Books by Patricia Blessing
Patricia Blessing, Elizabeth Dospel Williams and Eiren L. Shea, Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022
In this book, Patricia Blessing explores the emergence of Ottoman architecture in the fifteenth c... more In this book, Patricia Blessing explores the emergence of Ottoman architecture in the fifteenth century and its connection with broader geographical contexts. Analyzing how transregional exchange shaped building practices, she examines how workers from Anatolia, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Iran and Central Asia participated in key construction projects. She also demonstrates how drawn, scalable models on paper served as templates for architectural decorations and supplemented collaborations that involved the mobility of workers. Blessing reveals how the creation of centralized workshops led to the emergence of a clearly defined imperial Ottoman style by 1500, when the flexibility and experimentation of the preceding century was levelled. Her book radically transforms our understanding of Ottoman architecture by exposing the diverse and fluid nature of its formative period.
This book is a study of Islamic architecture in Anatolia following the Mongol conquest in 1243. C... more This book is a study of Islamic architecture in Anatolia following the Mongol conquest in 1243. Complex shifts in rule, movements of population, and cultural transformations took place that affected architecture on multiple levels. Beginning with the Mongol conquest of Anatolia, and ending with the demise of the Ilkhanid Empire, centered in Iran, in the 1330s, this book considers how the integration of Anatolia into the Mongol world system transformed architecture and patronage in the region. Traditionally, this period has been studied within the larger narrative of a progression from Seljuk to Ottoman rule and architecture, in a historiography that privileges Turkish national identity. Once Anatolia is studied within the framework of the Mongol Empire, however, the region no longer appears as an isolated case; rather it is integrated into a broader context beyond the modern borders of Turkey, Iran, and the Caucasus republics.
The monuments built during this period served a number of purposes: mosques were places of prayer and congregation, madrasas were used to teach Islamic law and theology, and caravanserais secured trade routes for merchants and travelers. This study analyzes architecture on multiple, overlapping levels, based on a detailed observation of the monuments. The layers of information extracted from the monuments themselves, from written sources in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and from historical photographs, shape an image of Islamic architecture in medieval Anatolia that reflects the complexities of this frontier region. New patrons emerged, craftsmen migrated between neighboring regions, and the use of locally available materials fostered the transformation of designs in ways that are closely tied to specific places. Starting from these sources, this book untangles the intertwined narratives of architecture, history, and religion to provide a broader understanding of frontier culture in the medieval Middle East, with its complex interaction of local, regional, and trans-regional identities.
Textile Museum Journal , 2018
This volume focuses on the mobile nature of textile patterns in the East and West during the Midd... more This volume focuses on the mobile nature of textile patterns in the East and West during the Middle Ages and investigates the question of cultural specificity in the use of textile imitations in a range of media. As coveted objects of trade and diplomatic gift exchange, tex- tiles were widely distributed using the cross-cultural networks between Byzantium, the Islamic world, and East Asia. Within this broader world of medieval textile exchange, the notion of textile patterns that are adapted in architecture, ceramics, metalwork, and manuscripts stands at the center of this volume. Questions to be discussed are the portability of textile patterns, the adaptation of textile motifs in a variety of media, and the appropriation of textile forms and patterns from other cultural contexts. Twenty years ago, Lisa Golombek argued for a ‘draped universe of Islam’, ascribing to Muslim culture a sensibility particularly attuned to textiles and their patterns. Golombek rightly emphasized the rich textile production of the Islamic world and the use of architectural decoration that refers to woven models. While this argument is certainly convincing, considering the fluidity with which textile patterns appear in other materials and contexts and how textiles evoke monumental decoration, the phenomenon itself is not exclusively Islamic. Rather, it is part of a broader medieval sensibility that is finely attuned to the subtleties of textiles and intrigued by the possibility to move their patterns and texture back and forth between fabrics, walls, and other objects. The topics of articles in this volume of The Textile Museum Journal range from representations of jewelry in late antique textiles, silks with bird motifs produced in both Iran and the Byzantine Empire in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to women’s clothing in the fourteenth-century Mongol courts of Iran and China.
Anatolia was home to a large number of polities in the medieval period. Given its location at the... more Anatolia was home to a large number of polities in the medieval period. Given its location at the geographical and chronological juncture between Byzantines and the Ottomans, its story tends to be read through the Seljuk experience. This obscures the multiple experiences and spaces of Anatolia under the Byzantine empire, Turko-Muslim dynasties contemporary to the Seljuks, the Mongol Ilkhanids, and the various beyliks of eastern and western Anatolia.
In recent years, Byzantine, Saljuq, Armenian and Georgian architecture have been increasingly stu... more In recent years, Byzantine, Saljuq, Armenian and Georgian architecture have been increasingly studiedin
a cross-cultural perspective that takes into account
the varied geography and cultures of the region. The
historiography of Anatolia, particularly, has received
close attention as the medieval history and architecture of this period are reevalutated.
