AHGA GMU

The relationship between homosexuality and the Islamic Ottoman state is expressed as a peculiarity between the Ottoman Muslim man and his religion in the male social spaces and arts, specifically the köçek boy dancers as well as literature and poetry. Men dominated many aspects of Ottoman culture, due in part to this, the primary and popular representations in record, from literature and poetry to other major arts, reflect these predominate aspects of a patriarchal culture.

To adequately characterize this, I will discuss aspects of Ottoman Islam and how it interacts with the prevailing form of sultanate government, including a generalized view of the male body and some expressions of homoeroticism in the Ottoman culture between the 1580’s and 1800. From this complex interaction, the Ottoman state and their interpretation of Islamic tradition created an environment which oscillated between the allowance of aspects of homoeroticism expressed in the cultural norm as well as repression of these actions by various religious authorities. Arts produced at this time are unique in that there were longer periods of allowance for these behaviors than previously and, therefore, the culture of homoeroticism expanded. The form of the Ottoman gender system coming out of this environment then supports various representations of homoeroticism perceived as a cultural norm through poetry and dance. These expressions originated in the courts but soon proliferated in the homosocial public sphere of leisure spots like coffeehouses in the Middle Period.

This thesis considers subjects of exemplary women and female homosociality in the sixteenth-century matronage and networks of Isabella d’Este, marchesa of Mantua, and Eleonora di Toledo, duchess of Florence. Themes of female kinship and agency in the commissions of both elite women allow for an expanded discussion of female matronage networks which have so far been overshadowed by discourse on networks of male patronage. Through Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser’s economic model of “game theory” and the theory of “signaling,” this thesis examines the connections between the self-promotion of elite women and how themes of agency and homosociality fed into methods of signaling status and forming one’s public persona. Moreover, this thesis seeks to establish a working definition for the term “matronage” as part of an effort to effectively convey the complexities of female self-promotion and the homosociality present within the networks of elite women.

Islamic talismanic shirts are particularly intriguing because they embody a mixture of faith and magic. The decorative schemes on these shirts have been carefully calculated with the complexities of astrology, numerology, and onomancy in mind and executed almost entirely in Arabic script arranged in complex geometric and floral patterns. Prayers and Qur’an verses appear in many aspects of the designs. The result is a shirt that is believed to protect the wearer against harm. Talismans are not unusual in the material record. They come in all shapes, sizes, and forms, but talismanic shirts should be of particular interest because of their many contradictions. Talismanic shirts are related to the written arts, yet they are textiles; they are covered in Qur’anic inscriptions, yet they are almost universally classified as ‘magic’ or ‘occult’ objects; they are made in the form of clothing, but are not designed to withstand being worn. Intriguing and contradictory as these objects are, very little has been done to understand and learn from them. In this paper I examine the existing literature on Ottoman talismanic shirts and begin to explore the source and implications of their power.

Throughout the Middle Ages, in both Constantinople and the West, the installation of relics connected to Christ, martyrs, saints, and the Holy Land was used to augment the status and power of churches and chapels. This essay explores the transmission of relics from the Holy Land to Constantinople and Europe, emphasizing the importance of these relics in enhancing the connections to the Holy Land. The examination of medieval writings and relics reveals the wealth of Constantinople and the veneration  that crusaders,  pilgrims, and religious leaders held for the objects that were taken from the East. Military conquest brought most of the relics from the East to Constantinople, and a burst of church construction during the emperor Constantine’s reign in the 4th century AD provided the housing for these holy objects. In later centuries, gifting became the most common  means of transfer of the objects from Byzantium to the West, further spreading the relics among Europe.

The significance of these physical links to the Holy Land is also sometimes reinforced by the architecture of the structures in which the relics were housed and worshiped. The final section of the essay examines the relics installed in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, built by King Louis IX of France to house the precious objects he obtained from a financially weak Constantinople in the thirteenth century. Beyond the Sainte-Chapelle’s aesthetic brilliance, the architecture served to help connect the chapel to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and Louis IX to King Solomon himself. The dedication of the chapel and its function as a reliquary for the holy objects of the Passion also signified the designation of Paris as the new Holy Land in the thirteenth century.

The 16th century was a time of rapid growth and change in the Iznik tile industry, with the commission for the Mosque of Rüstem Pasha serving as its most significant turning point.  The mosque of Rüstem Pasha has long been considered one of the most important monuments of the Ottoman Empire, being the first mosque to use tiles as its main form of decoration and hailed as one of the architect Sinan’s most refined mosque designs.  This paper offers a new look at the mosque, using Gulru Neçipoglu’s translations of Ottoman court documents to argue that although Rüstem Pasha had died before its construction began, he had made explicitly clear his desires to have his mosque covered in tiles decorated in the floral style pioneered by Kara Memi.  Following this argument, this paper will analyze the body of surviving Iznik tiles from before and after this period to demonstrate how the Iznik workshops incorporated Kara Memi’s style into their existing decorative vocabulary, resulting in a style of ceramics decoration distinct to Iznik wares.