In the dream realm of a sixteenth-century Ottoman biographer: Taşköprizade and the sufi shaykhs

Abstract

In the mid-tenth/sixteenth century, the Ottoman elite lived in a milieu marked by intense construction activity, in which they inscribed themselves and the components of their empire in both paper and stone. While sultans, pashas and royal women patrons built their complexes and established endowments, the learned circles presented themselves in the public realm by constructing biographical dictionaries. One of these compilers was Taşköprizade (901-68/ 1495-1561) who worked on his biographical project in Istanbul at a time when a number of immense complexes such as Süleymaniye were being built, and new domes and minarets were rising across the city skyline.