1
Within this complex historical context, the connections between architecture in the various regions are often blurred by
divided historiographies, and by the limits of primary
sources. Bringing together studies on various aspects
of architecture opens fruitful avenues for cross-re
gional comparisons that are difficult to maintain in a
single study. The articles in this volume engage with
recent scholarship by investigating case studies from
these regions.
Papers by Patricia Blessing
“Fragments of Paradise: Ottoman Wallpaintings in the 15th Century,” in Fragments: Medieval Makers, Modern Responses, ed. Catherine A. Fernandez and Pamela A. Patton (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2026), 121-142.
“Tiles, Stucco, and Wonder in Medieval Anatolia,” in Crafting Presence: Material Evocations in the Early and High Middle Ages, ed. Britta Dümpelmann (Leiden: Brill, 2025), 228-243.
“Bursa and Beyond: The Fifteenth-century Origins of Ottoman Architecture,” in The Ottoman Monuments in Greece Revisited: A Tribute in the Memory of Machiel Kiel, ed. Paschalis Androudis, Aikaterini Markou, and Dimitris Loupis (Athens, 2025), 103-116.
The study of medieval and early modern architecture located in Anatolia, from the Byzantine to th... more The study of medieval and early modern architecture located in Anatolia, from the Byzantine to the Ottoman Period, has focused on the region as a landmass, marked by mountains, rivers, and steppes. Defined in geographical texts of the Islamic world as Lands of Rūm (Bilād al-Rūm) and understood as a frontier region between various polities and empires, as well as between Christianity and Islam, the region and its buildings emerge from the literature as solidly tied to land, connected through trade routes overland through Iran, Central Asia, and all the way to China. At the same time, attention to trade and its routes can help shift the narrative towards the sea, and a better understanding of Anatolia in a Mediterranean context. Major ports existed in Alanya and Sinop; new ports were created in Balat-Miletus and Ayasuluk-Selçuk-Ephesus, to replace silted-up antique ones. While these facts, and their impact on the economic and cultural setting of individual sites, have been studied, a synthetic approach to the question of what it means to conceive of Anatolia as a Mediterranean region is yet to be endeavored.
Usur al-Wusta, 2024
When studying tile revetments of monuments in Iran from the late twelfth to the mid-fourteenth ce... more When studying tile revetments of monuments in Iran from the late twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century and in the fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire, one is faced with two very different narratives as to how the design and production of these revetments came about. The luster tiles installed in Iran and beyond were produced in one city, Kashan, by well-documented families of tile-makers who left a wide range of signed tiles and vessels. Tiles produced in the Ottoman Empire between the 1410s and the 1470s are attributed to the "Masters of Tabriz," an elusive group construed to be a multi-generational, itinerant workshop based on a single signature on the mihrab of the mosque-zāviye of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed I (r. 1413-21) in Bursa (1419-21). In a comparative study of these two contexts, this article offers insights into ways of producing and logistics of transporting and installing large-scale tile revetments, and argues that in the Ottoman case, too, production may have taken place at a single site.
This chapter examines questions of design and shared motifs across media in late fifteenth-and ea... more This chapter examines questions of design and shared motifs across media in late fifteenth-and early sixteenth-century Ottoman art, focusing on brass candlesticks (Turkish: şamdan, from Persian shamʿdān 1) made under the patronage of Ottoman sultan Bayezid II (r. 1480-1512). These candlesticks tie into a specifically Ottoman artistic repertoire that was in the process of being established across media in the period around 1500. While a unified vocabulary and centralized modes of production in court workshops (some located in Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, others in cities such as Bursa and Iznik) progressively emerged, this process allowed for a degree of experimentation with a range of designs and an openness to other influences such as that of Mamluk metalwork. Trade and exchange of the resulting objects reached across the Mediterranean. These candlesticks, and other objects produced under Ottoman court patronage, were placed in monuments across the empire, spreading imperial aesthetics to buildings created under imperial patronage and presenting them to the broader public in easily accessible buildings such as mosques, hammams, and markets, and not just within the closed premises of rulers' residences. Historically, this period was marked by conflict and exchange. During a war between the Ottomans and the Mamluks, lasting from 1485-91, the relationship between these two major actors of the Islamic world at the time became once more tense, after centuries in which they both competed and traded with each other. 2 At the same time, the Shiʿi Safavids rose to power in Iran, led by Shah Ismaʿil (r. 1501-24). Kızılbaş Turkmen tribes living under Ottoman rule, but loyal to the Safavids, rebelled, causing further unrest. 3 Under sultan Selim I (r. 1512-20) both conflicts would turn in the Ottomans' favor: a crucial victory against the Safavids in 1514 was closely followed by the Ottomans' defeat of the Mamluks, with the conquest of Syria in 1516 and Egypt in 1517. With this latter conquest, the Ottoman sultan took on the highly prestigious role of guardian of the two holiest sanctuaries of Islam (Arabic: khādim al-h. aramayn): the Kaʿba in Mecca and the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina; he eventually would come to claim the title of caliph. 4 At the artistic level, the earlier, nearly universal prestige of the Timurid arts across the eastern Islamic world substantially decreased, a development compounded by the fall of a major Timurid artistic center, namely, the city of Herat under the rule of sultan Husayn Bayqara (r. 1470-1506), to the Safavids in 1506. 5 The victorious Safavids took many artists This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
