The miniature is an art that fits a garden, a council or an operating room onto a page the size of a palm, and in doing so it attends not to shadow and depth but to the thing being told. In Turkish the craft is called tasvir, and its maker a nakkaş or musavvir. The painter is the silent partner of the book: he fills with colour the place the word leaves open. Amasya enters this story earlier than one might expect. Its princely palace was an assembly where books were commissioned, and its hospital was the place where an illustrated medical book was written.

The pages below follow these two threads together: on one side the illustrated manuscripts produced in Amasya in the early fifteenth century and the artists drawn to the princes' palaces, on the other Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin's Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye of 1465. On both subjects the sources do not say everything with certainty, and where the record falls silent it has to be said so openly.

What a Miniature Is and How to Read One

The word miniature comes from the decoration made with red-orange minium paint around the initial letter at the opening of a section in medieval European manuscripts. In time, under the influence of the Latin "minor", small, it took on the meaning of "small picture". In Islamic art the same work is called tasvir, and its maker a musavvir or nakkaş. Made to explain a text on the pages of a book, or as single leaves to be gathered in albums, these pictures are small-format works in watercolour and gold and silver gilding.

A miniature does not create a sense of depth through play of light and shadow. For that reason it does not show a world seen through a window; it shows a world rebuilt on the surface of the page. Importance is conveyed by size, and distance not by shrinking an object but by placing it higher on the page. Early examples of Ottoman miniature show this approach clearly. In a ruler scene in the Külliyât-ı Kâtibî the figures are kept large, and the sultan sits cross-legged in the middle of the picture so as to draw more attention than the others (Sever, 2020).

The Dilsûznâme, the Külliyât-ı Kâtibî and the Venice copy of Ahmedî's Iskendernâme, all produced in Edirne in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, are counted among the works that represent the early Ottoman miniature style. It has been established that in illustrating them a group of artists believed to have come from Shiraz, the Timurid city, to Edirne after 1440 worked together with Turkish-born painters. The two copies of the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye prepared in Amasya in 1465 are also mentioned among the important works of the same period. In other words, in this early age of Ottoman miniature, Amasya stands in a place where it can be named beside the capital, Edirne.

Did Ottoman Painting Begin in Amasya?

The article on the nakkaş speaks plainly on this point: among the Ottomans, painting began first in Amasya and Bursa and then developed in the Edirne Palace. The article does not cite a separate document for this claim; even so, the early illustrated manuscripts we have do not contradict the framework. The same article also tells us that some painters believed to have come from Shiraz to Edirne worked alongside local masters, and that after the conquest of Istanbul names such as Sinan Bey, who painted the portraits of Mehmed the Conqueror, Şiblîzâde Ahmed of Bursa and Abdullah Nakkaş came to the fore.

In terms of written traces, Amasya has one concrete first. An illustrated copy of Ahmedî's Iskendernâme was prepared in Amasya in 819 (1416). This copy is today in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Turc 309). Sever's article states that the copy was prepared in Amasya during the princehood of Murad II. The period is the one in which the interregnum years that followed the Battle of Ankara were ending and the Ottoman sanjaks were returning to order; commissioning a book in Amasya shows that a court life had been established around the prince.

Ahmedî (Tâcüddin İbrâhim b. Hızır) was born in 1334-35. He lived in Egypt, at the Germiyan court and in the circles of the Aydınoğulları and the Ottomans, and near the end of his life, at about eighty, he was in Amasya. The year of his death is given variously in the sources as 1413 and 1416. The Iskendernâme is an original mesnevi of 8,754 couplets; it was first begun for the Germiyanid Süleyman Shah and was then presented to Emir Süleyman, the eldest son of Bayezid the Thunderbolt.

