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for a moment, here, far from all the battles and turmoil: the feeling that

everything was coming to an end. Immediately before the end of the world,

there would also be such silence.

Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.

As I kissed Master Osman’s hand to bid him farewell, I felt not only great

respect toward him, but a sentiment that plunged my soul into turmoil: pity

mixed with the adoration befitting a saint, a peculiar feeling of guilt. This,

perhaps, because my Enishte—who wanted painters, openly or secretly, to

imitate the methods of the Frankish masters—was his rival.

I suddenly sensed, as well, that I was perhaps seeing the great master alive

for the last time, and in the fluster of wanting to please and hearten him, I

asked a question:

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“My great master, my dear sir, what separates the genuine miniaturist from

the ordinary?” I assumed the Head Illuminator, who was accustomed to such

fawning questions, would give me a dismissive response, and that he was

presently in the midst of forgetting who I was altogether.

“There is no single measure that can distinguish the great miniaturist from

the unskilled and faithless one,” he said in all seriousness. “This changes with

time. Yet the skills and morality with which he would face the evils that

threaten our art are of significance. Today, in order to determine just how

genuine a young painter is, I’d ask him three questions.”

“And what would they be?”

“Has he come to believe, under the sway of recent custom as well as the

influence of the Chinese and the European Franks, that he ought to have an

individual painting technique, his own style? As an illustrator, does he want to

have a manner, an aspect distinct from others, and does he attempt to prove

this by signing his name somewhere in his work like the Frankish masters? To

determine precisely these things, I’d first ask him a question about ”style‘ and

“signature.”“

“And then?” I asked respectfully.

“Then, I’d want to learn how this illustrator felt about volumes changing

hands, being unbound, and our pictures being used in other books and in

other eras after the shahs and sultans who’d commissioned them have died.

This is a subtle issue demanding a response beyond one’s being simply upset

or pleased by it. Thus, I’d ask the illustrator a question about ”time‘—an

illustrator’s time and Allah’s time. Do you follow me, my child?“

Nay. But that’s not what I said. Instead, I asked, “And the third question?”

“The third would be ”blindness‘!“ said the great master Head Illuminator

Osman, who then fell silent as if this required no explication.

“What is it about ”blindness‘?“ I said with embarrassment.

“Blindness is silence. If you combine what I’ve just now said, the first and

the second questions, ”blindness’ will emerge. It’s the farthest one can go in

illustrating; it is seeing what appears out of Allah’s own blackness.“

I said no more. I walked outside. I descended the icy stairs without

hurrying. I knew that I would ask the great master’s three great questions of

Butterfly, Olive and Stork, not only for the sake of conversation, but to better

understand these living legends who were contemporaries of mine.

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I did not, however, go to the master illuminators’ houses immediately. I

met with Esther near the Jewish quarter at a new bazaar that had an elevated

view of the confluence of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. Esther was all

atwitter in the pink dress she was forced to wear as a Jew, with her large and

lively body, her mouth which never stopped moving, and her eyebrows and

eyes which twitched madly and signaled to me; indeed, this is how she was

among the shopping slave women, the women wearing the faded and loose

caftans of poor neighborhoods and among the crowds that had lost

themselves amid carrots, quinces and small bundles of onions and turnips.

She stuffed the letter I gave her into her shalwar pants with an adept and

mysterious gesture, as if the whole market were spying upon us. She told me

that Shekure was thinking of me. She took her baksheesh and when I said,

“Please, make haste and deliver it straightaway,” she indicated that she still

had quite a lot of work to do by gesturing toward her bundle and said that she

only could deliver the letter to Shekure toward midday. I asked her to tell

Shekure that I’d gone to pay visits to the three young and renowned master

miniaturists.

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I AM CALLED “BUTTERFLY”

The midday prayers had yet to be called. A knock at the door: I opened it to

find Black Effendi, who was among us for a while during our apprenticeships.

We embraced and kissed on the cheeks. I was wondering whether he’d

brought some word from his Enishte, when he said that he wanted to look at

the pages I’d been illustrating and at my paintings, that he’d called in

friendship, and was going to direct a question to me in the name of Our

Sultan. “Very well,” I said, “what’s the question I’m to answer?”

He told me. Very well, then!

Style and Signature

“As long as the number of worthless artists motivated by money and fame

instead of the pleasure of seeing and a belief in their craft increases,” I said,

“we will continue to witness much more vulgarity and greed akin to this

preoccupation with ”style‘ and “signature.”“ I made this introduction because

this was the way it is done, not because I believed what I said. True ability and

talent couldn’t be corrupted even by the love of gold or fame. Furthermore, if

truth be told, money and fame are the inalienable rights of the talented, as in

my case, and only inspire us to greater feats. But if I were to say this openly,

the mediocre illustrators in the miniaturists’ division, rabid with envy, would

pounce upon me, so, to prove that I love this work more than they themselves

do, I’ll paint the picture of a tree on a grain of rice. I’m well aware that this

lust for ”style,“ ”signature’ and “character‘ has come to us all the way from

the East by way of certain unfortunate Chinese masters who’ve been led astray

under the influence of the Europeans, by pictures brought there from the West

by Jesuit priests. Nevertheless, let me tell you three parables that comprise a

recital on this topic.”

