The Arts of the Book in the Aydınid Realm: Exploring a Neglected Medical Manuscript from Late Fourteenth-Century Western Rum

Abstract

It is now well established in scholarship that the Turkmen principalities (beyliks) of late medieval Rum possessed lively, dynamic court cultures and that several of their members were enthusiastic supporters of art and architecture. Recent publications have shown that, like their more famous Ilkhanid and Mamluk contemporaries, several Turkmen princes were avid patrons of the Islamic arts of the book. For the most part, however, scholars have not examined the contributions of the Aydınid principality (1308–1425) to this art form. Before the emergence of Ottoman domination, the Aydınids were one of the most powerful and prosperous local polities, based on the western coast of present-day Turkey in and around Birgi, Ayasuluk (Selçuk), Tire, and İzmir. In an effort to contribute to ongoing discussions concerning the production and patronage of the late medieval arts of the book from Rum, this article analyzes and contextualizes an illuminated manuscript that was produced for Fakhr al-Din ʿIsa ibn Muhammad ibn Aydın (r. ca. 1360–90). This manuscript appears not to have been studied in any depth before. Given the small number of securely identified manuscripts from late fourteenth-century Rum, this material marks an exciting and welcome addition to the corpus.