The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts (TIEM) in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet Square is the first museum in Turkiye. It displays artifacts from the early Islamic period to the twentieth century, including ancient manuscripts of the Quran and Muslim manuscripts from around the Islamic world.
Istanbul Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts (Türk-Islam Eserleri Müzesi) is one of the most important museums in Turkiye.
The museum was founded on the initiative of Sheikh Al-Islam ‘Khayri Effendi’, Minister of Endowments of the Ottoman Empire, in response to the increasing theft of historical artifacts from mosques, other religious sites and tombs in the later period of the Ottoman Empire and to prevent smuggling of these works of art.
He was opened in 1914 under the direction of Osman Hamdi Bey (Director of the Imperial Museum and renowned artist) in a mansion inside the Süleymaniye Mosque complex, built by famous Ottoman architect of the XVI century Sinan, but was moved to its current location, the Ibrahim Pasha Palace, in 1983.
The museum’s collection is a treasury of works of Islamic art collected in the early XX century from all over the Ottoman Empire. These include carpets, manuscripts, metalwork, glassware, tiles and woodwork.
Rare museum pieces from the Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Ilkhanid, Timurid, Safavid, Qajar, Mameluk, Seljuk and Ottoman periods were brought from various parts of the Islamic world.
The metal and wood collection allows the visitors to learn about the development of craftsmanship in Anatolia. It also includes a rich collection of woodwork from the III century Hijra/ X century AD to the Ottoman period.
The glass and ceramic collections include antiquities from the Abbasid period found in cities such as Samarra, Kashan and Raqqa (Syria), as well as antiquities from the Anatolian Turks. The stone works, which are mostly in the form of inscriptions, include specimens from the Umayyad, Abbasid, Mamluks, Seljuk and Ottoman periods.
The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts reopened in April 2014 after a major renovation.
Beautiful and exquisite carpets
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This museum is famous for having the best collection of carpets in the world. “Our museum is also known worldwide as the Carpet Museum,” Akram Aytar, Director of the TIEM, told. – We have exhibited three carpets from the Seljuk period. They date back to the XIII century and there is not a single museum in the world where one could see three carpets of the Seljuk period altogether”.
Aytar added that this collection housed around 1700 carpets.
Metal, glass and tiles
The metal, glass and tile works in this museum date back to the XII-XX centuries. Ceramic and plaster reliefs from Seljuk and Ottoman buildings, frescoes left over from palaces, stone vessels from Raqqa, woodwork, early Islamic, Seljuk and Ottoman stone carvings are some of the unique and very valuable exhibits in the museum.
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Exquisite Qurans and manuscripts
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The museum also houses about 200 000 pages of special manuscripts written on large sheets and obtained from the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. These manuscripts were badly damaged in a major fire at the mosque in 1911. Water used to try to put out the fire washed the ink off the manuscripts.
Ethnography section
Ethnography section is the latest in the museum. A large hall in the museum courtyard is dedicated to ethnographic collection reflecting the everyday life of Istanbul’s residents in the XIX and early XX centuries. In this section, which opened in 2019, the visitors can see Ottoman Istanbul in interesting detail. The Director of TIEM said: “Here we also have exhibitions with beautiful examples of Istanbul women’s clothes of that time”.
Monuments to the Prophet adorn the museum
A section called ‘Holy Monuments’ has recently been added to the museum. It includes relics attributed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). In this section you can see hair, the Messenger’s garments and the traces on the stone.
There are about 40 000 exhibits from different collections in the museum, recently the museum staff have been trying to digitize various works of art.
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Dosseman/Creative Commons 4.0
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