Kağıt Sanatları ve Kalender Paşa: I. Ahmed Albümü

Abstract

This study focuses on the album of Ahmed the First (B. 408) which was composed by Kalender Pasha (d. 1616) for the sultan (r. 1603-1617) himself as a collection of beautiful calligraphy, paper filigree and paintings with several topics and which is being kept today at the Library of Topkapı Palace Museum. In this study another two albums (H. 2171, B.409) and Falnamah (H. 1703) in the collections of the Library of Topkapı Palace Museum, which are also known to be of Kalender Pasha or being dedicated to him were also compared according to technical point of view. Kalender Pasha organized all of these albums in the same way while their content, purpose of preparation and preparation process differs. Albums with the collection numbers of H. 2248, H. 2165, H. 2156, H. 2153 and H. 2160 from the same Topkapı collection and some pages, which were supposed to be the part of H. 2171, of Bellini Album with the collection number of 67.266.7 from New York Metropolitan Museum were also investigated. While the albums having the collection numbers of F. 1423 and F. 1426 from Istanbul University Rare Books Library were also studied with respect to their technical structures, the bindings of Sultan I. Ahmed Collection and several muraqqas of Hamidiye and Muraqqa Collections from Süleymaniye Manuscript Library were also compared according to their preparation techniques. Albums prepared by placing the samples of calligtaphy, illuminations and paper filigrees, paintings and religious, historical or literary texts or poems either one by one or together on one page provides the preservation of these one page works. The prefaces of several albums indicate that these works were prepared for/by sultans, sons of sultans or important bureaucrats. Until today several works are present which mainly focuses on the prefaces and their contents; but there are only few works studies the preparation processes, i.e the codicological studies of those albums. Craftsmen who have different responsibilities work together for preparing the manuscripts in naḳḳās̲h̲-k̲h̲āna in the palace. But the album which is the object of this study is believed to be prepared from its binding through its illuminations by Kalender Pasha himself. The texts and prefaces which were placed at the beginning of the albums by Kalender Pasha both represent the craftsman and his work and give us some clues about the design process. By taking into account the techniques of the album of Ahmet the First, general technical details like these kinds of albums will be revealed. Documentation techniques of current conservation applications were used for the codicological study. Since it was not possible to take any samples from the item, the details of paper arts were determined only by observation.