Table of Contents

1 “Holy Paradise! Is it Under or Above the City of Istanbul?”
2 Gardens, Creative Imagination and the Theory of Intermediary Space in Ibn al-‘Arabî’s Philosophy and its Reception in the Ottoman World
3 Gazel Poetry and Garden Rituals (1453–1730): Ideal and Real Gardens of Love
4 Şehrengiz Poetry and Urban Rituals (1512–1732): Ideal and Real City Spaces of Love, Reconciliation and Liberation
5 Nedîm’s Poetry and New Rituals of the Tulip Period (1718–1730): The Construction of Gardens at Kağıthane Commons
6 The “Storehouse” of Ottoman Landscape Tradition: Gardens and City Spaces as Barzakh
Appendices
1 Life of Ibn al-‘Arabî
2 Disciples of Ibn al-‘Arabî in Bayrami and Melâmî-Bayrami Orders of Sufi Mysticism
3 Melâmî Poles
4 List of Şehrengiz Poems

About the Author

B. Deniz Çalis-Kural is an architect and historian of Ottoman landscape and urban culture. She was awarded a BArch. by METU, Ankara, Turkey; a March. by Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and a PhD degree from METU. For her graduate studies, Çalis-Kural was granted fellowship from TUBITAK-The Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (1996-1998). She was a junior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies, Washington, DC (2003-2004). Her work has been published in TOPOS and Dumbarton Oaks Publications, among others. She has taught at Yeditepe and Bahçeşehir Universities of Istanbul. In 2010-2011, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia, School of Architecture. Çalis-Kural teaches in the Istanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture.

Reviews

'Şehrengiz, Urban Rituals and Deviant Sufi Mysticism in Ottoman Istanbul is thrillingly bold, demonstrating that the Ottoman Şehrengiz were a function of the Melami sufi order. This is as breath-taking as to say that performances at the Globe Theatre of Elizabethan England were a function of a secret mystical order penetrating the highest levels of government. Yet in this author’s hands the exposition proceeds at a calm, comfortable pace, rigorously supported and comfortably thorough.' Victoria Holbrook, author of The Unreadable Shores of Love: Turkish Modernity and Mystic Romance