![Research paper thumbnail of Patricia Blessing and Richard P. McClary, “Reimagining Royal Space: The Qilij Arslan II Kiosk in Konya and its Lost Interior,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 9.2 (September, 2022 [published summer 2023]): 153-158](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/121480126/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The Qilij Arslan II Kiosk, a palatial structure on the citadel mound of Konya, is one of the earl... more The Qilij Arslan II Kiosk, a palatial structure on the citadel mound of Konya, is one of the earliest Rūm Seljuq buildings that survived into the modern age, and is of major historical importance. It is also one of the few palatial buildings from the medieval larger Persianate/Iranian world to have survived into the age of photography, as its upper structure remained intact until 1907 (Figure ). This project works towards the recreation of as clear a picture as possible of the appearance and decorative scheme of the partially intact monument. By integrating all the new scholarship and archaeological evidence with the surviving architectural elements, this project provides a more detailed and contextualised understanding of this key Rūm Seljuq monument. Materials from the building-some collected by various scholars and travellers, others gathered in documented excavations-are now dispersed in collections mostly in Turkey and Germany, with fewer pieces in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. These materials include fragments of what must have been extensive interior tile and stucco decoration. These pieces, removed from their original contexts, offer glimpses of what the interior of the building would have looked like, with similar motifs used in tiles and stucco to create an immersive space that we will eventually attempt to reconstruct on a digital platform. Based on a full study of these extant fragments and historical photographs and drawings, the project will establish to what extent we can understand the Qilij Arslan II Kiosk as a full monument, rather than as a ruined building separated from the tiles, stucco, and brick elements that once formed its decoration. So far, we have collected and catalogued an extensive archive of historical photographs, with the earliest dating to the 1890s. We have also collected
Research on premodern textiles from the Islamic world (and elsewhere) often begins with the task ... more Research on premodern textiles from the Islamic world (and elsewhere) often begins with the task of tracking fragments that originally belonged to the same piece. This fragmentary character of textiles is often the result of early collection practices, which value textiles as examples of patterns for new designs, rather than as functional objects. Early publications of textile research often included plates that omitted aspects such as fading and stitch marks, and reconstruction of possible use. While digital tools have made it easier to imagine and depict such textiles in their original form, the initial problem remains: How can we understand textiles as functional objects, rather than supports for motifs? This chapter argues that histories of collections are fundamental to the study of textiles, as are new ways of considering the function of textiles in their original contexts.
Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association , 2021
In this essay, we reflect on the conversion of Hagia Sophia from museum back to mosque in light o... more In this essay, we reflect on the conversion of Hagia Sophia from museum back to mosque in light of the discussions that have taken place since the transformation happened on 24 July 2020. Let us begin with the initial reactions to the museum-to-mosque conversion, especially in mainstream media in the US and Europe. In much of that reporting, Hagia Sophia's Byzantine past was emphasized, and narratives of Ottoman conquest connected to misleading notions of Islamic iconoclasm followed. Thus, the building's life as a church (537-1453) has obscured its history as a mosque (1453-1934). Among reactions to the 2020 transformation, writing that also carefully considered the Hagia Sophia's Ottoman context, and the fact that the building was affected by changes in Ottoman political and religious life over time, was slow to emerge. 1 Why does this matter? Hagia Sophia is a Byzantine monument, it is an Ottoman monument, and it was until 2020 one of modern Turkey's most important museum-monuments. This statement should be self-apparent, yet in reactions to the museum-to-mosque conversion, Hagia Sophia at times appeared only as a Byzantine monument that has now-through the insistence of Turkey's current government, fulfilling a long-time dream of right-wing politics-turned into a mosque to the detriment of its Byzantine past. We contend that this view is mistaken because it does not take into account the entire history of the building, and it neglects the multiple and complex past(s) of both the monument and the city where it is located. Interestingly in Turkey, we have a mirror image of this one-dimensional representation of Hagia Sophia, this time as a mosque. The Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453, according to the supporters of Hagia Sophia's conversion, was seen as an almost eschatological event, resulting in the building's rebirth
International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2021
