Stylogenyin the style of Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

Traditions & vernacular · c. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia

Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

Also known as Tughra (Ottoman Turkish ṭuġrā; Turkish tuğra), Ottoman imperial monogram, Sultan's cipher, Dîvânî chancery script (Ottoman hatt-ı çep), Celî dîvânî

The Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it. From Orhan in 1324 each sultan had his own tughra, composed at his accession and redrawn by hand on every decree: his name and titles stacked at the base, three tall shafts, two nested loops sweeping left and arms reaching right. Struck on coins and carved over gates, it was at its grandest lettered in blue outlined in gold, its loops filled with scrolls and blossoms. Below it ran Dîvânî, a slanting, tightly packed hand. A counterpart of the European royal cypher: one owned mark carried across every medium.

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Use it with care

A tughra is the personal mark of one sovereign and spells his name with a prayer for victory: do not redraw a historical sultan's tughra as a brand logo, product stamp or decorative texture, do not present a new design as a historical one, and never fill the form with invented pseudo-Arabic. The calligraphy behind the tughra and Dîvânî, hüsn-i hat, is a living craft passed on through apprenticeship (UNESCO Representative List, 2021), so commission a hattat for a new tughra and have every word read by a fluent reader of Ottoman Turkish. The tughra is also a sign of Ottoman rule: where that rule is remembered as conquest, as in parts of the Balkans, Greece, Armenia and the Arab world, or is invoked by nationalist politics, it can read as a claim to that rule, so check how the audience will read it. The tughra form is also used for sacred texts, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith and the names of the founders of Sufi orders, and Popov showed a 'tughra of Allah' in Kazan; such compositions follow the parent tradition's rules: never crop, distort or mirror them, and keep them off floors, footwear and throwaway surfaces.

01

How it works

  • Give one ruler one mark: stack the name, the father's name and the formula 'ever victorious' in the base (sere), raise three tall shafts (tuğ) crossed by S-shaped strokes (zülfe), sweep two nested loops (beyze) out to the left and extend the arms (hançer) to the right, then redraw that same composition by hand on every decree and carry it to coins, seals and inscriptions, refining its proportions when needed (Orhan's tughra of 1324 was redrawn by 1348, Mahmud II's in Mustafa Râkım's reformed style from 1815) but never changing whose mark it is.
  • Make the mark by far the largest thing on the sheet: set it alone at the head of the document, above the long run of small text, on a plain burnished paper ground, so the page reads as authority before it is read as words.
  • Match the finish to the occasion: for grand decrees letter the strokes in blue, outline them in gold and fill the loops with fine spiral scrolls and small blossoms; for everyday orders and coins, draw or strike the same outline plain in one ink or metal; on stone, cut the letters in relief and, as on the large sultanic tughras especially from Mahmud II on, gild them with gold leaf and paint the ground a dark colour: black, deep green, dark blue or dark cherry.
  • Write the text in Dîvânî: pack letters and words close together, slant them to the left, let each line end rise to a point and finish each line with a stroke drawn downward, so the decree is hard for outsiders to read and hard to tamper with.
  • Carry identity with letters alone: no figures, no pictures and no tiling; after Mustafa Râkım's reform of the form (begun under Selim III and Mustafa IV, mature in Mahmud II's tughra from 1815), keep the spaces between the letters clear of decoration, let proportion carry the beauty, and if ornament is wanted, frame the tughra on all four sides like a calligraphy panel.

The Ottoman court chancery of the Dîvân-ı Hümâyun (imperial council), at Bursa and Edirne and from 1453 in Istanbul. The word and the practice are older than the Ottomans: Mahmud al-Kashgari (11th century) records that in Oghuz Turkic 'the tughragh is the seal and signature of the king', and the Seljuks kept an office of the tughra (Dîvân-ı Tuğra) from their founder Tuğrul Bey. The Ottoman tughra was the charge of the nişancı, a high official and member of the imperial council who sealed the sultan's decrees (the title dates from Murad II; the office was abolished in 1836). Specialist court calligraphers and illuminators drew and decorated it; the name tuğrakeş, which modern writers also give to the court's specialists of the 1530s–50s, became the customary title of those who drew it after 1836 and lasted until 1922. The earliest known Ottoman tughra is Orhan's of 1324 (Wikipedia gives 1326). Chancery scribes wrote the text in Dîvânî, a hand Turkish calligraphers developed from Persian taʿlīq, with examples surviving from the reign of Mehmed II. The illumination travelled beyond documents: Iznik 'Golden Horn' ware (c. 1530–50), which Julian Raby calls 'tuğrakeş spiral ware', has thin spiral scrolls like those behind Süleyman's tughra, as on the Met's Dish with 'Tughra-illuminator' Design (ca. 1540–50, 41.45). Other courts used tughras too: the Safavids and Qajars, the Crimean and Kazan khanates and the Mughals, and the form lasted on Afghan banknotes (1919–1936) and Pakistani coins (1947–1974)

