Descriptions of sultans in the miniatures of Istanbul University Library T.Y şecaatname no. 6043

Asafi Pasha, also known as Dal Mehmet Celebi, was a clerk during the reign of Sultan Murad III. He got promoted from civil servant to the beylerbeyi when the Eastern Expedition of the Ottoman Empire (Caucasus and Iran) had began. During the period of the Ottoman-Safavid wars, that lasted for almost eleven years, Asafi Pasha created his master piece Şecaatname. Şecaatname is a type of gazavatname work. Gazavatnames are prose and pictorial depictions of expeditions, victories, heroic actions of sultans, serdars, viziers, and military commanders. Şecaatname describes the campaign and events of the Ottoman Empire between 1578-1585. One of the works in this book is the examination of miniatures about the monarch. These miniatures give information about political, social and cultural life of the period both in terms of their stylistic features and in terms of their subjects. The miniatures to be analyzed were divided into three equal areas and examined. Two of the selected miniatures were sketched and reproduced according to the original. In the first part of our thesis information about book arts is given and formation phase of a classical book is explained. This part contains information about verse works and their genres written in the 16th century. In the second chapter, information about the formation of the manuscript named Şecaaatname is explained. The physical properties of the work are mentioned and information about the artist of the work is given. In the third chapter, six manuscripts were analyzed and evaluated. An original miniature was designed by making use of the subjects of novelist-writer Namık Kemal's Cezmi. In the fourth chapter, period features of miniatures are examined by comparison and evalution. Finally, the conclusion section and bibliography were prepared and the thesis was concluded.