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Friday, February 14, 2014
Triumphal Tents
Ottoman Tents, European Trophies, and Remembering the Battle for Vienna
guest contribution by Ashley Dimmig, University of Michigan
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| [1] Three-poled Ottoman tent, ca. 17th-century, Tent gallery, Türckische Cammer, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (David Brandt, SKM). |
On the thirteenth of September 1683, Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland, sat in the tent of the recently vanquished Ottoman Grand Vizier outside the city of Vienna, writing a letter to his wife to tell her of his victory in battle. He marveled at the scale and magnificence of the tents in the Ottoman camp, describing them being “‘as large as Warsaw or Lviv within the walls’” (Atasoy 240-41, Żygulski 165). [i.e., Figure 1] By Sobieski’s count, many tents were seized in the aftermath of the battle for Vienna—perhaps as many as a hundred thousand—although this estimate is most likely generous. Subsequently, the spoils of war, chief among them the magnificent seventeenth-century Ottoman imperial tents, were dispersed among the allied victors, in particular Poland, Germany, and Austria.…
