The Tulip Era

Music and art played a very significant role in the Ottoman Empire. From 1718 to 1730, the Tulip Era, also known as the Lale Devri in Turkish, brought cultural innovations and new forms of consumptions and sociability for the upper classes of the Ottoman Empire. Named after the court’s passion for tulips, the Tulip Era was a symbol of the artistic innovation during the period. The tulip became a symbol of Western ways and signified sophistication. This period is known for various advances such as the first Muslim printing press and various breakthroughs in arts and urban design. The Tulip period is recognized for its extravagance of the court and a culture that was gradually transitioning into a more Western-inspired one. After the disaster

Sajdi argues that a lot of popular narratives that surround the story of the Tulip Era, look at Sultan Ahmed III’s and Damad Ibrahim’s effort to introduce Western forms into the Ottoman Empire as “the desire to copy Western ways and emerge from the restraints of a medieval past” (Sajdi 48). Other historians that Sajdi cites, is Robert Olson who saw the westernization of the Ottoman Empire as “undertaking a first serious attempt…to try to understand one another during the Tulip Age” (Sajdi 48). Sajdi argues that due to these “well-made stories” the “precocious modernization” of the Ottoman Empire is interpreted as seeing the move to the West as Turkey’s destiny. Sajdi cites that current critical discourse looks at the popular discontent with architectural reforms that were enacted by Ahmed III and Damad Ibrahim- “with benevolent rulers trying to impose innovation on an unwilling populace steeped in religious bigotry and prejudice” (Sajdi 49). Sajdi cites author, Ahmed Refik who believed that the creation of the Saadabad topos embodied issues in Ottoman-Turkish history and was a rebellious acts of those who wished to stay pure to Ottoman tradition by taking down this building with Western architectural influences during the reign of Ahmed III.

Justin McCarthy follows the typical positive outlook on the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire during the Tulip Era- citing the benefits such as the introduction of military school and the printing press and slightly insinuating that those who were opposed were conservatives who only wanted to stay to the purity of Ottoman tradition regardless of how less advanced they were than their Western counterparts. Vucinich on the other hand takes a more negative view, and cites the revolt of the poor as one of the many negative effects of the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire. Sajdi in her interpretation acknowledges that both of these interpretations do exist, but both tend to follow a general narrative without delving deeper into the background of Ottoman history and the efforts of Ahmed III and Damad Ibrahim. Sajdi in her interpretations takes a combination of the two and cites various historians’ account of the Tulip Era while arguing that all of these arguments only take a one-sided view without looking at the objectives that Ahmed III and Damad Ibrahim may have had in mind with the gradual Westernization of the Ottoman