A Sight for Sore Eyes

One of the things I’ll miss the most about Turkey is the imagery. I love the image of the tulip and how you can find it anywhere in Istanbul. I will no longer think of the Dutch when I see a tulip- I’ll think of Turkey and how every mosque has tulips painted on the tiles or woven into the carpet. Since Islam prohibits the use of the human form in art, everything seems somehow more creative and beautiful. Paintings and mosaics of plants or geometric patterns are common, but never get boring. The designs can get so intricate that I marvel at how much effort it must have taken to create.



It all became even more impressive when our guide took us to a small mosque and told us that each tile was hand painted without any sort of stencil, yet each figure was almost exactly like the one before it. The thousands of artists over the centuries that have their art displayed throughout this city must have had so much discipline to create and recreate the same forms with such clarity and precision. What motivated them to do this? What drove them to slave away over pieces of tile or carpet for years? Was it out of a love for their religion, the empire, or just pride in their craft? Was it something else entirely? We even had the chance to see some ceramics being made and it still amazed me that people could sit down and create such things.



Even the Arabic script seems like an intense process to me. Some of it is written in a way that it is more art than text, and that craft takes years to perfect. Another symbol I find intriguing is the three circles, representing the three continents of the Ottoman Empire. At its height, the empire stretched over Asia, Europe, and Africa. The three circles can be found almost anywhere, even on people as tattoos. I can’t think of a single Western image I would care enough to have permanently inscribed on my body. I’ve really learned to love these images and it’ll be hard to leave them behind.