An exceptionally rare Ottoman silver-gilt mosque or throne hanging ornament, Turkey, 17th/18th century

Ex-European private collection, before 2000

This rare hanging ornament is an important survival of a type commissioned in both religious and secular settings during Ottoman rule. It is a near pair to an example sold in these rooms, 14 April 2010, lot 282, both sharing the same ribbed form, with stones set on delicately twisted wires at the contours. They were most likely commissioned as part of a set to sit above the sultan’s throne.

Historians relate that from the earliest centuries of Islam it was the custom of rulers to send valuable ornaments to be hung at the Ka'ba in Mecca and in the Tomb of the Prophet at Medina. Such pendants very probably included the spectacular jewellery with large emeralds now in the Treasury of the Topkapi Palace. The earliest depictions of hanging ornaments in shrines are in Matrakçı Nasuh's account of the principal stages of Süleyman the Magnificent's Persian campaign of 1534-35 Mecmu'a-yi Menazil (Istanbul University Library T 5964), folios 64b Mashhad 'Ali/ Najaf and 109a showing that of Seyyid Battal Gazi. The manuscript was dated 944 AH/1537-38 AD in the colophon, which has now been lost.

The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul, houses a small group of hanging ornaments showing their variety of technique and design. One example, attributed to the sixteenth century, has openwork tracery in floral designs parallel to Iznik tilework, while four attributed to the seventeenth century are set with panels of semi-precious stones and show variety in their base material. These examples all entered the museum collection from the türbe of Halid on 9 January 1926 and the Laleli Mosque, 26 November 1911 (see Akbank 2002, pp.298-300, see also fig.1). Predating those examples is an ornament produced by Iznik potters, circa 1480, which bears Qur’anic inscriptions (Raby 1989, p.150, no.277. Later examples from the eighteenth century include two magnificent emerald pendants commissioned by Sultan Mustafa III (r.1757-74) and Sultan Abdulmëcid (r.1839-61), probably for the Prophet’s Mosque, Medina, and now in the Topkapi Palace Treasury (Akbank 2000, p.209).

The Ottomans appear to have adopted this custom that was originally associated with mosques and shrines as part of their regalia, which aptly symbolised their claims to spiritual as well as secular authority. A well-known example of this is the Bayram Tahtı, on which the Sultan was accustomed to receiving the highest dignitaries of the Empire on the great feasts of the Muslim year, which was originally encrusted with 954 of the stones on gold sheet covering a walnut armature. Paintings of sultans enthroned on it show that it originally had a baldachin that could be removed, and by the eighteenth century the throne was set up in the portico of the Babüssaadet, on the axis of the Second Courtyard of the Topkapi Palace with the pendant hanging on a chain from the roof.

In this secular context, early representations of Ottoman hanging ornaments exist from the reign of Murad III (r.1574-95), when, in the Hünername (H.1524) of 996 AH/1587-88 AD, which was written for him, the Divan, the Council of State, is shown in session in the Kubbe Altı with a globe hanging at the centre of the chamber. There is also a miniature showing Selim II, evidently flown with wine, from his private chamber above it using the globe for impromptu archery practice, which suggests that the Sultan was free to commit lese majesté if he so desired. A manuscript in Vienna of c.1590 also depicts Murad III enthroned in the Arz Odası receiving an Austrian embassy, with two eggs hanging from the roof. In the eighteenth century, a painting by Jean Baptiste Vanmour (1671-1737) shows a series of hanging ornaments above Sultan Ahmed III’s throne (Istanbul 2003, p.195), and a painting by Antoine de Favray (1706-98) of Osman III (r.1754-57) similarly shows the sultan seated beneath a series of ornaments of comparable form to the present example (fig.2).

The pendants continued to be very various in their forms, some of them almost suggesting turban ornaments, and just as the later Sultans all seem to have had their own, so each may have had his particular pendant. None of the earlier ones appear to be eggs. Ostrich-eggs, however, showing elaborately and expensively decorated, and 'Damascus eggs', shiny glass balls, are listed in the building accounts for Süleymaniye Mosque (inaugurated 1557). They were also used to decorate tombs. Stefan Gerlach, who was in Istanbul in 1574, a matter of months after the death of Selim II, visited his tomb and describes round mirrors (shiny glass balls?) on silken strings with fine silken tassels hanging from them.

For a contemporaneous gold-overlaid steel hanging ornament made in India, and intended for the shrine in Karbala, see Sotheby’s, London, 30 April 2025, lot 606.