CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Peng, Yu-Hao |
|---|---|
| Title | A Mirror of Changes and Continuities: The Illustrated Copies of Hamse-i 'Ata'i in the Long Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire and the Islamicate World |
| Summary | This thesis revolves around the five eighteenth-century copies of Ḫamse-i ‘AǦ d;āȁ 9;ī (henceforth the Ḫamse), a seventeenth-century Ottoman poetry anthology that consists of five mes̱nevī poems written by Nev‘īzāde ‘AǦ d;āȁ 9;ī. After the author’s death in 1635, the Ḫamse was repeatedly copied and widely circled. However, the illustrated copies did not appear until almost one century later. Besides this, they contain many sexually explicit paintings, which caused researchers to shy away from commenting on them in avoidance of controversy. However, ‘AǦ d;āȁ 9;īȁ 9;s text is one that aims to offer moral teachings. How should one comprehend this discrepancy or even contradiction between the text and the illustrations? In order to provide a feasible answer to these questions, this thesis contextualizes the Ḫamse in the framework of the long seventeenth century, an age of transformation. This framework bridges the century-long gap between the Ḫamse as a literary work and as an illustrated book. The thesis also aims to reveal how certain elements of these two intertwined faces of the Ḫamse together reflect the continuities and changes that occurred in the Ottoman Empire throughout the period in question. The first chapter introduced the basic facts about the Ḫamse, its illustrated copies, and its author ‘AǦ d;āȁ 9;ī, and reviews the current literature on the subject. The second chapter offers a summary of the long seventeenth century, and delves deeper into the historical context in which ‘AǦ d;āȁ 9;ī composed this work. By analyzing the text from the perspectives of the early seventeenth-century interstate entanglement and the social, political, as well as religious currents, it sheds light on what made the Ḫamse retain popularity in the following century and eventually become the object of early eighteenth-century Ottoman elite’s art commission. The third chapter turns the focus to the course of events that happened after ‘AǦ d;āȁ 9;īȁ 9;s death and culminated in the early eighteenth century, when the illustrated Ḫamse copies first appeared. It also evaluates certain important characteristics of the paintings that help us grasp the connection and reveal how the paintings gave the text a new life in the new social, political, and religious landscape of the early eighteenth century. |
| Supervisor | Robyn D. Radway; Tijana Krstić |
| Department | Historical Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/peng_yu-hao.pdf |
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