TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

attract talents from the East to the Ottoman palace. Sehi Bey states, for example, “The
conqueror used to search and bring to his court people of talents in the lands of Arabia
and Persia and showed to them an extraordinary esteem.” 293 Indeed, the palace
patronage as an institute had been already established in the Islamic world long before
the Ottomans. As Đnalcık indicates, in the absence of the printing press, which gave the
opportunity for large masses to read and thus provided for authors a source of income as
the scholars and artiste were dependent on the support of rulers and ruling class. It is
simply because of this fact that ‘high culture’ in most Islamic states existed basically as
the palace culture. 294 Another function of the patronage of culture in the Turkish-Mongol
states appeared as “the process of adopting the indigenous civilization for the military
class.” 295
To conclude, the intellectual and cultured elite of the Ottoman state were formed
by ‘immigrant’ or ‘imported’ ulemā and bureaucrats as well as artists and men of letters.
While establishing the administrative machinery, they also imported high Islamic
civilization, which had flourished in the hinterlands of Islam, to the Ottoman cities.
Hence, imitating traditional style in the great Islamic states, a ‘palace culture’ of
Ottomans was also growing under the initiative of ‘imported’ intellectuals and artists. Of
course many indigenous scholars and artists educated in Ottoman madrasas and grown
up in the palace banquets of either the sultans themselves or of other prominent
293 Sehi Bey, Heşt Bihişt, ed. G. Kut, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 97. For further
discussion of the issue, see Đnalcık, “The ‘Ottoman Civilization’ and Palace Patronage”, pp. 18-23.
294 Đnalcık, “The ‘Ottoman Civilization’ and Palace Patronage”, p. 18. For further reading on the palace
patronage of science and art in the Ottoman empire, and in the Islamic world in general, see Halil Đnalcık,
Şair ve Patron: Patrimonyal Devlet ve Sanat Üzerinde Sosyolojik Bir Đnceleme. Ankara: Doğu Batı
Yayınları, 2003; “Klasik Edebiyat Menşei: Đranî Gelenek, Saray Đşret Meclisleri ve Musâhib Şâirler”, Türk
Edebiyatı Tarihi, 1, ed. Talât Halman, Đstanbul: TC Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları, 2006,221-82.
295 Đnalcık, “The ‘Ottoman Civilization’ and Palace Patronage”, p. 18.
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