Surname-i Vehbi: 26b-27a

The grand vizier's.gifts are presented to the sultan


27a		26b

In this scene we see the presentation of the grand vizier's.gifts for the sultan and his family. The.gifts, which were transported as far as the imperial pavilion by halberdiers and servants, were surrendered one by one to Beşir Agha, chief of the Black Eunuchs, who brought them before the sultan.

The grand vizier is watching from the upper left corner of (26b). The sultan, seated right of center, is accompanied by his three sons, his sword-bearer and equerry, and a contingent of pages. Beşir Agha, at the head of three halberdiers, has reached the sultan's throne. Two sackers are taking a break in the lower right corner and seem to be commenting on the proceedings.

The green-robed figure wearing a white turban in (27a) is the telhisçi, an official whose duty it was to prepare summaries of reports being submitted to the sultan. Here, he is responsible for turning the.gifts over to the men who will take them to Beşir Agha. Among the.gifts depicted by the artist are two horses and a pony that are to be given to the princes.

Here's how Vehbi describes the grand vizier's.gifts:

This is a declaration of the gifts that the grand vizier, whose generosity is as vast as that of Hatim, presented to the sultan, whose hand is as open as the sea and whose heart is munificent.

First was a sash fashioned from the most of precious diamonds, sparkling and pure, and decorated with fine embellishments. More limpidly pure than a hundred-petaled rose bedecked with dew and brighter and more resplendent than the crystal ball of the moon suspended like a chandelier from the vault of the firmament, its world-illuminating gleam transformed the festival-ground into a sea of light. To accurately assess its value, the assayer of the mind would need to empty the purse of his consciousness.

By the author

Compared with it, the night-illuminating moon is like a candle beside the sun.
Anyone beholding the spotless brilliance of those diamonds would say it resembles silver water flowing through aqueducts.
If there can be any "gift fit for a sultan", this surely must be it.

This was followed by a bandoleer, masterfully crafted and encrusted with diamonds and rubies, that was fit to grace the necks of Paradise's houris as a necklace. If all the master jewelers of the age were to gather in one place in an effort to create another like it, they would give it up, saying that it was beyond the circuit of ability to do so, and would come to blows with those who asserted the contrary.

By the author
Grasping choice pearls and precious stones, it was as if they made the king a.gift of the treasures of land and sea.

A Chinese porcelain bowl decorated with gems,

Verse
As beautiful and delicate as a sip of water,

whose interior reflected the gleam of red rubies giving it the color of garnet dissolved in water while its individually-set diamonds as dazzling as the sun had the look of bubbles on a watery surface.

By the author

Oh you who call the Goblet of Jemshid the world-revealing mirror! Did Jemshid drink from this bowl or behold this world?
Behold how the habitual and innate anxiety-dispelling quality of wine billows inside it before one takes even a sip.

A crystal pitcher decorated with precious stones. The crown of Fagfur, the famous emperor of China, would have seemed worthless beside it. The firmament's crescent would have suited it as a handle and the golden ingot of the sun would have been worthy as its golden lid.

By the author

My God! What honor there is in this pitcher that it should come lip-to-lip with the ruler of the world!
Beholding that vessel, how can the sun and moon keep from branding themselves in their jealousy and mottling their bodies with scars?

May the ruler of the world receive good health drinking crystal-clear water from that vessel.

An elegant jewel-chest with drawers, paneled in the Indian fashion. Its delicately-worked decorations caused amazement. It opened its eyes as wide as a mirror and turned them upon the images of saints plastered like idols to the wall of the temple of Ferhar perhaps to view the beauty of their adornments and ornaments.

By the author
No master ever crafted anything as beautiful as this. What a lovely chest of drawers! Congratulations!

An extraordinarily beautiful gold-plated money-counting desk of Jewish manufacture, decorated with enamel and having thirteen drawers. Like a veiled bride, its face was not to be revealed to just anyone, and because was satiated with gold and generous of heart like someone who is abundantly rich, its eyes would glance upon no one but the sultan, whose business is generosity and charity, even were they to fill it to the brim with gold. Such a well-crafted desk would be hard to find if one scoured the markets of every inhabited place on earth. Jewelers convened in the assayers' market were at a loss to assess its value.

By the author

Such an artistically-made desk. There is no more fitting place for it than before the throne.
May God the Glorious bless His Fortunate Majesty the Sultan!

Royal attar in a bottle weighing three hundred misqals. One drop of it would waft its fragrance to all mankind and burn the nasal passages of the houris of Paradise.

Distich in Arabic
Were its sweet-smelling essence to perfuse the east, even someone with no sense of smell would detect in the west.

By the author
Were the wind to spread the odor of the sultan's beautiful nature, hundreds of bottles of royal attar could be distilled from it.