The 1416 copy has a peculiar feature: of its 21 pictures only three were made for this book. The others were cut from other manuscripts and pasted in, and the gaps between them were filled with large vegetal ornaments or plain landscapes. A group of the pictures is cited as the first pictures relating to Ottoman history. The relevant section of the Büyük İstanbul Tarihi takes this as a sign of interest in the production of illustrated manuscripts in Amasya, "the most favoured princely sanjak", as early as 1416. Yet pictures that were cut and pasted leave open the question of whether Amasya then had a painters' workshop of its own; on this point the evidence is not enough to reach a conclusion.

Book and Pen in the City of Princes

Among the sanjak governors of Amasya were Prince Alâeddin, appointed at the age of fifteen in 1440 (he died in 1443 on his way back from the Karaman campaign), Mehmed the Conqueror's son Bayezid in 1454, and later Bayezid's son Ahmed and his son Murad. Prince Bayezid was appointed to the sanjak at the age of seven and stayed there for twenty-seven years, until 1481. So long a stay suggests that a princely palace was not merely an administrative centre but worked as a small court of its own, with its own tutor, secretary, calligrapher and poet.

During his governorship Bayezid looked after the artists around him and placed the means of the state at their disposal. He took experienced statesmen such as Çandarlı İbrahim and Yahya Pasha as his lalas, learned writing from the Amasya calligraphy master Şeyh Hamdullah and received an icazetname, a certificate of mastery, from the young calligrapher. When he left Amasya in 1481 to take the throne, he summoned his teacher with his family to Istanbul. This story shows that the circle of pen and book around the Amasya palace was not made up of painting alone. Bayezid's son Prince Ahmed likewise opened his palace to poets and scholars, and the Amasya woman poet Mihrî Hatun presented most of her odes to him.

Brushes from Tabriz to Amasya

The section in the Büyük İstanbul Tarihi writes that the scribe and painter Derviş Mahmud b. Abdullah, from the Tabriz workshop of the Akkoyunlu Sultan Yakub (1478-1490), is thought to have come to Amasya during the princehood of Bayezid II and, when Bayezid became sultan, to the Istanbul palace (relying on the work of Yoltar-Yıldırım). This "is thought" matters. There is no definite decree or register in hand; there is an inference, and the text presents it as such.

Another trace is the painter Şahkulu. Âşık Çelebi writes that during the reign of Bayezid II Şahkulu came from Tabriz to Amasya and stayed in the palace of Prince Ahmed, and that after the prince's death he came to Istanbul. According to a document in the Ottoman Archives, after Selim the Grim's victory over Shah Ismail, on 27 Safer 921 (12 April 1515), the distinguished scholars and artists of Tabriz were sent to Istanbul by way of Amasya, and Şahkulu's name appears in this list. A muster register of Rebîülâhir 932 (January-February 1526) lists twenty-nine painters and twelve apprentices among the palace painters, with masters such as Şahkulu, Melek Ahmed, Hasan b. Mehmed and Hasan b. Abdülcelîl at the head. It is also reported that Süleyman the Magnificent assigned Şahkulu a workshop of his own and from time to time visited him and watched him work. The details of these subjects are given in our articles on the painters and the nakkaşhane.

A Translation, a Misunderstanding

The name Amasyalı İbrahim is often cited as a "painter". Yet the information in the Büyük İstanbul Tarihi is different: Muhammed Assar's Persian Mihr ü Müşterî was probably translated into Turkish for Bayezid II in 892 (1487) by Amasyalı İbrahim. That is, what is documented is a translation, not an illustration. A Persian copy of the work, illustrated in the Akkoyunlu workshops at Shiraz on 18 Ramazan 887 (31 October 1482), was also dedicated to Bayezid II. Where the translation was made is not stated in this source.

A Physician's Book: the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye

Amasya's most important contribution to the history of miniature is the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye, written in 1465 (870) by the physician Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, commonly spelled Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye. This book is cited as one of the first works in the history of medicine to show surgical procedures through the technique of miniature, and it is written in plain Turkish. Many studies have been made of it from the viewpoints of the history of medicine, Turkish language and the art of painting, yet for a long time its pictures were treated chiefly as appendices carrying medical information. The 2020 study by Ertunç and Mazı is one of the works that treat the pictures in the first chapter of the Paris copy from an artistic point of view.

