Ottoman Art and Architecture

He began his academic career in 1992, and has been working at Bahçeşehir University's Faculty of Architecture and Design since 2011. Özer had the opportunity to visit and study the Ottoman cities and architectural monuments in the Balkan countries starting with Macedonia while on a one year scholarship in 1994. Özer has pubÜshed many articles, conference proceedings and books on the topic of Ottoman architecture and its legacy in the Balkans. Among the books he has published are 'Turkish Architecture in Skopje,' 'The Selçuk Hatun Mosque in Edirne' and 'Sadullah Koloğlu Primary School in Kırklareli-Pınarhisar.'
Özer is involved in many projects to preserve the cultural heritage in Turkey and has been a member of the Cultural Heritage Preservation Board for the past nine years.
Starting from the time he was a student, Özer has participated in archaeological excavations in Turkey. Since 2009, Özer has been Directing the archaeological excavation, restoration and conservation of the Edirne Palace.

Evolving from a patrician domus, the emperor's residence on the Palatine became the centre of the state administration. Elaborate ceremonial regulated access to the imperial family, creating a system of privilege which strengthened the centralised power. Constantine followed the same model in his new capital, under a Christian veneer. The divine attributes of the imperial office were refashioned, with the emperor as God's representative. The palace was an imitation of heaven. Following the loss of the empire in the West and the Near East, the Palace in Constantinople was preserved- subject to the transition from Late Antique to Mediaeval conditions - until the Fourth Crusade, attracting the attention of Visgothic, Lombard, Merovingian, Carolingian, Norman and Muslim rulers. Renaissance princes later drew inspiration for their residences directly from ancient ruins and Roman literature, but there was also contact with the Late Byzantine court. Finally, in the age of Absolutism the palace became again an instrument of power in vast centralised states, with renewed interest in Roman and Byzantine ceremonial. Spanning the broadest chronological and geographical limits of the Roman imperial tradition, from the Principate to the Ottoman empire, the papers in the volume treat various aspects of palace architecture, art and ceremonial.

The subject of this book is the understanding of the aesthetic message conveyed by the great wooden palaces..The great wooden Turkish dwellings that form the subject of this book have completely vanished, only their history and their memory remain,the visual memories consisting for the most part of engravings in the books and sketches in travel notes. The wooden palaces are presented in this book, not in the form of a sketch to be found in travel books, but rather as architectural drawings in a 1/100 scale, the reconstruction are interpretations, engravings and desseins of European artists.

A conference on the Islamic garden was held at M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1994. This volume collects eight papers from the conference and two additional papers especially written for the book, to further and act as a basis for the attention given by scholars these days to Islamic landscape architecture.

The lover who experienced this blossoming of eternal rose in himself understands that the gardens of this world are only a lovely pretext for the Beloved to veil and unveil Himself at the same time. The hidden treasure of his beauty needs the garden to become visible to those who are still bound to sensible and tangible beauty. The eye of love sees behind the roses and trees, in the shade of the slender cypress and in the modest genuflection of the little violet, in the limpid water of basins and in the gushing fountains faint remembrances of the garden of Paradise with its Tuba tree, kauthar and salsabil; a Paradise which is, in turn, only a sensual symbol of God's everlasting beauty.

In the course of my research," writes D. Fairchild Ruggles, "I devoured Arabic agricultural manuals from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries. I love gardening, and in these texts I was able to enter the minds of agriculturalists and botanists of a thousand years ago who likewise believed it was important and interesting to record all the known ways of propagating olive trees, the various uses of rosemary, and how best to fertilize a garden bed."Western admirers have long seen the Islamic garden as an earthly reflection of the paradise said to await the faithful. However, such simplification, Ruggles contends, denies the sophistication and diversity of the art form. Islamic Gardens and Landscapes immerses the reader in the world of the architects of the great gardens of the Islamic world, from medieval Morocco to contemporary India. Just as Islamic culture is historically dense, sophisticated, and complex, so too is the history of its built landscapes. Islamic gardens began from the practical need to organize the surrounding space of human civilization, tame nature, enhance the earth's yield, and create a legible map on which to distribute natural resources. Ruggles follows the evolution of these early farming efforts to their aristocratic apex in famous formal gardens of the Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in Agra. Whether in a humble city home or a royal courtyard, the garden has several defining characteristics, which Ruggles discusses. Most notable is an enclosed space divided into four equal parts surrounding a central design element. The traditional Islamic garden is inwardly focused, usually surrounded by buildings or in the form of a courtyard. Water provides a counterpoint to the portioned green sections. Ranging across poetry, court documents, agronomy manuals, and early garden representations, and richly illustrated with pictures and site plans, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes is a book of impressive scope sure to interest scholars and enthusiasts alike.