A wheel of unworked amber resembling the full moon, exquisitely fragrant and weighing more than two hundred misqals. One would not be surprised were a freckle on the chin of beauty to burn in the chafing-dish of jealousy in the fire of the envy that it felt for it; it would be understandable if the locks of clear-eyed beauties whose hair is scented with musk were to behold the sweet-smelling smoke rising in a chain of rings and dissipate like a mind sick with love.

By the author
If amber fills the horizon with its fine fragrance, one should not be surprised: for it is the smell of the earth where the foot of Ahmed Khan has trod.

A golden coffer-clock. Persons knowledgeable about precision and familiar with such finer measurements as minutes were at a loss to assess its value. The jealousy that it felt for its beautiful form caused the celestial constellation of Scorpio to pierce its soul. When the cord on its right side was plucked like a lute-string, the clock played a tune in the major scale once every quarter-hour and its playful swinging pendulum played like castanets on the hour. When the cord on its left side was plucked like a dulcimer, the works that tolled the rhyme of night and day were set and the clock ran and played unattended.

Strophe

The firmament is a clock with moon and sun, but it makes no sound. This clock however does.
I thought it was a clock. But when I looked carefully at it I realized
That in fact it was a beautiful lady sitting in conceit atop the coffer and dispensing coquetry as she peers through half-closed eyes.

A cloak of new black fox-fur with a lining of green broadcloth. Each of its hairs seemed to have been individually examined and selected. How many furriers exhausted thousands of skins and what enormous effort was expended to bring it into being! It was purchased for twenty purses of aspers not counting what went to brokers and middlemen. Another eight purses were spent on the hems and collar. Truly the fur was more delicate and more supple than the first black hair appearing on the head of a sweet-faced, winsome baby: as full-bodied as a rose, as soft as a violet, and finer and warmer than eyelashes. Each of its hairs would have made eyebrows for countless Selmas or have become the hair for countless Leylas wandering through the desert because of her love. Indeed were they to conceal the very sun whose yellow color makes it resemble an orange behind the black curtain of that fur in order to protect it from the bitter cold of winter, it would disappear from view like an egg set in sable. Had they sewn the ball-like full moon onto its collar like a silver button, it would have been as invisible to sight as the eye of a white fairy in a dark corner and it would have vanished like the wheel of the sun disappearing into the darkness of night.

By the author

But despite the blackness of this fur's appearance, it was as brilliant as the Night of Power.
Let those who never saw Iskandar wandering in the darkness behold the sultan of the age in this fur.

And also: Two pelts of sable-fur, blacker than the blackness of night and finer than Selma's eyelashes.

By the author

This peerless sable resembling a dark night is either a black light or else the black pupil of a houri's eye.
If it were made into a fur collar for the sultan, his camphor-white throat would be even whiter.

One pelt of pardine lynx, as white as dry camphor as black as powdered musk or else as white as a clear conscience and as black as the pupil of a houri's eye in Paradise. The fur was more comely than a beauty's clear and freckled breasts. Its spotted appearance made it as alluring as eye-catching nielloed silver.

Two pelts of black-tailed ermine, as white and pure as the soft and warm breasts of young boys, as perfect and pellucid as a page of glazed paper prepared for the sultan, as dazzling as a morning whose brilliance resembles a bright-faced beauty. The bicolored tails resembled a pen fashioned from white Java gold whose tip was stained with ink and reminded one of a pure-white camphor candle with an extinguished black wick. Perhaps it even had the appearance of the hennaed fingers of a bride in the nuptial chamber.

In addition: Four fine and precious furs lined with broadcloth in various eye-catching colors: the brisket, chest, and crest of a wolf and a white fox.

Two bundles of each of fine Persian and İstanbul silk tissue, each with enough to make five garments from. Since the Weaver of Fate first began weaving the cloth of night and day on the loom of the firmament using the crescent moon as a shuttle and the sun as a reed, no cloth as delicately designed as this was ever fabricated nor was anything resembling it ever woven on the loom of the mind as measured by the yardstick of the eye. Indeed as the couplet tells us:

By the author

Were all the imported fabricated stuffs arriving at commercial piers to be heaped up in one place
The ones limned by Vehbi would stand out among them by virtue of the delicacy of their weave.

And they would be quite fitting and suitable to be the label attesting to the quality of these goods.

Two bundles each of wired and plain Cathay-cloth of incomparable quality, each with enough to make five garments from. Each was a leaf of Cathay-paper as beautiful and comely as if sprinkled with gold-dust. So delicate was the workmanship of their decorations and patterns that the painters of China and Cathay would be transformed into images frozen with amazement on the walls of temples were they but to gaze upon them.

