Page 197 - The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent

The Topkapi Palace collection also owns a large number of their designs worked out by specialists in numerology and
undergarments known as talismanic shirts (tilsimh gomlek). onomancy. The inscriptions on a unique shirt made for §eh-
Made of soft white cotton, linen, and occasionally cream or zade Gem, the son of Mehmed II, state that the work was be-
pink silks and painted with polychrome pigments, gold, and gun on 30 March 1477 and completed on 29 March 1480,
silver, these garments are decorated with Koranic verses, the text giving the exact minutes, hours, and configuration of
prayers, and magical squares with digits and letters (vefk) the constellation in both dates. 55 With the exception of two
whose numerical values (cefr) were used in predicting the fu- examples, the owners of these garments are not identified,
ture. The shirts were worn next to the skin to protect the nor are they dated and signed by the makers. The two excep-
owner from a variety of mishaps, including illness, danger tions are shirts made for §ehzade Gem and Selim II (see 123).
from enemies, and evil forces. These magical or talismanic One of the unidentified shirts (122) is decorated with such
shirts were also used in Iran and India. finesse that it could only have been produced for Süleyman.
The preparation of these garments was complicated, their Made of white linen and lined with white cotton with rose-
proper time of execution determined by court astrologers and colored silk facings, it is cut like a collarless, open-fronted,

122. Talismanic shirt, second quarter sixteenth century (Istanbul, Topkapi
Sarayí Müzesi, 13/1150)

196 Detail, 122