İstanbul’da “Dolmabahçe Bölgesi” olarak tanımlanan Fındıklı ile Beşiktaş arasındaki sahil şeridi ile Gümüşsuyu-Taksim-Teşvikiye-Maçka semtlerini de içine alan fiziksel ve kültürel topoğrafya; merkezinde önemli bir mimari anıt olan Dolmabahçe Sarayı ile birlikte İstanbul’un tarihsel, toplumsal ve kültürel hafızasını çok zengin olarak yansıtan bir mekân. Bu kitapta; çok katmanlı, karmaşık bir geçmişe sahip olan ve bu geçmişin izlerini barındıran bölgenin tüm özellikleri üçyüz yıllık tarihsel bir dönem kapsamında, çeşitli disiplin ve meslek alanlarından gelen uzman ve akademisyenlerin kaleme aldıkları ve zengin görsel malzemeyle de desteklenen makaleleri yeralıyor. Bölgenin üzerinde oluşan mekânın hafızasını birbirini tamamlar biçimde yansıtan bu makaleler, Dolmabahçe bölgesini temel alarak İstanbul ve Türkiye’nin modernlik deneyimlerini de tartışıyor.

17. yüzyılda Fransız seyyah J. B. Tavernier, Topkapı Sarayını tasvir ederken, hareme ilişkin bilgi vermesinin mümkün olmadığını, zira hareme girmenin neredeyse imkânsız olduğunu söyler. Tavernier'in, fazla görünmediklerini söylediği hareme mensup kadınların etkinlikleri, perde arkasından da olsa hiç küçümsenemeyecek ölçüdeydi ve her biri birer başrol oyuncusuydu. 17. yüzyılda gelişen olayların ve şartların tanıdığı olanaklar ölçüsünde konumları yükselen valide sultanlar her alanda etkinliklerini artırdı. Artık "saray" ve özellikle "harem" siyaset oyununun sahnelendiği yerdi. Bu oyunda sultan başrolden düşmüş, yerini başkaları almıştı. 16. yüzyılın ikinci yarısından itibaren Topkapı Sarayı Haremi ön plana çıkmaya başladı. Özellikle valide sultanların artan siyasi gücünün yanında darüssaade ağalarının siyasi güce kavuşmaları da bunda önemli bir rol oynadı. Ancak Harem'in asıl etkin bir rol oynamaya başlaması, 17. yüzyılın başında şehzadelerin sancaklara gönderilmeyip yerine haremde yaşamaya başlamasıyla oldu. Bu yeni durumla birlikte Osmanlı hanedanı içinde süregelen iktidar oyununun sahnelendiği yer harem oldu. Yazar Murat Kocaaslan, Topkapı Sarayı haremini ele aldığı bu çalışmasında, Osmanlı hanedanı üyelerinin yaşadığı haremin mimari örgütlenmesini ve kadınların mimariye olası etkilerini, özellikle IV. Mehmed'in saltanat dönemi çerçevesinde tartışıyor. Bununla birlikte haremdeki mimari örgütlenmenin beraberinde getirdiği "bilinçli" veya "bilinçsiz" olarak oluşturulan sınırlara dikkat çekiyor. Osmanlı hanedan üyelerinin yaşadığı haremde mimari şekillenmenin doğrudan statüyle ilgili olduğunu, bu örgütlenme içinde haremde yaşayan her bir bireyin sınırlarının kesin olarak çizildiğini ve bu sınırların aşılmasına izin verilmediğini ileri sürüyor. Haremdeki bu sınırların mimariye bire bir uygulandığını ortaya koyuyor. Bu anlamda haremdeki mimari örgütlenmenin sarayın genel mimari örgütlenmesiyle de örtüştüğünü belirtiyor. Dr. Murat Kocaaslan, halen Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sanat Tarihi Bölümünde çalışıyor.

This catalog covers the extraordinary U.S. exhibition of treasures from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, a collection of objects representing the artistic mastery, cultural diversity, and unparalleled wealth of the Ottoman Empire at its zenith. With its richly detailed color photographs and its four highly readable historical essays, this is a welcome opportunity to experience the achievements of a great civilization.

Today the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul seems a haphazard aggregate of modest buildings no longer capable of conveying imperial power. Yet it is one of the most celebrated of all Islamic palaces. Gulru Necipoglu brings together largely unpublished sources, both written and visual, along with information derived from the architectural remains to uncover the processes through which the meaning of the palace was once produced. She relocates the Topkapi in its historical context, a context that included not only the circumstances of its patronage, but the complex interaction of cultural practices, ideologies, and social codes of recognition

The scant number of drawings and the absence of any theoretical treatises on the architecture of the pre-Islamic world make the late fifteenth-century Timurid pattern scroll in the Topkapi Palace Museum Library an exceedingly valuable source of information. In the course of her analysis of the scroll, Necipoglu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her comparison of the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art makes this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The text also has far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. The book reproduces the entire scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, along with illustrations showing the underlying geometries from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohahhad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the mugarnas and demonstrates how one of the scroll's patterns could be used to design a three-dimensional vault.