Thus withered the red rose of the joy of painting and illumination that had bloomed for a century in Istanbul, nurtured by inspiration from the lands of Persia. The conflict between the methods of the old masters of Herat and the Frankish masters that paved the way for quarrels among artists and endless quandries was never resolved. For painting itself was abandoned; artists painted neither like Easterners nor Westerners. The miniaturists did not grow angry and revolt, but like old men who quietly succumb to an illness, they gradually accepted the situation with humble grief and resignation. They were neither curious about nor dreamed about the work of the great masters of Herat and Tabriz, whom they once followed with awe, or the Frankish masters, whose innovative methods they aspired to, caught indecisively between envy and hatred. Just as the doors of houses are closed of an evening and the city is left to darkness, painting was also abandoned. It was mercilessly forgotten that we’d once looked upon our world quite differently.
My father’s book, sadly, remained unfinished. From where Hasan scattered the completed pages on the ground, they were transferred to the Treasury; there, an efficient and fastidious librarian had them bound together with other unrelated illustrations belonging to the workshop, and thus they were separated into several bound albums. Hasan fled Istanbul, and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Shevket and Orhan never forgot that it wasn’t Black but their Uncle Hasan who was the one who killed my father’s murderer.
In place of Master Osman, who died two years after going blind, Stork became Head Illuminator. Butterfly, who was also quite in awe of my late father’s talents, devoted the rest of his life to drawing ornamental designs for carpets, cloths and tents. The young assistant masters of the workshop gave themselves over to similar work. No one behaved as though abandoning illustration were any great loss. Perhaps because nobody had ever seen his own face done justice on the page.
My whole life, I’ve secretly very much wanted two paintings made, which I’ve never mentioned to anybody:
1. My own portrait; but I knew however hard the Sultan’s miniaturists tried, they’d fail, because even if they could see my beauty, woefully, none of them would believe a woman’s face was beautiful without depicting her eyes and lips like a Chinese woman’s. Had they represented me as a Chinese beauty, the way the old masters of Herat would’ve, perhaps those who saw it and recognized me could discern my face behind the face of that Chinese beauty. But later generations, even if they realized my eyes weren’t really slanted, could never determine what my face truly looked like. How happy I’d be today, in my old age-which I live out through the comfort of my children-if I had a youthful portrait of myself!
2. A picture of bliss: What the poet Blond Nazım of Ran had pondered in one of his verses. I know quite well how this painting ought to be made. Imagine the picture of a mother with her two children; the younger one, whom she cradles in her arms, nursing him as she smiles, suckles happily at her bountiful breast, smiling as well. The eyes of the slightly jealous older brother and those of the mother should be locked. I’d like to be the mother in that picture. I’d want the bird in the sky to be depicted as if flying, and at the same time, happily and eternally suspended there, in the style of the old masters of Herat who were able to stop time. I know it’s not easy.
My son Orhan, who’s foolish enough to be logical in all matters, reminds me on the one hand that the time-halting masters of Herat could never depict me as I am, and on the other hand, that the Frankish masters who perpetually painted mother-with-child portraits could never stop time. He’s been insisting for years that my picture of bliss could never be painted anyhow.
Perhaps he’s right. In actuality, we don’t look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is precisely what they cannot depict. That’s why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life.
In the hopes that he might pen this story, which is beyond depiction, I’ve told it to my son Orhan. Without hesitation I gave him the letters Hasan and Black sent me, along with the rough horse illustrations with the smeared ink, which were found on poor Elegant Effendi. Above all, don’t be taken in by Orhan if he’s drawn Black more absentminded than he is, made our lives harder than they are, Shevket worse and me prettier and harsher than I am. For the sake of a delightful and convincing story, there isn’t a lie Orhan wouldn’t deign to tell.
1990-92, 1994-98
Appendix
336-330 B.C.: Darius ruled in Persia. He was the last king of the Achaemenids, losing his empire to Alexander the Great.
336-323 B.C.: Alexander the Great established his empire. He conquered Persia and invaded India. His exploits as hero and monarch were legendary throughout the Islamic world even until modern times.
622: The Hegira. The emigration of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, and the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
1010: Firdusi’s Book of Kings. The Persian poet Firdusi (lived circa 935-1020) presented his Book of Kings to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Its episodes on Persian myth and history-including Alexander’s invasion, tales of the hero Rüstem and the struggle between Persia and Turan-have inspired miniaturists since the fourteenth century.
1206-1227: The reign of Mongol ruler Genghis Khan. He invaded Persia, Russia and China, and extended his empire from Mongolia to Europe.
C. 1141-1209: The Persian poet Nizami lived. He wrote the romantic epic the Quintet, comprised of the following stories, all of which have inspired miniaturist painters: The Treasury of Mysteries, Hüsrev and Shirin, Leyla and Mejnun, The Seven Beauties and The Book of Alexander the Great.
1258: The Sack of Baghdad. Hulagu (reigned 1251-1265), the grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered Baghdad.
1300-1922: The Ottoman Empire, a Sunni Muslim power, ruled southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. At its greatest extent, the empire reached the gates of Vienna and Persia.
1370-1405: Reign of the Turkic ruler Tamerlane. Subdued the areas that the Blacksheep ruled in Persia. Tamerlane conquered areas from Mongolia to the Mediterranean including parts of Russia, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Anatolia (where he defeated the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid I in 1402).
1370-1526: The Timurid Dynasty, established by Tamerlane, fostered a brilliant revival of artistic and intellectual life, and ruled in Persia, central Asia and Transoxiana. The schools of miniature painting at Shiraz, Tabriz and Herat flourished under the Timurids. In the early fifteenth century Herat was the center of painting in the Islamic world and home to the great master Bihzad.
1375-1467: The Blacksheep, a Turkmen tribal federation, ruled over parts of Iraq, eastern Anatolia and Iran. Jihan Shah (reigned 1438-67), the last Blacksheep ruler, was defeated by the Whitesheep Tall Hasan in 1467.
1378-1502: The Whitesheep federation of Turkmen tribes ruled northern Iraq, Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia. Whitesheep ruler Tall Hasan (reigned 1452-78) failed in his attempts to contain the eastward expansion of the Ottomans, but he defeated the Blacksheep Jihan Shah in 1467 and the Timurid Abu Said in 1468, extending his dominions to Baghdad, Herat, and the Persian Gulf.
1453: Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror took Istanbul. Demise of the Byzantine Empire. Sultan Mehmet later commissioned his portrait from Bellini.