A hinge of history

Originally published 12 March 2006

In two week’s time [in 2006] I will be in Istan­bul, on my way to view a total solar eclipse. It will be my sec­ond vis­it to that great city, and my sec­ond TSE.

Istan­bul is the most Euro­pean of Moslem cities. It sits astride the Bospho­rus, the tra­di­tion­al bound­ary between Europe and Asia. It was once the cap­i­tal of a Moslem empire that reached to India and Spain, Today, with all of Turkey, it aspires to be part of the Euro­pean Union.

One of the best intro­duc­tions to the soul of Istan­bul are the nov­els of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s most pop­u­lar writer. Like Istan­bul itself, his books bridge divides — between Europe and Asia, sec­u­lar­ism and reli­gion, moder­ni­ty and tradition.

My Name Is Red—part mur­der mys­tery, part love sto­ry, part his­tor­i­cal fic­tion —is set in Istan­bul of the late 1590s, and begins with the Ottoman sul­tan Murat II secret­ly com­mis­sion­ing a book that will cel­e­brate his life and empire, to be illus­trat­ed by a group of mas­ter minia­tur­ists, men trained in the artis­tic styles of the great tra­di­tion­al mas­ters of Islam­ic text illumination.

Why the secre­cy? The illus­tra­tions will be in the new Euro­pean style of real­is­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion, with shad­ow, per­spec­tive, and all the oth­er tricks-in-trade of Euro­pean Renais­sance art — all deeply hereti­cal by Islam­ic stan­dards. Shock­ing­ly, the book will also include a rec­og­niz­able por­trait of the Sul­tan him­self, not as a styl­ized appendage to Allah’s word, but as an object of admi­ra­tion in itself.

Inno­va­tion con­fronts tra­di­tion, sec­u­lar­ism con­fronts theoc­ra­cy, indi­vid­ual artis­tic style con­fronts anony­mous con­for­mi­ty to estab­lished modes of expres­sion. Soon, two men are dead, and we have a baf­fling mys­tery that is not resolved until the final pages of the book.

Pamuk’s sto­ry con­cerns itself with art, but some­thing else, not unre­lat­ed, was hap­pen­ing in Europe in the 1590s.

Astronomers debat­ed the truth of the Coper­ni­can sys­tem of the world, which removed the Earth (and humankind!) from the cen­ter of the uni­verse. Anatomists dis­sect­ed the human body, and used their care­ful obser­va­tions to chal­lenge ancient learn­ing. Soon the tele­scope and micro­scope would reveal new worlds, large and small.

All of this was part of a great cul­tur­al upheaval that had its begin­ning in art.

Once an artist such as Albrecht Dür­er could take as his sub­ject a sin­gle rab­bit or patch of weeds, and describe with life­like real­ism every hair and whisker, every leaf and stem, the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion could not be far behind. Once an artist, such as Dür­er, promi­nent­ly signed his work and took pride in his own indi­vid­ual style, the Ref­or­ma­tion and col­lapse of mono­lith­ic the­ol­o­gy was inevitable.

The Renais­sance, Ref­or­ma­tion, and Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion can togeth­er be tak­en as a hinge of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, when Europe embraced progress, indi­vid­ual cre­ativ­i­ty, and empir­i­cal learn­ing, and turned its back on tra­di­tion, theoc­ra­cy, and the author­i­ty of the past. The Roy­al Soci­ety in Lon­don, the world’s first sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tion, took as its mot­to Nul­lius in ver­ba, “Don’t take any­one’s word for it,” and there was no turn­ing back.

As the 16th-cen­tu­ry began, Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion was expe­ri­enc­ing a Gold­en Age, and one might rea­son­ably have thought that the East was des­tined for cul­tur­al and mil­i­tary dom­i­nance over the West. It was not to be. The Turks were checked at the walls of Vien­na in 1529 and beat­en at sea at Lep­an­to in 1571. But it was in the realm of ideas, not in war, that Europe gained ascendency.

In his nov­el, Pamuk describes a large mechan­i­cal clock with stat­u­ary sent as a gift to Sul­tan Murat II by Eng­land’s Queen Eliz­a­beth I, meant to rep­re­sent, pre­sum­ably, the best of Euro­pean sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal and artis­tic inno­va­tion. Murat’s less for­ward look­ing suc­ces­sor, Ahmet I, takes a mace to the clock and bash­es it to pieces in the name of Allah — and returns Islam­ic book illus­tra­tion (and, by impli­ca­tion, Islam­ic cul­ture) to slav­ish imi­ta­tion of the past.

Pamuk’s won­der­ful­ly orig­i­nal who­dunit evokes this sig­nif­i­cant moment in Islam­ic his­to­ry with all of the con­flict­ed loy­al­ties — to past and future, East and West, reli­gion and sec­u­lar­ism, author­i­ty and free­dom — that are Istan­bul today.