Since the publication of its first issue in 2012, the International Journal of Islamic Architectu... more Since the publication of its first issue in 2012, the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) has embraced a mission to redefine the conventional understanding of 'Islamic architecture' as a field of scholarship. IJIA definitively 'reappropriated' its title to expand and refine the term's meanings by providing an interdisciplinary platform for research on architectural history and contemporary practice that challenges the dominant narratives about Islamic architecture, and Islamic societies and cultures in general. This 'reappropriation' opens the term up to a new range of uses across the fields that we, as the senior editorial team, sought to achieve not from a defensive, isolationist position, but rather by repurposing existing frameworks of scholarship and expanding the field. IJIA exemplifies this effort by publishing articles that traverse geographic, temporal, and disciplinary divides and that reveal architectural cultures and practices premised on a broad definition of what constitutes 'Islamic' architecture. The journal includes articles that address historical inquiries of both global and regional issues, drawing on diverse archival materials, as well as essays that involve critical practices (buildings, sites, designers, new pedagogical approaches, etc.) related to historical and contemporary architecture throughout the Islamic world. The diversity of our published articles also demonstrates that we value the work of junior scholars and give voice to individuals who
This article is specifically about teaching Islamic architecture, rather than Islamic art in gene... more This article is specifically about teaching Islamic architecture, rather than Islamic art in general. It addresses the particular challenges presented by teaching Islamic architecture in contexts where visits to monuments are impossible. Some such observations are of course valid to teaching architectural history in general, while others are specific to the built environment of the Islamic world, and monuments relating to Muslim communities around the globe. One of the greatest challenges in teaching Islamic art history, as Kishwar Rizvi eloquently describes, is how to talk about the beauty and sophistication of historical monuments and objects in a time of war and violence. 1 I strongly believe that it is impossible to teach Islamic art history without discussing present-day geopolitics. With current events in mind, students have questions about the historical background of specific regions. I see my role equally as a teacher of the historical art and architecture of the Islamic world, and as an intermediary who provides students with the tools to research and analyze cultural, historical, and religious issues. This is especially the case when discussing cultural heritage, while also addressing the overwhelming human suffering intertwined with the destruction of major historical cities such as Aleppo or Mosul. A second challenge that presents itself is with the term "Islamic architecture." 2 First and foremost, the term implies religious monuments related to Islam-mosques, shrines,
Studies on inscriptions in medieval Islamic monuments in Anatolia have primarily concentrated on ... more Studies on inscriptions in medieval Islamic monuments in Anatolia have primarily concentrated on the historical content that usually appears in these inscriptions, including the date of the foundation and the patron. Since the written sources from this region, such as chronicles and Sufi hagiographies, rarely refer to patronage with any amount of detail, monumental inscriptions often become the single source on this topic. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Anatolia and the Caucasus present intricate cases of the use of inscriptions within monuments that are expressions of a frontier society at the intersection between Byzantium, the Christian kingdom of the Caucasus, and the Islamic world. Based on case studies that include the Buruciye Medrese (1271-72) in Sivas (Turkey), the Yakutiye Medrese (1310) in Erzurum (Turkey) and the Selim Khan/ Orbelian Karavanserai (1330s) south of Lake Sevan (Armenia), this article discusses how inscription programs were part of carefully conceived schemes to guide the viewer. Thus, inscriptions were placed deliberately in order to create an itinerary through the building, in which the viewer is guided by the size and script of the inscriptions, their location and (for the reader able to understand the content), the text itself. Often more so than chronicles of the time, these inscriptions reflect the complex dynamics of identity, language, and frontier cultures that were at stake in the region.
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Books by Patricia Blessing
The monuments built during this period served a number of purposes: mosques were places of prayer and congregation, madrasas were used to teach Islamic law and theology, and caravanserais secured trade routes for merchants and travelers. This study analyzes architecture on multiple, overlapping levels, based on a detailed observation of the monuments. The layers of information extracted from the monuments themselves, from written sources in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and from historical photographs, shape an image of Islamic architecture in medieval Anatolia that reflects the complexities of this frontier region. New patrons emerged, craftsmen migrated between neighboring regions, and the use of locally available materials fostered the transformation of designs in ways that are closely tied to specific places. Starting from these sources, this book untangles the intertwined narratives of architecture, history, and religion to provide a broader understanding of frontier culture in the medieval Middle East, with its complex interaction of local, regional, and trans-regional identities.
a cross-cultural perspective that takes into account
the varied geography and cultures of the region. The
historiography of Anatolia, particularly, has received
close attention as the medieval history and architecture of this period are reevalutated.
1
Within this complex historical context, the connections between architecture in the various regions are often blurred by
divided historiographies, and by the limits of primary
sources. Bringing together studies on various aspects
of architecture opens fruitful avenues for cross-re
gional comparisons that are difficult to maintain in a
single study. The articles in this volume engage with
recent scholarship by investigating case studies from
these regions.
Papers by Patricia Blessing