A new approach to late Ottoman visual culture and its place in the world With its idiosyncratic yet unmistakable adaptation of European Baroque models, the eighteenth-century architecture of Istanbul has frequently been dismissed by modern observers as inauthentic and derivative, a view reflecting broader unease with notions of Western influence on Islamic cultures. In Ottoman Baroque—the first English-language book on the topic—Ünver Rüstem provides a compelling reassessment of this building style and shows how between 1740 and 1800 the Ottomans consciously coopted European forms to craft a new, politically charged, and globally resonant image for their empire’s capital. Rüstem reclaims the label “Ottoman Baroque” as a productive framework for exploring the connectedness of Istanbul’s eighteenth-century buildings to other traditions of the period. Using a wealth of primary sources, he demonstrates that this architecture was in its own day lauded by Ottomans and foreigners alike for its fresh, cosmopolitan effect. Purposefully and creatively assimilated, the style’s cross-cultural borrowings were combined with Byzantine references that asserted the Ottomans’ entitlement to the Classical artistic heritage of Europe. Such aesthetic rebranding was part of a larger endeavor to reaffirm the empire’s power at a time of intensified East-West contact, taking its boldest shape in a series of imperial mosques built across the city as landmarks of a state-sponsored idiom. Copiously illustrated and drawing on previously unpublished documents, Ottoman Baroque breaks new ground in our understanding of Islamic visual culture in the modern era and offers a persuasive counterpoint to Eurocentric accounts of global art history.

A new approach to late Ottoman visual culture and its relationship with the West.

Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of Turkey covers the period from 1603 to 1839.

Presents a region-by-region history of the art of the Islamic world, looking at architecture, the art of the book, mosaics, pottery, textiles, and other decorative art forms.

This text is focused on the history of the extant buildings in the Republic of Turkey. The book begins with a brief history of the Ottoman Empire and develops by outlining the mains features of Ottoman architecture and discusses the biography of the great Ottoman architect Sinan.

Retrieving the term 'baroque' from the margins of art history, scholars from a range of disciplines demonstrate that it is a productive means to engage with art history and theory. Rather than attempting to provide a survey of baroque as a chronological or geographical conception, the essays here attempt critical re-engagement with the term 'baroque'-its promise, its limits, and its overlooked potential-in relation to the visual arts.

This collection of essays provides a timely reassessment of nineteenth-century Islamic art and architecture. The essays demonstrate that the arts of that era were vibrant and diverse, making ingenious use of native traditions and materials or adopting imported conventions and new technologies. However, traditionalists, revivalists and modernists all referred in one way or another to an Islamic heritage, whether to reinvent, revive or reject it. Beginning with an historical introduction and an assessment of changing attitudes towards the visual arts the following essays provide case studies of architecture and art in Ottoman Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, Central Asia, India and the Caribbean. They examine such issues as patronage, sources of artistic inspiration and responses to European art. The essays have a relevance and importance for our understanding of the societies and attitudes of that time, and have a direct bearing on the more general debate concerning cultural identity and the integration of modern ideas in the Muslim world. The book is richly illustrated with very many illustrations in black-and-white and in full colour.

Baroque, the cultural period extending from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century, created some of the world's most striking monuments, music, artworks, and literature. This Handbook goes beyond all existing studies by presenting Baroque not only as a style, but also as a global cultural phenomenon arising in response to enormous religious, political, and technological changes.

Rethinking the Baroque explores a tension. In recent years the idea of ?baroque? or ?the baroque? has been seized upon by scholars from a range of disciplines and the term ?baroque? has consequently been much in evidence in writings on contemporary culture, especially architecture and entertainment. Most of the scholars concerned have little knowledge of the art, literature, and history of the period usually associated with the baroque. A gulf has arisen. On the one hand, there are scholars who are deeply immersed in historical period, who shy away from abstraction, and who have remained often oblivious to the convulsions surrounding the term ?baroque?; on the other, there are theorists and scholars of contemporary theory who have largely ignored baroque art and architecture. This book explores what happens when these worlds mesh. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines retrieve the term ?baroque? from the margins of art history where it has been sidelined as ?anachronistic?, to reconsider the usefulness of the term ?baroque?, while avoiding simply rehearsing familiar policing of periodization, stylistic boundaries, categories or essence. ?Baroque? emerges as a vital and productive way to rethink problems in art history, visual culture and architectural theory. Rather than attempting to provide a survey of baroque as a chronological or geographical conception, the essays here attempt critical re-engagement with the term ?baroque? - its promise, its limits, and its overlooked potential - in relation to the visual arts. Thus the book is posited on the idea that tension is not only inevitable, but even desirable, since it not only encapsulates intellectual divergence (which is always as useful as much as it is feared), but helps to push scholars (and therefore readers) outside their usual runnels.

Examines the socio-cultural history of the regions where Islam took hold between the 7th and 16th century. This two-volume work contains 700 alphabetically arranged entries, and provides a portrait of Islamic civilization. It is of use in understanding the roots of Islamic society as well to explore the culture of medieval civilization.