The Author: from a Family of Physicians

Because Şerefeddin states that he was eighty-three in 1465 and eighty-five in 1468, he is reckoned to have been born around 1386; the date of birth appears in the sources with different accounts, but 1386 is cited as the most widely accepted. He belongs to a well-known family of physicians whose name lives on in the quarter of Amasya now called Sabuncuoğlu (Hacı İlyas). Hacı İlyas Çelebi, chief physician of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed, was his grandfather; in another study the same man is mentioned as one of the private physicians of Mehmed Çelebi during his governorship of Amasya. The family did not end with Şerefeddin. His son Sabuncuoğlu İbrahim is reported to have treated Prince Murad, the son of Selim the Grim who fled to Iran, and Hekim Lütfullah is likewise counted as a member of the same family.

Şerefeddin learned medicine at the Amasya Dârüşşifâ, probably from Burhâneddin Ahmed en-Nahcuvânî, by the master-apprentice method; he began the profession at seventeen and worked there for fourteen years. There is no certain information on whether he studied at a madrasa. It is said that he developed himself by reading the classical medical books and through observation and experience, and that he mentions with respect Turkish physicians such as Hacı Paşa and Akşemseddin, as well as Hippocrates and Galen. From the phrase in the Mücerrebnâme, "ben bu nüshaı kitab-ı yunanîden istihrac itdüm" (I extracted this copy from a Greek book), it has also been thought that he knew Greek. Among his students are counted Gıyâs b. Muhammed İsfahânî, who dedicated the Mir'âtü's-sıhha to Bayezid II, and Muhyiddin Mehî.

Later he spent some time in Kastamonu, in the circle of the Candarid İsfendiyar Bey. When he had written his book he went to Istanbul and presented it to Mehmed the Conqueror, and on the way back he stopped at Bolu, Gerede and Tosya (this rests on a statement in the Mücerrebnâme). There are also researchers who note that there is no certain information on whether this presentation took place (Sever, 2020). The Paris copy is cited as the one prepared to win the Conqueror's favour and to be offered to him.

Three works of his are known, and in addition four autographs. The Akrâbâzîn translation contains medicinal formulas. The Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye is the surgical book. The Mücerrebnâme was written in 1468 at the request of the circle of physicians in Amasya; in seventeen chapters it describes the preparation and use of various medicines tried on animals, people and the author himself, and is regarded as the first monograph in which a physician presents medicines and treatment methods of his own discovery. Rusçuklu Hakkı first introduced the book in the newspaper İkdam in 1920. A work called Müfîd (Nazmü't-teshîl) was for a time attributed to him and was later found to belong to his student Muhyiddin Mehî.

According to what the TDV reports, the Akrâbâzîn translation was made in 1444 at the request of Prince Bayezid during his second governorship of Amasya. But since Bayezid was appointed to Amasya at the age of seven in 1454, how these dates reconcile has not been verified. The year of Şerefeddin's death is also unknown; he is accepted to have died after the Mücerrebnâme, that is, after 1468. The location of his grave is not known.

His name appears about one hundred and twenty-four years after his death, in the Alâim-i Cerrâhîn of the surgeon İbrâhim b. Abdullah, dated 1505. There İbrâhim names Sabuncuoğlu while giving the formula, taken from the Mücerrebnâme, of a suppository used in women's diseases. Among the reasons he was not widely known are counted his living in Amasya, his confining his interest to the medical sciences, and his writing his works in Turkish rather than in Arabic and Persian, the scientific languages of the day.

