Visual Reading or Reading with Images? Visuality and Orality in Ottoman Manuscript Culture (City Boys and Beautiful Women of Istanbul)

Abstract

The organic relationship between the text and image is the most distinc- tive feature of Islamic manuscript painting. However, there was a long-established tradition of making one-page album paintings that do not have any textual context related to the image. To capture the intended meaning of album paintings, we need to develop the study of “visual reading”, just as their contemporary spectators did. Therefore, the oral literary context, in which these paintings were produced and consumed, becomes extremely important to acquire the iconography of visual codes repeated in many album paintings, probably had certain meanings approved in the collective memory of the society. In this respect, I will mostly focus on a group of album paintings depicting young males and females produced in 17th century-Otto- man İstanbul. I will try to observe and the visual language of these album paintings in conjunction with the demographic, economic and political changes by the 17th century. Specifically, the variations in contents and forms of oral and literate culture, in accordance with new forms and venues of socialization, will be the crucial point of my argument.