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Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in its Illustrated Manuscripts focuses on a period of great artistic vitality in the region of Baghdad, a frontier area that was caught between the rival Ottoman and Safavid empires. In the period following the peace treaty of 1590, a corpus of more than thirty illustrated manuscripts and several single page paintings were produced. In this book Melis Taner presents a contextual study of the vibrant late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Baghdad art market, opening up further avenues of research on art production in provinces and border regions.
Price: $186.00
Pages: 210
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Publication Date:
26 November 2019
ISBN: 9789004412699
Format: Hardcover
"Caught in a Whirlwind describes the short decade of relative peace following the Treaty of Constantinople in 1590 between the warring Safavid Persians, led by Abbas the Great, and the Sunni Muslim Ottoman Empire, led by Sultan Ahmed I. Located in the disputed Mesopotamian and Southern Caucasus territory, Baghdad became the site of bitter conflict. Melis Taner observes some of the manuscripts created during this short decade of intense creativity. Like an academic detective, she considers what individual manuscripts reveal about the two empires’ heated rivalry, the creativity of individual artists, and the visual culture and patronage at the time. Taner’s mastery of her subject as well as the detail and artistry of the illuminations provide tremendous insight into a rare period of creativity under pressure."
Sophie Kazan in: Aramco World, March-April 2021.
"As a result of the method Taner chose, rather than focusing on each manuscript, she focuses on the context within which it was produced. Thus, her examination of the Manuscripts is based on key questions like the conditions that led to the flourishing of art in Baghdad, situating in the context of empire-wide social and urban transformations. She investigates issues like the types of works chosen for illustration as well as the question of whom they were meant to be. She insists upon making a point on the relations between provincial cultural capitals and the center of the Empire. More specifically, she sets the question of what distinguishes Baghdad from other frontier provinces while in each chapter, an exemplar Manuscript serves as a showcase. All these make Taner’s book a valuable tool for students of the sociology of art."
Stavros Nikolaidis in: Journal of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 30 (2021).
Sophie Kazan in: Aramco World, March-April 2021.
"As a result of the method Taner chose, rather than focusing on each manuscript, she focuses on the context within which it was produced. Thus, her examination of the Manuscripts is based on key questions like the conditions that led to the flourishing of art in Baghdad, situating in the context of empire-wide social and urban transformations. She investigates issues like the types of works chosen for illustration as well as the question of whom they were meant to be. She insists upon making a point on the relations between provincial cultural capitals and the center of the Empire. More specifically, she sets the question of what distinguishes Baghdad from other frontier provinces while in each chapter, an exemplar Manuscript serves as a showcase. All these make Taner’s book a valuable tool for students of the sociology of art."
Stavros Nikolaidis in: Journal of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 30 (2021).
Melis Taner, Ph.D. (2016), Harvard University, is Assistant Professor at Özyeğin University in Istanbul.