What the Book Tells

The book largely renders into Turkish the thirtieth section, the surgical part, of the Kitâb al-Taṣrîf of the Andalusian Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī (d. 404/1013). It differs from it in containing two additional chapters and miniatures of certain instruments and patient treatments. Ertunç and Mazı go further: although the order of the Cerrâhiyye parallels the surgical section of Zahrāwī, it is not a one-to-one translation; the sections on temriye, the cauterization of cold sores and the akrâbâzîn come from Sabuncuoğlu's own experience. Zahrāwī gives only pictures of the instruments, whereas Sabuncuoğlu adds miniatures showing how the instruments are used. Here the picture ceases to be ornament and becomes part of the instruction.

It consists of three babs, or books. The first describes the treatment of diseases by cauterization, the second operations and surgical instruments, and the third the treatment of fractures and dislocations. The numbers of chapters and miniatures vary somewhat by source. For the second bab the TDV gives 96 chapters, Ertunç and Mazı 98; for the first bab the figures are 56 and 57. According to a study that counts the pictures of the Paris copy one by one, the first bab has 54 treatment pictures, 7 instruments and 4 incisions, the second 58 treatments, 131 instruments and 10 incisions, and the third 24 treatments and 11 instruments, and in total 136 treatment scenes are drawn. In general about 140 miniatures are mentioned. It has also been noted that some of the points marked in the cauterization treatments coincide with acupuncture points; the use of cauterization in diseases of the eye, teeth, liver and lungs is among the striking features of the book.

Sabuncuoğlu explains his reason for writing the book in Turkish as being of use to physicians and surgeons who knew neither Arabic nor Persian. This choice also makes the book valuable for the history of the Turkish language. The text is written with vowel marks and reflects the features of the Anatolian Turkish of its time; for this reason the work is also a source for the grammar and phonetics of Turkish. The handwriting itself is a successful naskh for its time, and the calligraphy of the book is accepted to be Sabuncuoğlu's own.

The Language of the Pictures

A certain order stands out when the miniatures of the Paris copy are examined. Most chapters end with a picture; the pictures are enclosed in a double frame in red (lâl) ink, and each contains a note explaining the physician, the patient or the instrument in a single sentence. The notes are written in red ink and vocalized in black. Instrument drawings are fewer than treatment scenes and are mostly set into the text without a frame.

The bodies of the figures are drawn in the colour of the red ink, and the turbans and garments are outlined in black. The turbans of the physician, the assistant physician and the patient figures vary in their ornament but are always white. The eyes and skin of all the figures are painted in the same colour; the pinkness of the faces thickens and thins here and there. The physician figure is depicted in almost every scene on the right-hand side, seated, while the patient's posture changes according to the treatment to be applied. In scenes with more than one figure one also meets persons whose identity is not mentioned in the text but who can be understood from their posture to be assistant physicians.

Ertunç and Mazı do not conceal that the figures are anatomically out of proportion. Hands and feet are very small and drawn carelessly, in some chapters the hands are given six fingers, the upper bodies of standing figures are drawn larger than the lower, and the eyes are large and close together. These features show that the pictures were made to explain rather than to be beautiful paintings. The same study finds that picture and text coincide exactly, that is, the procedure described in the text is shown in the picture just as it is. For this very reason the miniature here does not stand as ornament; it is a language that carries information.

Three Copies, Three Paths

The work has three copies. The copies in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Supplément Turc 693) and in the Millet Library in Istanbul (Ali Emîrî, no. 79) came from Sabuncuoğlu's own pen. The third, in the History of Medicine collection of the Istanbul University Faculty of Medicine, is a copy datable to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, known for its incomplete but artistically high-quality miniatures.

The Paris copy, according to the TDV the finest of the three, is the manuscript presented to the Conqueror and bearing the seal of Bayezid II. The tuğra of Bayezid II appears on its first and last pages. It is kept in a brown leather binding of great plainness, and in the middle of the covers there is a small ornament in the form of a rhombus. It measures 18 x 26.5 cm, is written in seventeen lines of vocalized naskh and has 205 folios; it contains a three-page dedication, a section of five lines of verse running to almost half a page, and a twenty-three-page table of contents. When it left the palace is not known; in 1860 it was given by Yâsincizâde İlmî Efendi to a French physician, and in 1871 it passed to the Bibliothèque Nationale.