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
All-over field, Modular grid, Flat hierarchy, Geometric tessellation, Naturalistic depiction, Stylised figuration, Straight photography, Grotesque & neo-grotesque, Fluorescent & neon

Palette

  • #f1e6cf
  • #2e4ea6
  • #bf9a52
  • #1b1916
  • #2f9a92

Typefaces

  • The tughra's own scheme

    name, father's name and the formula el-muzaffer dâimâ ('ever victorious') stacked in the sere, under three tall shafts (tuğ) with S-shaped zülfe, two nested beyze loops and the arms (kol or hançer), composed at each sultan's accession and redrawn by hand on every decree; illuminated tughras were prepared in advance in an officially fixed number, kept in the treasury and pasted to the head of decrees as needed, the nişancı writing sahhü'l-vasl across the join

  • Dîvânî (Ottoman hatt-ı çep), the chancery hand of fermans, berats and nişans

    tightly packed letters leaning to the left, with line ends rising to a point

  • Celî dîvânî, the monumental form for panels and inscriptions, mastered by the leading dîvânî calligraphers such as Sâmi Efendi and Kâmil Akdik; after the 1928 alphabet reform it lived on in a few celî dîvânî panels by famous calligraphers of the last generation, and dîvânî is still taught in Cairo

  • Dîvânî kırması, the fast register hand of the mühimme defterleri

  • Pençe, the simpler mark that viziers, beylerbeyis and other officials used in place of a signature, set in the space beside the opening of the text rather than above it

Known for

  • Tughra of Orhan, the earliest known Ottoman tughra (1324 in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, 1326 in Wikipedia), naming simply 'Orhan, son of Osman'; his second tughra of 1348 already curves the nûns and adds a zülfe

  • Akçe of Süleyman Çelebi dated 1404, the first Ottoman coin bearing a tughra

    'Emir Süleyman, son of Bayezid'

  • Foundation inscription over the gate of the Heptapyrgion, Thessaloniki (1431), headed by the tughra of Murad II, a rare early tughra in stone

  • Two illuminated tughras of Süleyman the Magnificent, Istanbul, ca. 1555–60, ink, opaque watercolour and gold on paper

    (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 38.149.1 and 38.149.2); the first, 52.1 × 64.5 cm, has letters in blue outlined in gold, and blue and gold spiral scrolls of stems, blossoms and cloud bands inside the loops

  • Tughra of Mehmed IV (r. 1648–87), cut from the head of a decree scroll, lettered in gold with a foliated sunburst in turquoise, gold and silver (Cleveland Museum of Art, 1944.525)

  • Illuminated ferman of Mustafa III (r. 1757–74), Library of Congress, which the Library's Near East Section calls one of the most exquisitely illuminated firmans; its tughra sits at the base of a conical arrangement of tulips and other flowers

  • Mustafa Râkım's reformed tughra for Mahmud II (from 1815), which set the proportions later tughras followed and dropped decoration between the letters

  • The first Ottoman postage stamps, the 'Tughra issue' of 1 January 1863, with the tughra of Abdülaziz over a crescent

03

Make something in this style

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleOttoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphyc. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Sources

