Evening entertainment before Aynalıkavak Palace

 

90a

 

89b

In the first frame (89b), İbrahim Pasha is seated on the Aynalıkavak Palace quay and accompanied by attendants as he watches the proceedings. According to Vehbi, the raft with a superstructure and nearer the shore was prepared by the members of the Arsenal corps and has four mechanical rams on the roof that run back and forth and butt heads with one another. Solomon’s seal fireworks are suspended between the pillars. On the second raft in the foreground of the frame we see dancers and musicians performing beneath a tightrope walker overhead. In the second frame (90a), the sultan appears seated in the palace’s observation balcony accompanied by two of his sons and a handful of attendants. The raft in the foreground with a kind of merry-go-round with swings is, on the basis of Vehbi’s account, a continuation of the foreground raft in (89b). On the raft closer to shore in this frame is a group of musicians providing the musical accompaniment for an opera-like performance in which all but one of the actors (the figure in the blue Ottoman kaftan) are dressed in Persian garb.


Images index

Return to Surname-i Vehbi index

Return to Kanyak's Doghouse