The evening’s entertainment before Aynalıkavak Palace

 

51a

 

50b

These images show events that took place before the Arsenal Palace on the Golden Horn on the evening of the third day. According to Vehbi, the sultan observed the performances from a tent set up on the quay before the entrance to the palace while the grand vizier watched them seated beneath a bower set upon on the admiral’s galleon anchored off Aynalıkavak pier. The sequence and details of the rafts described by Vehbi are different from those depicted by Levni. In (50b) we see the sultan seated in a tent on the Arsenal Palace quay surrounded by attendants. Two rafts are floating by. The one at the right, of which we can only see a part but appears to be a platform mounted on a pair of caiques, was donated by Yeğen Mehmed Pasha, Superintendent of the Customs Office. (According to Vehbi, this was the last float to appear in the procession. This knowledge and the stances of the figures in the two images indicate that the flotilla is moving from right to left.) Unlike the others it has a roof. The figures of two rams suspended on gears and pulleys from the roof butt one another. This is following a real raft on which are set two gigantic dummies that face backwards and are dressed in Persian garb. The parts of their bodies moved as if they were alive and they seemed to be playing with or worshipping fire, in the form of fireworks blazing before them. At the front of the raft is a huge wheel of fireworks that one of the pyrotechnists is causing to revolve. Its supporting frame is surmounted by a fire-spewing bird and rockets hurtle this way and that. The image at the left (51a) shows an earlier stage of the flotilla. A long raft in the foreground carries a huge structure shaped like a cypress tree from which strings of fireworks are suspended and two Catherine wheels. Rockets and projectiles hurtleabout. On the basis of Vehbi’s account, this should be the float prepared by the Artillerymen’s corps. A two-story structure set on a pair of caiques carries a troupe of dancers and musicians on the lower floor while pyrotechnists are busy at work on the upper one. This is probably the float prepared by the Arsenal corps, which Vehbi describes as a "high-domed kiosk". In the background of this frame we can see a golden imperial barge lying among more modest caiques. A latticed pavilion with a pale blue (lead) roof provides an architectural link between the two images.


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