Howard Crane – författare

The Risāle-i Mi‘māriyye by Ca'fer Efendi is the most extensive and detailed Ottoman literary source devoted to a particular architect. In addition to being an account of the life and works of the imperial architect Mehmed Ağa, builder of the Sultan Ahmed Complex in Istanbul, it serves to suggest something of the general character and career evolution of the entire class of Ottoman imperial architects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and includes as well a trilingual glossary of terms related to architecture. With the exception of the more abridged teẕkeres of Mustafa Sa'i Çelebi dealing with Sinan, the Risāle-i Mi‘māriyye is the only systematic Ottoman account of the life an imperial architect known to exist.

This is an annotated translation of what is perhaps the most important Ottoman literary source for the Islamic monuments of the Ottoman capital, Istanbul: Hafız Hüseyin bin Ismail Ayvansarayî's Hadikat al-Cevami (The Garden of Mosques). Long recognized by Turkish scholars as a unique source for the city's architecture and urban form, the text, which was completed in 1195/1780 and revised and enlarged between 1248/1832-33 and 1253/1838 by Ali Sati, contains separate descriptions of each of Istanbul's more than 800 mosques, plus accounts of its medreses, tombs, tekkes and other monuments. The annotations place each of these buildings within the city's urban plan and provide biographical information about the patrons, architects and other personalities mentioned in the text. An introductory essay gives an account of Ayvansarayî's life and works, describes the various manuscript versions of the text and reviews the cartographic resources available for the study of Istanbul's urban form.

The sixteenth-century Ottoman architect Sinan is today universally recognized as the defining figure in the development of the classical Ottoman style. In addition to his vast oeuvre, he left five remarkable autobiographical accounts, the Adsız Risale, the Risāletü'l-Miʿmāriyye, Tuḥfetü'l-Miʿmārīn, Teẕkiretü'l-Ebniye and Teẕkiretü’l-Bünyān, that provide details of his life and works. Based on information dictated by Sinan to his poet-painter friend Mustafa Saʿi Çelebi shortly before his death, these accounts exist in multiple manuscript versions in libraries in Istanbul, Ankara, and Cairo.The present volume contains critical editions of all five texts along with transcriptions, annotated translations, and facsimiles of the most important variant versions; and an introductory essay that analyzes the various surviving manuscripts, reconstructs their histories, and establishes the relationships between them; and a preface that considers the sources, themes, and broader implications of the five autobiographies.