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respects, this of course echoes discussions of Persian and Sanskrit as multibranched con-
duits of high culture and cosmopolitanism. Given how integral long-distance links were to
these processes, we might soon see this growing interest in Arabic sources extend also to
medieval and early modern Iran and Central Asia. Chapter 4 in White’s book, on the com-
position of Arabic poetry in Mashhad, is already pioneeringly leading in that direction.
Another way in which this book refines our understanding of the effects of
seventeenth-century mobility and migration is by paying attention to local levels of lit-
erary and social interaction, in addition to the transregional patterns. White shows that
the migrant poets who are the subject of his study not only engaged with globalizing
idioms, a corpus of classical texts, and overseas networks, but equally addressed local
audiences and created literary communities that were specific to their time and place.
Cosmopolitan literary production, in other words, also reflected localizing tendencies
and multiplicity. More specifically, poets used “emulative intertextuality” in various
forms to construct connections with the canon, with transregionally circulating pieces,
and with artistic interlocutors in their immediate environs. This point is elaborately illu-
strated through a close reading of early modern poetry produced in Hyderabad, Sanaa,
Mashhad, Kabul and Isfahan.
Further commendable features of this monograph are the many translated extracts of
poetry that support its arguments, and its considerable attention to India’s Deccan region
(another trend that is gaining pace). But most admirable is its extensive bibliography of
unpublished works that remain in manuscript, many written by unfamiliar names. As
such, each chapter starts by tracing the biographies of its key figures, which makes the
reader appreciate their backgrounds, migratory journeys, and social connections in rela-
tion to their literary production. It also brings out the relevance of poets who fell through
the cracks of history for understanding the globalizing dynamics of early modern litera-
ture. White’s methodology reminds us of the fact that the publication and celebration of
an early modern work today does not necessarily reflect how it was valued by contempor-
aries. The conclusion further rightly points to the role that the colonial removal of manu-
scripts and modern nationalisms played in the neglect of some works and the
foregrounding of others. Our own scholarly community will without doubt find this an
inspiring study to emulate and build upon.

doi:10.1017/S0041977X24000053

Deniz Türker: The Accidental Palace. The Making of Yıldız

in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul
xix, 251 pp. Pennysylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press,
2023. ISBN 978 027109391 8.
Caroline Finkel
Independent Scholar, London, UK
Email: [email protected]

A visit to Yıldız Palace today is a somewhat dispiriting experience. The coherence of the
whole has long been lost: some buildings serve as government offices, as they did in the

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late nineteenth century, or as museums, but much of the palace’s former grounds is par-
celled out. With talk of the site becoming the latest of the president’s Istanbul residences,
the threat of effective privatization of the remainder looms. A notable virtue of Deniz
Türker’s book is that it enables us to capture some of the former magic of Yıldız, a
place first conceived of as a retreat for the mothers of sultans.
The history of Yıldız has often been one of sultans escaping the constraints of public
life, and in particular of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) attempting to secrete himself far
from the assassin’s bullet: Türker ’s fascinating and richly illustrated study tells a more
complex story. Her wide-ranging research into visual and written sources establishes
that a pavilion – a belvedere – first appeared here in 1795, built by Selim III for his
mother. Soon, the hilltop became a suburban estate, accessible from the palaces on the
Bosphorus shore below. Mahmud II (r. 1808–39) practised archery at Yıldız, but it was
his consort, Bezm-i Alem, who re-emphasized the distaff connection, once she became
co-ruler with her son Abdülmecid, Mahmud’s successor. Famous for her public endow-
ments, Bezm-i Alem built an open air mosque here, and a second pavilion. Her patronage
provided Yıldız with a farm, an orchard and garden complex, and chalets, cottages, and
French-style urban mansions. Contemporary records show that the orchards produced
a remarkable 581 different kinds of fruit.
The image of the Ottoman nineteenth century as an era of gloom and dysfunction is
belied by events at Yıldız. In 1835, a Bavarian landscape gardener named Christian
Sester arrived, and worked first at Çirağan, Mahmud’s European-style Bosphorus shore
palace where he built grottoes and planted exotic species, then at Yıldız. In the hands
of Bezm-i Alem and Abdülmecid, the valley and long slope behind Mahmud’s
European-style Çırağan, became a grand Romantic park. The visionary remaking of the
landscape continued once Abdülaziz (r. 1861–76) was on the throne, and his mother
and co-ruler, Pertevniyal, became Sester’s patron.
Sester’s approach to gardening was philosophical, and attuned to the political inclina-
tions of the Ottoman royals at this time. Once the janissaries, ultimate symbol of the
ancien régime, had been expunged (in 1826) and the age of reform was underway, the dyn-
asty sought a new imperial image. Eschewing French formality in garden design, which
smacked of authoritarianism, the more liberal rule that the empire now aspired to was
to be exemplified in the English garden – conspicuously titivated, yet emphasizing
untouched nature. Sester was joined by other German gardeners, who fostered his legacy
after his death in 1866. Abdülhamid’s reign brought change in the corps of gardeners: he
employed men from Kastamonu (in northern Anatolia) and Albania, and French experts
now replaced German. Needless to say, Istanbul’s elite competed to outdo one another
in innovation and ambition in the garden arts.
It was a short step from the rustic landscape Yıldız had become, to the “Alpine” aes-
thetic that Abdülhamid embraced, with wooden structures in the Ottoman vernacular
echoing the “country cottages” popular in highland sanctuaries elsewhere. This was “a
homier, more light-hearted, more picturesque idiom” than that of Abdülaziz’s grandiose,
neoclassical Mabeyn Pavilion. The “lifestyle publications” of the time made international
architectural taste and design accessible: the history of prefabricated buildings predated
Abdülhamid, but they caught his interest. His most visible essay into this technology was
his state-of-the-art Yıldız hospital for war veterans, which was possibly locally made. The
hugely damaging 1894 earthquake underlined the appeal of light, prefab, structures –
again, like the craze for gardening, inventively detailed, portable, buildings found wide
favour.
Abdülhamid made of Yıldız a palatial complex, albeit one where he could indulge his
simple tastes, outdoors as much as possible. The photograph albums he commissioned to
showcase the empire are famous, but Türker has located a hitherto unknown album by an