Ten garments' worth of combed satin, beside which sky-topping Atlas would not amount to so much as a sendal.

Five garments' worth of colorfully striped canvas, with whose beauty not even the rosy curtain of dawn could compete.

Two bundles each stuffed full of precious woolen cloth one colorfully decorated with flowers the other plain, each with enough to make five garments from.

Ten garments' worth of common broadcloth, distinguished by its beauty, color, and superior value.

Five garments' worth of camlet.

Ten bolts of tightly-woven and loosely-woven turban-cloth, whose value made it worthy of decorating heads.

Ten bolts of wired and plain striped stuff and silk from Hind.

Five bundles each of striped and plain silk and cotton cloth with gold thread in both warp and weft.

And countless other kinds of cloth.

Of edible things: one jar each of cloves, myrobalan, and preserved pineapple, and countless other delicacies of a similar kind.

In addition, four rifles by the famous masters known as Hacı Mustafa, Molla Mehmed, and Niğbolulu Ahmed, with stocks inlaid with tortoiseshell, silver-plated and double-ringed barrels and one rifle of Hungarian manufacture. The shot emerging from the cartridge of each flew like the arrow of fate when finding its target. Racing like the arrow of a heartfelt prayer, the rifles make a terrible enemy-deafening roar when they are fired, saying "Here's lead for the enemy's ear." In short, each one resembled an iron-hearted, fire-born, ardent, hard-boiled warrior who

By the author

Would not utter a sound were molten lead poured down his throat
But when he did open his mouth, his voice would reach the welkin.

Like a talented and illustrious hero who is capable of responding to an enemy in every way, he has sufficient strength to demolish the house of an enemy's soul with a single blow yet does not strike out in vain or pointlessly become embroiled in a fight unless ignited.

And as for mounts: Two perfectly-equipped, matchless, awe-inspiring saddle horses of Anatolian and Egyptian breed and one pack horse. Each one was worthy of being saddled with the crescent moon and fitted with the golden wheel of the sun as its stirrups. Their swaggering walk and flirtatious trot would have given lessons in gait to Chinese and Tartar antelopes. They could have served as models for full-length portraits by the artists of China. Draped in their gold-embroidered saddle-covers, they galloped and raced about. As they pranced around the field, bowing and shaking their heads and beating their hooves, they seemed to be challenging and daring that day's garment-fluttering, hand-clapping dancers and the hoop-jumping Arab from Egypt.

Notes

1. Hatim: Hatim at-Taai, who was known far and wide for his chivalry and fabulous generosity. He was the father of Adiyy Ibn Hatim, the first Arab king to convert to Islam.

2. Goblet of Jemshid: A mythical cup owned by the hero Jemshid. Also a reference to the magical mirror of Solomon (also called Jem) that reflected everything in the world.

3. Mirror: A double pun. Göz, the word for "eye" also means "drawer". Ayna means "mirror" as well as "panel".

4. Ferhar: City remarkable for the beauty of its inhabitants and for a number of idols; also the name of a pagan temple where beautiful girls worshipped.

5. Eyes: Or "drawers", as above.

6. Royal attar: İtr-ı şahı. Attar of sweet pea (Lathyrus oderatus).

7. Misqals: An apothecary measure equal to 1.5 drams. 300 misqals would weigh about 1,750 grams, a bit less than 4 pounds.

8. Scorpio: Akrep. The word also means the hour-hand of a clock as well as "scorpion".

9. Selmas: Probably a literary reference. "Selma" is a woman's name.

10. Leylas: A reference to the female protagonist of the poem Leyla and Majnun.

11. Night of Power: The 27th of Ramadan. The night when the Qur'an was revealed.

12. Iskandar: Not Alexander the Great but the son of Harisu'r-Rayish, a king of Yemen. He was famous for his quest for the Water of Life, which took place in darkness.

13. Fabricated: A pun on nazm, which also means "versified". This whole section is rife with puns.

14. Wired: Telli. Woven with gold or silver thread.

15. Atlas: The Titan Atlas of ancient myth but also the word for "satin".

16. Sendal: 1) sandal (shoe) 2) white sandalwood 3) a kind of silk or satin cloth 4) rowboat.

17. Camlet: Sof. Name given to any cloth made from the hair of goats, camels, etc.

18. Pineapple: Aynünnâs. Pineapples, which originated in the New World, were introduced into Asia by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Pineapples grown in Indonesia were reportedly being shipped to Europe in 1599. An attempt to grow them in Italy in 1616 was a failure. By the 18th century, it would also have been possible for them to be shipped into Europe and the Ottoman Empire from Africa.

19. Arab: Hajji Şahin, who first made his appearance sitting atop a pole in (21b).

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