  1. M. Uğur Derman, 'Tuğra', TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, on the Oghuz and Seljuk background (Dîvân-ı Tuğra from Tuğrul Bey), Orhan's first tughra (1324) and a second of 1348, the parts of the tughra, the nişancı and the later title tuğrakeş, illuminated tughras prepared in advance and joined to decrees (sahhü'l-vasl), late-fifteenth-century decorated tughras, Mustafa Râkım's reform and four-sided framing, gilded relief stone tughras on dark grounds from the eighteenth century, tughras of Qur'anic verses, hadith and Sufi founders' names, and the pençe (https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/tugra)
  2. Ali Alparslan, 'Dîvânî', TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi vol. 9 (1994), pp. 445–446, on the chancery script's origin from taʿlīq, its close-packed letters for secrecy and against tampering, the leftward slant, rising line ends closed by a downward stroke, celî dîvânî and its masters (Sâmi Efendi, Kâmil Akdik and others), its survival in celî dîvânî panels after 1928, its teaching in Cairo, and dîvânî kırması (https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/divani)
  3. Joan Weeks (Head, Near East Section), 'The Sultan's Tughra', Library of Congress, 4 Corners of the World blog, posted by Anchi Hoh (28 July 2021), on the tughra drawn at each sultan's accession and the ferman of Mustafa III (https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2021/07/the-sultans-tughra/)
  4. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tughra (Insignia) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent, ca. 1555–60, 38.149.1 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/449533) and 38.149.2 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/449534)
  5. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dish with 'Tughra-illuminator' Design, Iznik, ca. 1540–50, 41.45 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/450384)
  6. Cleveland Museum of Art, Tughra of Sultan Mehmed IV, 1648–87, 1944.525 (https://clevelandart.org/art/1944.525)
  7. Wikipedia, 'Tughra', for the etymology (Mahmud al-Kashgari: 'the tughragh is the seal and signature of the king'), the tughra on seals and coins, the Süleyman Çelebi akçe (1404), the Heptapyrgion tughra, the tughras of other states, Afghan banknotes and Pakistani coins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tughra)
  8. Wikipedia, 'Iznik pottery', on Golden Horn ware and Julian Raby's term 'tuğrakeş spiral ware' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iznik_pottery)
  9. Wikipedia, 'Mustafa Râkım', after M. Uğur Derman, Letters in Gold: Ottoman Calligraphy from the Sakıp Sabancı Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_R%C3%A2kim)
  10. Wikipedia, 'Nişancı' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C5%9Fanc%C4%B1)
  11. Wikipedia, 'Postage stamps and postal history of Turkey', on the 1863 Tughra issue and the end of the tughra on stamps in 1922 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_history_of_Turkey)
  12. Wikimedia Commons, 'THES-Heptapyrgion inscription.jpg', foundation inscription of 1431 with the tughra marked (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:THES-Heptapyrgion_inscription.jpg)
  13. Business Gazeta (Kazan), 'Тугра Владимира Путина – рулевое колесо, а Барак Обама – «хоровод» из звездочек' (2014), on Vladimir Popov's exhibition 'Calligraphy for Peace' (https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/99924)
  14. UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 'Hüsn-i Hat, traditional calligraphy in Islamic art in Turkey', inscribed 2021 (https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/husn-i-hat-traditional-calligraphy-in-islamic-art-in-turkey-01684)
  15. Loyola University Chicago digital exhibit, 'Tughra of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent Catalogue Entry', after Maryam D. Ekhtiar and Claire Moore, Art of the Islamic World: A Resource for Educators (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012), pp. 128–129, on the Met tughra's blue letters outlined in gold and its scrolls of stems, blossoms and cloud bands (https://libapps.luc.edu/digitalexhibits/s/honr212spring01/page/amaan-r2)
  16. Wikipedia, 'Mahmud al-Kashgari', for his dates (1005–1102; Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, 1072–74) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_al-Kashgari)
  17. CNumis, Pakistan '1 pie - Emblem', 1951–1957, KM#11, crescent and star over a tughra with the legend GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN (https://cnumis.com/en/catalog/pakistan/vintage/1-pie-embleme-59381)
  18. Wikipedia, 'Abolition of the Ottoman sultanate', on the end of the monarchy on 1 November 1922 and the Republic of 29 October 1923 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_the_Ottoman_sultanate)
  19. Wikipedia, 'Royal cypher', on the sovereign's monogram in European heraldry, which mentions the Ottoman tughra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_cypher)

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