royal ladies and concubines, a vast labyrinth of rooms and corridors that were once cloaked in the veil of secrecy, firmly away from the eyes of the outside world.

But, of a different order, and guarded now for different reasons, here also is one of the most visited areas of the complex: the Chamber of the Sacred Relics. In it are kept some of the holiest objects of the Islamic world: the relics of the Prophet Mohammed, brought by the Turkish Sultan, Selim I, upon the conquest of Egypt in 1517.

Among them are the Prophet’s bamboo bow, the banner that he carried to the battlefield, the swords of the first four Caliphs and other religious leaders. There are cases and caskets: in one is what is reputed to be the oldest existing Koran, written on deer skin; in other cases have been kept the mantle of the prophet, a letter written in his own hand, soil from his grave, hair from his beard. One can imagine the hush that falls over the chamber as visitors file past the sacred objects.

Far less spectacular, but priceless and full of the greatest fascination — for once again history hovers in the air above it — is the museum’s collection of illustrated manuscripts and albums, or muraqqas as they are referred to in the Arabic-Turkic world.

Works produced in Turkey itself, by Turkish painters — one’s mind goes back here to My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk’s magical novel of murder and art in 16th century Istanbul — is not all that there is in these collections. There are rarities from all over the Islamic world, and beyond: Mongol and Timurid and Uzbek works, works from Baghdad and Herat, Tabriz and Shiraz, north Africa and India, Central Asia and China and Japan — wonderful treatises on physics, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, botany, and chemistry, many of them illustrated; books of fables and chronicles of kings; enigmatic, dream-like drawings by Siyah Qalam, among the greatest works in the history of painting; and so on. As many as 14,000 manuscripts are in the collections of the Topkapi; 18,000 miniatures; 45 albums, the last-mentioned bearing names like the Fatih, the Sarai, the Istanbul.

Much work on these has been done; but evidently so much more needs to be done yet. Scholars from all over the world are drawn to the collections, and so many have been working for years.

All great collections hold some surprises, to be sure. The Japanese team which was documenting the Topkapi collections till a few years back found four of the albums of quite uncommon interest, for in them they saw reflected the exciting meeting of eastern and western Asia.

Paintings and drawings from far eastern lands were here, as were calligraphic works, and pounced designs that served as patterns. How they entered the Turkish collections, whether as royal gifts, or through acquisition, or as booty, is not of great consequence, but the fact that they are still there, is: landscapes and procession scenes, Buddhist-Taoist images and portraits of individuals, dragons and phoenixes and bird studies. What is more, there are works in the collection that seem to be copies of Chinese works by Turkish artists: evidence if any were needed of a thirst for learning, for the expansion of one’s horizons.

Among the most fascinating of works in these albums are studies of falcons: acknowledged symbols of sovereignty, mementos of royal favours. In one of his works, the distinguished Japanese scholar, Toh Sugimura, has discussed several of these studies, among them that of a golden eagle. For all the damage and the abrading it has suffered over centuries, the image still takes one’s breath away.

The uqab-i- talai, as it is called in Persian, is a magnificent bird: majestic in its bearing, splashes of white on its wings and tail, its crest adorned in a bright red colour. In the painting, the bird, its head turned imperiously to one side, is seen perching on a horizontal bar lacquered in red and equipped with metal rings to which it is tied with a greenish string, the green leash making luxurious twists and turns. A little like the twists and turns that art sometimes makes across vast skies and uncharted spaces.

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