Evening entertainment before Aynalıkavak Palace
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64a |
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63b |
This scene shows the evening entertainment that took place on the fourth day of the festival. In the upper part of (63b) we see the grand vizier seated before the palace’s seaside gate. (According to Vehbi, he was accompanied by Governor Ali Pasha of Raqqa, Governor İbrahim Pasha of Maraş, and Tevkii Mustafa Pasha this evening.) The middle and lower parts of the frame depict two different rafts. The middle raft is the one Vehbi tells us was the second in the flotilla and was prepared by the Arsenal corps consisting of a huge tent of about four hundred fireworks of different types flanked by two big cypress trees constructed of four hundred fireworks each. The hexagonal stars suspended between the columns were fireworks known as "Solomon’s seals" and the raft was loaded with an enormous assortment of fireworks of every imaginable kind. The raft at the bottom was the sixth in line and contains the dummy of "a frightful demon". The superstructure of this raft has a roof on which there are two pairs of mechanical rams that butt heads with each other. At the front of the raft are two cypress-tree fireworks and at the back, a military band. In (64a) we see the sultan, two of his sons, and a number of attendants watching the proceedings from an enclosed balcony. Below them is a raft that Vehbi describes at great length. The first in the evening’s flotilla, it was constructed by the Engineers corps and laid out as an elaborate garden of fireworks decorated with lanterns and Solomon’s seals. (In his depiction of this raft, Levni has included musicians and dancers. According to Vehbi, the raft with musicians and dancers was constructed by the Arsenal corps and was the third in the flotilla.)
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