Gardens in Ottoman Culture

Abstract

Although there is little literature on the subject, Ottoman gardens constituted an important aspect of everyday culture as well as constituting the major content of Ottoman poetry. Because of Western influences which affected lifestyles and design after the eighteenth century, gardens in the Ottoman style have not survived to our day. However an important architect of the early twentieth century had made studies reconstituting Ottoman gardens of Istanbul; Gulru Necipoglu has written on the Topkapi Palace and other Ottoman gardens from studies of travelers' drawings and maps. Scott Redford has made studies on Seljukid gardens on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, showing that garden culture in Anatolia showed a continuation from the Roman through the Byzantine, Seljukid and Ottoman cultures. My essay intends to show how the Ottoman gardens of Istanbul had a free design and were also always in visual and physical relation to the sea and that they were designs of gardeners rather than of architects. The Sultan and other high bureaucrats had their private gardens to which they retreated in their boats after a day's work. The entertainment and recreation in these gardens were important rituals for which special poetry was produced. Therefore Ottoman gardens constituted a core element in the culture of the Ottoman elite in terms of their relation to music, poetry, conversation, and landscape. Considering that almost all Ottoman visual art in the form of miniatures, wall decorations and tiles always in some way refer to gardens and flora, it would not be farfetched to claim that gardens and the joy they offered were a major element in Ottoman culture.