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 BSOAS 215

unnamed photographer, dating from 1905, with 64 images of the imperial sites of Istanbul.
The early 1890s had seen the renovation of these sites, as Abdülhamid impressed on the
public mind the achievements of his forebears and his own unbreakable link to a glorious
past.
The images in the album relating to Yıldız document the end stages of its transform-
ation from garden retreat to the heart of the empire’s administration. Hedges, walls and
fences are often seen in the photographs, and Türker suggests they symbolize the status
and virtue inherent in social order, and act as metaphors for the boundary between man-
made and natural terrain, between civilization and rusticity.
By contrast with the mood of restfulness pervading much nature photography, the
album induces the feeling of the effort of movement between the sites depicted – includ-
ing those where Abdülhamid stayed in his early years. As Türker writes: “Almost every
image in the album is framed to elicit a jolt in the armchair traveller”. She detects an
appeal to female sensibility, and opines: “This entire album could be assessed as a depic-
tion of one of the Friday-afternoon outings of the Sultan’s harem …”. Türker proposes that
the architecture embodied in its images is closely tied to Abdülhamid’s biography and to
his own particular connection to his surroundings.
The contribution of Türker’s book to landscape history generally, as well as to our
understanding of the changing face of Istanbul, is immeasurable. She explores to effect
the interplay between the personal taste of the sultans of the Ottoman nineteenth cen-
tury and their imperial and political vision, humanizing them, and giving the royal
women, and their gardeners, who all stamped their mark on Yıldız, their place as histor-
ical actors. Abdülhamid II has fared better of late in the public mind: here he is revealed as
being as innovative as many another landowner seeking to transform his built and natural
environment. The Ottoman idiom was specific, but cultural trends were international, and
those at the apex of society, here as elsewhere, were receptive to the zeitgeist, and
indulged their whims in creative and enriching ways.

doi:10.1017/S0041977X2400003X

Mun’im A. Sirry: The Qur’an with Cross-References

ix, 683 pp. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2022. ISBN 978 3 11077915 8.
Walid A. Saleh
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Email: [email protected]

Reference works on the Quran have proliferated recently, a reflection of the seriousness
with which academia views the field of Quranic studies. These reference works are invari-
ably produced by single authors, but it is not clear what merit many of them have when
they are produced hastily and claim universal coverage of the Quran. They run the danger
of being either premature (such works are usually the culmination of a life of engagement
with a particular text), or worse redundant since they do not improve on older reference
works. We are at an interesting moment in Quranic studies when individual scholars are
trying to replicate reference works produced for the Hebrew Bible and New Testament,
reference works that are the result of collaborative work by a multitude of scholars.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X2400003X Published online by Cambridge University Press