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Parution : Bilha Moor, Illustrated Ottoman Cosmographies, c. 1550–1700. The World through Muslim Eyes, Edinburgh University Press, 2025

 

Illustrated Ottoman Cosmographies, c. 1550–1700
The World through Muslim Eyes

Bilha Moor

 

 

 

 

 

The first monograph on illustrated Ottoman cosmographies produced in the capital Istanbul and the Ottoman provinces of Egypt, Syria and Baghdad

  • Shows that to image the Old and New Worlds, Ottoman manuscript illustrators in Istanbul of the second half of the sixteenth century combined the Islamic and European cosmographical traditions.
  • Provides an overview of illustrated cosmographical manuscripts in Islamic lands, 13th–19th centuries.
  • Explores illustrated manuscripts of one of the most popular and canonised texts in the premodern Islamic lands (Qazwīnī’s Wonders of Creation).
  • Includes the first examination of a large corpus of frontispieces in Islamic cosmographies, 14th–18th centuries.
  • Examines representations of the ‘other’ – the Jew, Orthodox Christian, European and Amerindian – in Ottoman cosmographies.


This book explores the unprecedented Ottoman interest in illustrated cosmographies and their representation of the world and its inhabitants. It analyses fifteen illustrated manuscripts of four cosmographical texts on the Old and New Worlds (in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish) produced in the capital Istanbul and the Ottoman provinces of Egypt, Syria and Baghdad, c. 1550–1700.
Overall, dozens of richly illustrated cosmographies were copied across the span of six hundred years, from the late thirteenth until the nineteenth century, in different artistic centres and by different political entities in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and India. This study points to an unprecedented and unparalleled production of illustrated cosmographies in the Ottoman period, in particular during the second half of the sixteenth century. It explores the changes introduced into Ottoman cosmographical manuscripts, including representations of holy geography, popular medicine, the dangers of seafaring, Egyptian antiquities, portraits of the Ottoman sultans and depictions of the Orthodox Christian and European.

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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Chargé de diffusion scientifique (5 juin 2025). Parution : Bilha Moor, Illustrated Ottoman Cosmographies, c. 1550–1700. The World through Muslim Eyes, Edinburgh University Press, 2025. IISMM. Consulté le 10 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/1427o


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