The Millet copy was prepared in Amasya on the same date as the Paris copy. It has 199 folios, measures 16.4 x 25.3 cm and is likewise written in seventeen lines of vocalized naskh. Many of its sections are missing; some of the missing pictures were completed in a clumsy hand, in rough sketch. The Istanbul History of Medicine copy has 188 folios; who copied it and when is not known, and it passed to the museum from the private library of Besim Ömer Akalın. Since the dedication page is lost the number of miniatures cannot be known, and today only 32 miniatures remain. That these pictures, almost all of half-page size, are closer to the classical miniature style suggests that they came from the hand of a master painter.

Opinions on the artistic value of the miniatures vary. It is said in the literature that the pictures in the Paris copy are not rated very highly for artistic value, while those in the Istanbul copy look like the work of a more skilled painter; Ertunç and Mazı nonetheless regard the unity of picture and text in the Paris copy as an important document. The view that Sabuncuoğlu painted the pictures himself has also been put forward (İlter Uzel). The book was introduced to the scholarly world in 1927 by Ali Canip (Yöntem). In later years A. Süheyl Ünver (1939), P. Huard and M. D. Grmek (1960), Vecihe Kılıcoğlu (1956) and İlter Uzel (facsimile and transcription, 1992) published the work.

Where the Book Was Born: the Amasya Dârüşşifâ

The place that gave birth to the book is the Dârüşşifâ on the edge of the street that runs parallel to the Yeşilırmak in the Yâkutiye quarter. According to the Arabic inscription on the portal, which runs in a single line in three directions around the portal niche, the building was built in 708 (1308-1309) by Anber b. Abdullah, a slave of İlduş (Yıldız) Hatun, wife of the Ilkhanid ruler Öljeitü Khan, and by the Anatolian Emir Ahmed Bey. Nothing is known about its architect; its endowment deed, which has not survived, was drawn up in 712 (1312).

The building measures 33.60 x 25.60 m from outside to outside; it is an Anatolian Seljuk building running east to west, on a madrasa plan with a courtyard and two iwans. Around a rectangular courtyard are two rows of arcades and, behind them, long halls. The main iwan measures 7.10 x 5.70 m inside and opens onto the courtyard with a pointed arch. The arcades are built of pointed arches resting on columns with differing capitals, some muqarnas and some moulded. Both the columns and the capitals are of stone.

The west façade facing the street has kept its monumental effect to this day. The façade, built of regular cut stone, is bounded at the top by a thin moulded stone frieze; the portal, one third higher than the façade and projecting, commands it, while the large windows on either side of the portal and the cylindrical towers at the corners balance the façade. Thus the entrance façade reflects the traditional features of Anatolian Seljuk building. The east, west and north walls, by contrast, are built of random stones, supported with buttresses, and have lost their original state. The main decoration on the exterior is concentrated, in stonework, on the portal and the rectangular windows at its sides. Gabriel's restitution is one of the drawings that lets us see the building's original layout today.

According to the inscription the building was founded as a hospital in the general sense. The name "bîmarhâne" comes from the notion that only the mentally ill were kept here; the dârüşşifâ, as at the beginning, went on working for a long time afterwards as a medical institution. That Sabuncuoğlu worked here as a physician and surgeon is learned from his own Mücerrebnâme. Today the building has been restored and is open to visitors as the Sabuncuoğlu Şerefettin Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery of the Amasya Municipality; the depictions of instruments and operations in the book are revived here in the language of an exhibition.

