Hey dear community, at the beginning I hope that you are all well and that you were able to have a day that has brought many positive experiences into your lives! In this post, I would like to discuss a historical topic and hope you can learn new things.
Here you can see pictures of tulips in different colors which have partly opened to present their full splendor and originally tulips also come from the Ottoman Empire to Europe via trade routes. In the Ottoman Empire, plants in general had a very great importance and sultans loved to decorate the gardens of the palaces with flowers and were also considered a popular motif for various works of art such as ceramics, metal art, murals and many more. There are numerous artwork decorated with stylish floral elements and sultans even decorated their animals with works of art in which flowers were seen as a motif and some sultans were also passionate gardeners and sent messengers to different countries to look for new plants to create more stylish gardens by combining different species and colors. The garden itself was also often regarded as a form of visual art and people loved to decorate themselves and so sometimes they decied to carry different plants in their turban and regarded this as a sign of prosperity and from a symbolic point of view, different plants were generally of great importance in this culture and during the 18th century in Turkey a separate flower language was also created which was also under the name Selam and the tulip was also considered an important symbol for the craft there. When it comes to flowers was one of the most famous sultans of the 18th century in Turkey Sultan Ahmed III (1673 - 1736) who placed so much importance on the cultivation of tulips and created large gardens and regularly celebrated festivals to share his passion.
The research and breeding of plants was also promoted and so the Ottoman Empire was very proud of the different species and during the 16th century, many plants came to Europe and more nobles from Europe became aware of the diverse flowers of the Ottoman Empire and it quickly developed into a large market that had specifically focused on exporting the seeds or bulbs to Europe and an important center for trade was Constantinople at that time, which is considered today's Istanbul and from there they came to Rome or Venice from where they were sent to other countries. The tulips were brought by diplomats of Emperor Ferdinand I (1503 - 1564) from the house of Habsburgs to Europe, from where they came to the Netherlands, which quickly became an important center for tulips and from there the trade was expanded more and more and reached other countries via routes on the high seas. Numerous poets from the Ottoman Empire also mentioned flowers in their writings and, similar to other cultures, medicinal plants were also very appreciated by the Ottomans and were of great importance and the tulip is just one of the many examples of flowers that come from the Ottoman Empire and have found their way to Europe.
Thank you very much for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about history! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.
