From the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey: Formation and Display of the Earliest Islamic Art Collection in the Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümâyun), Istanbul

In the 1880s, Islamic art objects were not yet regarded as collectable heritage in the Ottoman state. Although Salomon Reinach (1858–1932) had suggested turning the fifteenth-century Çinili Köşk (Tiled Kiosk) into a museum of ‘Muslim art’ in 1883, this was realised only in 1908, when the building was devoted exclusively to the Islamic art collection of the Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümâyun). The collection itself had begun to take shape gradually from the 1880s under the direction of Osman Hamdi (1842–1910) and Halil Edhem (1861–1938). In 1939, during the early Republican period, the collection in Çinili Köşk was dispersed, closing this chapter. This paper examines how the formation and display of the earliest Islamic art gallery in the Imperial Museum were shaped through the interplay between the visions and scholarly networks of individual actors and by the broader political and cultural transformations of the late Ottoman and early Republican state. These individuals, shaped by the intellectual currents of their time, simultaneously influenced state cultural policies, redefining the Islamic art collection under the framework of ‘national heritage,’ ‘decorative art,’ and/or ‘masterpieces’ and positioning the museum within internationally recognizable scholarly and curatorial practices. By situating the Imperial Museum’s Islamic art gallery within both local reformist agendas and transnational exchanges, this study argues that it functioned as a site where the collection was reframed in service of nationalism and international recognition.