Nomadic societies seldom have much to offer the world of interior design. Decluttering and travelling light are the essentials of life on the move. For the Ottoman Turks, however, the last stop was Istanbul. The imperial family liked the city so much, they stayed in one palace, Topkapi, for almost 400 years. They moved out in 1853, exactly four centuries after conquering the city. There must be something about the neighbourhood to encourage such high levels of resident satisfaction; the Byzantine rulers had lived in their palace for even longer.
The Ottomans’ first action after taking Constantinople was to repurpose. Hagia Sophia Cathedral became Aya Sofya Mosque. It went from being the largest Christian building in the world to one of the largest Muslim structures. The Church of St Irene — the second biggest — was turned into an Ottoman arsenal and never became a mosque. Many of the weapons were Western European, collected with the same excitement that their Christian opponents collected Ottoman arms and armour.
England’s Elizabeth I was, of course, on the other side. She was known to Sultan Murad III as Sultana Isabel and Ottoman furnishings had entered the British Isles before the Virgin Sultana struck any trade deals with her Continental Catholic enemies’ enemy. Her father had been a great admirer of ‘Turkey rugs’ and, indeed, some of Henry VIII’s most commanding images feature his well-appointed frame anchored to carpets from Ottoman Anatolia. He had hundreds of these floor coverings to choose from. Holbein the painter knew them well. For his less-regal sitters, the Oushak weavings were likely to have an honoured place on a table rather than underfoot.
These were among the first Ottoman products to enliven the interiors of Tudor homes in England. Using ‘Turkey’ rather than ‘Ottoman’ to describe the rugs was in some ways ahead of the times. In 2022, according to the UN, the nation known as Turkey since 1923 became Türkiye, just before the republic’s 100th anniversary, although it must be said that a century of Turkey/Türkiye has not furnished Britain with even a quarter of the previous four centuries of Ottoman interior-design concepts and products. Compounding this is the confusion between the Ottoman Turks, who built an empire in the eastern Mediterranean, and all their Turkic cousins who came out of Central Asia to create shorter-lived kingdoms.
Then there were the Turks whom English Crusaders identified (wrongly, on the whole) as being their foes in the Holy Land. Turk’s Head pubs used to abound in Merry England from the 13th century onwards. Occasionally, the name came closer to home. Folklore says the tavern by that name, which still exists in Penzance, Cornwall, was once thought to refer to an incursion by seasoned traveller Turks from Jerusalem — in fact, it appears that such raids may actually have happened. More certain is a raid by Spaniards in the 16th century. These intruders caused mayhem and even held a prohibited Catholic Mass before heading home.
'The word "harem" comes from the Arabic language, but was adopted into English through the Ottomans and remains a jokey byword for everything that a real harem was not'
The Muslim raiders, by contrast, appear never to have got down to Friday prayers in Penzance, if they ever reached there at all. They were an unspecified sort of Turk, possibly Seljuks, who took on the hapless People’s Crusade of 1095 in Anatolia, long before the arrival of the Ottomans, whose engagement with Crusaders was in eastern Europe rather than the Middle East.
A different type of ‘Turk’s head’ — a knot — also entered the English decor lexicon as long ago as the 13th century, in which case it wasn’t inspired by the Ottomans; or it might have been later, when English knot enthusiasts would have seen the full splendour of Ottoman headgear. Among Muslim societies that wore turbans, there were few as flamboyant as the conquerors of Constantinople. Suleiman the Magnificent is topped off with the most towering example of all. In a well-known painting by Titian, it is at least twice the size of the sultan’s head. Every elite Ottoman house would have had turban stands fixed to the walls to display these essentials, some of which were later incorporated into British interiors, without the original purpose in mind.
Shakespeare was, as usual, a pioneer in describing the people of the time rather than the products. Although it is not always clear which type of Turk he was referring to, one near-certain Ottoman appears in Henry IV: ‘This is the English Court, not the Turkish; Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds.’ The Amurath mentioned by the Bard is most probably Sultan Murad III, who killed five brothers en route to the top position.
Shakespeare’s references are less flattering than some of his contemporaries, whose sympathies were more with the warrior Muslim Ottomans than the conniving Byzantine Christians they overthrew. The Ottomans’ real contribution came later, when Britain began to have more contact with them. Until then, it was objects from the Ottoman court that came to dominate the imagination. Together with carpets, there was Iznik pottery. More colourful than the floor coverings, these ceramics achieved a brilliance that eclipsed even Chinese wares. Soon, the English traveller was making his way east to find out more.
It was never easy to meet the Turk in his — and especially her — domestic environment. The word ‘harem’ comes from the Arabic language, but was adopted into English through the Ottomans and remains a jokey byword for everything that a real harem was not. The practice never took off on these shores: English homes didn’t need any more ‘trouble and strife’; instead, additional ladies could be deposited in selected locations, so long as they were not in the same house. One of the few contenders for the title of a British Bey or Pasha would be the 7th Marquess of Bath with his 70-plus ‘wifelets’ installed around the harem of Longleat.
As if one word describing secluded accommodation for women were not enough, there is also the term ‘seraglio’. As much as this alternative name for Topkapi Palace appealed to Mozart, details of what was inside remained a mystery. The best-informed English observer was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. This 18th-century daughter of a duke didn’t gain access to the Imperial Harem, but was welcomed into others. One comment that would have puzzled her audience in England related to how the exterior of a Turkish building was of less importance than its interior.
The harem itself turned out to be less thrilling than the hammam. Lady Mary’s account of glistening bodies at the bagnio made a huge impression on readers in 1763: ‘...all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian…’ All they were missing was smallpox scars. As a victim herself, Lady Mary managed to take the Ottoman process of inoculation back with her to Britain, laying the groundwork for Edward Jenner.
The Ottoman-style hammam went on to be the most fashionable leap forward in Western hygiene since soap was brought home from the Middle East during the Crusades. The earliest British bath, the Royal Bagnio, had been built in 1679, probably by Sir Christopher Wren. During the 18th century, the Turkish bath’s influence was so ubiquitous that some English travellers to the Ottoman Empire believed the Turks had taken the concept from Britain. By the 19th century, the biggest and best was opened in Jermyn Street, London, by the London & Provincial Turkish Bath Company. Private homes had them, too, together with that less-wholesome Ottoman import: the smoking room. One of the few that remains, at least partly, is at the Wallace Collection. Built in 1872, it goes full Turkish with floor-to-ceiling Iznik tiles — or the Minton imitation of them.
Furnishings and their names were also indebted to the Ottomans. Not least among these was the so-called ‘ottoman’. The ‘sofa’ and the ‘divan’ were other names that came via Turkey. For England’s country houses, there were also ‘kiosks’ or, more often, tents (yurts). Less well known and taking a more circuitous route is ‘shagreen’. Originally meaning the back of a horse, saghri later became the stingray veneer that was so much a part of Art Deco interiors. It’s one more reminder of the Ottoman Turks’ distant nomadic past, before they found their forever home on the banks of the Bosphorus
From November 7 until May 9, 20207, the V&A Museum will hold the ‘Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires’ exhibition, which will examine two mega-cultures in the ultimate metropolis.