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Three Parables on Style and Signature

ALIF

Once upon a time, to the North of Herat, in a mountain castle, there lived a

young Khan who was fascinated with illuminating and painting. This Khan

loved only one of the women in his harem, and this striking Tatar woman,

whom he loved madly, loved him in return. They engaged in such bouts of

lovemaking, sweating until morning, and lived in such ecstasy that their only

wish was to live eternally. They soon discovered the best way to realize their

wish was by opening books and gazing, for hours and hours and days on end,

upon the astounding and flawless pictures of the old masters. As they stared at

these perfect renderings, unfalteringly reproduced, they felt as though time

would stop and their own felicity would mingle with the bliss of the golden

age revealed in the stories. In the royal bookmaker’s workshop, there was a

miniaturist, a master of masters, who made the same flawless pieces over and

over for the same pages of the same books. As was his custom, the master

depicted the anguish of Ferhad’s love for Shirin, or the loving and desirous

glances between Leyla and Mejnun, or the duplicitous, suggestive looks Hüsrev

and Shirin exchanged in that fabled heavenly garden—with one slight

alteration however: In place of these legendary lovers, the artist would paint

the Khan and his Tatar beauty. Beholding these pages, the Khan and his

beloved were thoroughly convinced that their rapture would never end, and

they showered the master miniaturist with praises and gold. Eventually,

however, this adulation caused the miniaturist to stray from good sense;

incited by the Devil, he dismissed the fact that he was beholden to the old

masters for the perfection of his pictures, and haughtily assumed that a touch

of his own genius would make his work even more appealing. The Khan and

his beloved, considering these innovations—the personal stylistic touches of

the master miniaturist—nothing but imperfections, were deeply disturbed by

them. In the paintings, which the Khan observed at length, he felt that his

former bliss had been disrupted in numerous ways, and he grew increasingly

jealous of his Tatar beauty who was depicted with the individual touch of the

painter. So, with the intention of making his pretty Tatar jealous, he made love

with another concubine. His beloved was so bereft upon learning of this

betrayal from the harem gossips that she silently hanged herself from a cedar

tree in the harem courtyard. The Khan, understanding the mistake he’d made

and realizing that the miniaturist’s own fascination with style lay behind this

terrible incident, immediately blinded this master artist whom the Devil had

tempted.

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BA

Once upon a time in a country in the East there was an elderly Sultan, a lover

of illustrations, illuminations and miniatures, who lived happily with his

Chinese wife of unsurpassed beauty. Alas, it soon happened that the Sultan’s

handsome son from a previous marriage and the Sultan’s young wife had

become enamored of each other. The son, who lived in terror of his treachery

against his father, and ashamed of his forbidden love, sequestered himself in

the bookmaker’s workshop and gave himself over to painting. Since he painted

out of the sorrow and strength of his love, each of his paintings was so

magnificent that admirers couldn’t distinguish them from the work of the old

masters. The Sultan took great pride in his son, and his young Chinese wife

would say, “Yes, magnificent!” as she looked upon the paintings. “Yet, time will

surely pass, and if he doesn’t sign his work, no one will know that he was the

one responsible for this majesty.” The Sultan responded, “If my son signs his

paintings, won’t he be unjustly taking credit for the techniques and styles of

the old masters, which he has imitated? Moreover, if he signs his work, won’t

he be saying ”My paintings bear my imperfections‘?“ The Chinese wife, seeing

that she wouldn’t be able to convince her elderly husband on this issue of

signature, was, however, eventually successful in persuading his young son,

confined, as always, in the bookmaker’s workshop. Humiliated at having to

conceal his love, persuaded by his pretty young stepmother’s ideas and with

the Devil’s coercion, the son signed his name in a corner of a painting,

between wall and grass, in a spot he assumed was beyond notice. This, the first

picture he signed, was a scene from Hüsrev and Shirin. You know the one: After

Hüsrev and Shirin are wed, Shiruye, Hüsrev’s son from his first marriage, falls

in love with Shirin. One night, entering their bedchamber through the

window, Shiruye swiftly sinks his dagger into his father’s chest. When the

Sultan saw his son’s depiction of this scene, he was overcome with the sense

that the painting embodied some flaw; he’d seen the signature, but wasn’t

consciously aware of it, and he simply reacted to the picture with the thought,

”This painting bears a flaw.“ And since one would never expect any such thing

from the old masters, the Sultan was seized by a kind of panic, suspecting that

this volume he was reading recounted not a story or a legend, but what was

most unbefitting a book: reality itself. When the elderly man sensed this, he

was overcome with terror. His illustrator son had entered through the

window, as in the painting, and without even looking twice at his father’s

bulging eyes, swiftly drove his dagger—as large as the one in the painting—

into his father’s chest.

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DJIM

In his History, Rashiduddin of Kazvin merrily writes that 250 years ago in

Kazvin, manuscript illumination, calligraphy and illustration were the most

esteemed and beloved arts. The reigning Shah in Kazvin at that time ruled over

forty countries from Byzantium to China—perhaps the love of book arts was

the secret of this great power—but alas, he had no male heir. To prevent the

lands he’d conquered from being divided up after his death, the Shah decided

to find a bright miniaturist husband for his beautiful daughter, and toward

this end, arranged a competition among the three great young masters of his

atelier, all of whom were bachelors. According to Rashiduddin’s History, the

object of the competition was very simple: Whoever made the most

remarkable painting would be the victor! Like Rashiduddin himself, the young

miniaturists knew that this meant painting in the manner of the old masters,

and thus, each of the three made a rendition of the most widely liked scene: In

a garden reminiscent of Heaven itself, a young and beautiful maiden stood

amid cypress and cedar trees, among timid rabbits and anxious swallows,

immersed in lovelorn grief, staring at the ground. Unknowingly, the three

miniaturists had rendered the same scene exactly as the old masters would

have; yet, the one who wanted to distinguish himself and thereby take

responsibility for the painting’s beauty had hidden his signature among the

narcissus flowers in the most secluded spot in the garden. And on account of

this brazen act, by which the artist broke with the humility of the old