The Istanbul Style and the Trace of Amasya

Ottoman painting in the following years changed direction together with the capital. Mehmed the Conqueror founded the palace painters' workshop in the New Palace in Istanbul; from the collective work of local and foreign artists in a master-apprentice relationship the "Istanbul Style" was born in the sixteenth century (Derman, quoted by Sever). In the time of Bayezid II literary works such as Kelîle and Dimne and Hüsrev ü Şîrîn are seen being illustrated in the palace workshop; in such manuscripts the influence of Western art can be seen beside the fifteenth-century Turkmen style. The painters representing the different traditions that Selim the Grim brought from Iran and Egypt developed a new style recalling the Herat style, and the painters in time became one of the most important divisions of the Ottoman ehl-i hiref organization.

But the tradition of Istanbul was not born from nothing. Amasya's manuscripts, physicians, calligraphers and the painters drawn to the princely palace played a part in the years of preparation of this tradition. The summoning of Şeyh Hamdullah to Istanbul, the coming of Derviş Mahmud and Şahkulu from Tabriz to the palace by way of Amasya, and the preparation of Sabuncuoğlu's book to be offered to the Conqueror all point in the same direction: Amasya, as a centre that raised artists and books, supplied the store of knowledge the capital needed. How far this was a conscious policy the documents do not say.

Notes for Visitors

The Dârüşşifâ and museum lie within the walkable core of Amasya, along the Yeşilırmak, and can be taken on the same route as buildings of the princes' period such as the Bayezid Complex. The books themselves are not in Amasya. The Paris copy of the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye is in the French National Library, and the other copies are in Istanbul. What can be seen in Amasya is the building where they were born and the reconstructions in the museum. Because museum hours and fees can change from year to year, it is wise to get current information from the Amasya Municipality or the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism before going.

Chronology

1308-1309: The Amasya Dârüşşifâ is built by Anber b. Abdullah and the Anatolian Emir Ahmed Bey.

1386: Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin's year of birth, calculated from his stated age.

1416: The illustrated copy of Ahmedî's Iskendernâme is prepared in Amasya.

1440: Prince Alâeddin becomes sanjak governor of Amasya at the age of fifteen.

1444: Sabuncuoğlu's Akrâbâzîn translation (the date conflicts with Bayezid's governorship and has not been verified).

1454: Prince Bayezid is appointed sanjak governor of Amasya at the age of seven.

1465: Sabuncuoğlu writes the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye in Amasya.

1468: Sabuncuoğlu writes the Mücerrebnâme; he is accepted to have died after this.

1481: Bayezid leaves Amasya and takes the throne; he summons Şeyh Hamdullah to Istanbul.

1487: Amasyalı İbrahim translates the Mihr ü Müşterî into Turkish.

1505: Sabuncuoğlu's name is first mentioned in the Alâim-i Cerrâhîn.

12 April 1515: The distinguished artists of Tabriz are sent to Istanbul by way of Amasya.

1860-1871: The Paris copy is given to a French physician and then passes to the Bibliothèque Nationale.

1927: Ali Canip introduces the Cerrâhiyye to the scholarly world.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Seçil Sever, "15. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Dönemi Minyatür Sanatı Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme", Sanat Dergisi, 35, 2020, pp. 153-166.
  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 5.

Official sources

  • Amasya Municipality, Sabuncuoğlu Şerefettin Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery.

Other sources

  • Nuran Yıldırım, "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35, 2008. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Ali Haydar Bayat, "Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7, 1993. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Nakkaş" and "Minyatür" entries, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Gönül Cantay, "Amasya Dârüşşifâsı", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3, 1991. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Çiğdem Önkol Ertunç - Lütfiye Depeler Mazı, "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin'in Paris Bibliotheque Nationale'de Bulunan Cerrahiyyetü'l-Haniyye İsimli Eserinin Minyatür Özellikleri", İstem, 18/36, 2020, pp. 305-323.
  • "Görsel Sanatlar", Büyük İstanbul Tarihi (Ottoman miniature section).
  • Şahamettin Kuzucular, "Nakkaş Şahkulu Hayatı ve Sanatı", Edebiyat Sanat Akademisi, 2014.

Online sources