Architecture, ceremonial, and power : the Topkapi Palace in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Architecture, ceremonial, and power : the Topkapi Palace in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Architectural History Foundation , MIT Press, c1991
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Note
Revision of thesis (doctoral)--Harvard University, 1986
Includes bibliographical references (p. [305]-328) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Today the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul seems a haphazard aggregate of modest buildings no longer capable of conveying imperial power. Yet it is one of the most celebrated of all Islamic palaces. Gulru Necipoglu brings together largely unpublished sources, both written and visual, along with information derived from the architectural remains to uncover the processes through which the meaning of the palace was once produced. She relocates the Topkapi in its historical context, a context that included not only the circumstances of its patronage, but the complex interaction of cultural practices, ideologies, and social codes of recognition Necipoglu focuses on the imperial iconography of palatial forms that lack monumentality, axialaity, and rational-geometric planning principles to decipher codes of grandeur that are no longer obvious to the modern observer.
She reconstructs the architectural and ceremonial impact of the palace through a step-by-step tour of its buildings, demonstrating how the palace was experienced as a processional sequence of separate courts and seemingly disjointed architectural elements that were nevertheless integrated into a coherent whole by passage through time and space. In addition, the book raises questions and provides answers to fundamental concerns about the ideology of absolute sovereignty, the interplay between architecture and ritual, and the changing perceptions of a building through the centuries, a building that drew upon a wide range of palatine traditions, mythical, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Romano-Byzantine and Italian Renaissance.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 Construction of the new palace and the codification of its ceremonial: building chronology of the new palace and the making of an imperial image
- role of the patron, architects, and decorators in the building program
- imperial seclusion - the codification of court ceremonial
- architectural and ceremonial transformations in the 16th century. Part 2 The imperial fortress and the first court: the imperial fortress, its gates and belvederes
- ceremonial space and service buildings of the first court
- the middle gate. Part 3 The second court - state ceremonial and service buildings: language of architecture and ceremonial in the second court
- royal kitchens
- royal stables
- dormitories of the halberdiers with tresses. Part 4 The second court - administrative buildings: old council hall
- new council hall
- tower of justice
- public treasury
- royal colonnade and the gate of Felicity. Part 5 The third court - layout of the sultan's residence and the chamber of petitions: encountering the sultan - the chamber of petitions and its ceremonial. Part 6 The third court - the palace school for pages: institutional organization of pages
- dormitories of pages
- the mosque. Part 7 The third court - royal structures in the court of male pages: treasury-bath complex - the large bath
- the inner treasury
- privy chamber complex - the royal bedroom transformed into a throne room
- antechambers and annexed halls, the outer portico, its marble terrace and pool. Part 8 The third court - the imperial harem: rebuilding the harem in the late 16th century - royal quarters, courtyards of the Queen Mother, concubines, and black eunuchs, the hierarchical structure of the harem's layout. Part 9 The hanging garden of the thrid court, its pavilions, and the outer garden: pavilions of the hanging garden
- layout and institutional organization of the outer garden - landscape as microcosm. Part 10 The pavilions of the outer garden: 15th century garden pavilions - metaphors of universal empire, tiles kiosk, ishakiye kiosk
- 16th century shore pavilions - the end of universalism, marble kiosk, pearl kiosk, shore kiosk, basketmakers' kiosk. Part 11 Conclusion - the topkapi and other palatine traditions. Appendices.
by "Nielsen BookData"
