Potter / tilemaker

The potter here is the maker of the glazed tiles that clothe the walls of Islamic architecture. The TDV encyclopaedia follows the craft from the lustre ware of Samarra to the cut tile mosaic of the Seljuks, the underglaze colours of Iznik and the move of the centre to Kutahya. It names the makers Merendli, the Tusi master, Muhammad al-Majnun and Ali ibn Ilyas Ali of Bursa. It does not describe kilns, vessel pottery or guilds. ¹

The Ottoman word cini means Chinese work, from Cin, China, because the Chinese introduced porcelain. The entry calls glazed tile the most colourful interior and exterior decoration of Turkish-Islamic art. A coloured glaze is fired over a tile body and gives a permanent colour. The entry traces glazed brick back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and says the Uyghurs used glazed tile before Islam. ¹

The entry names Samarra, in Abbasid times, for green and yellow glazed pieces and for lustre pieces painted with metallic powders in dark red, brown, yellow and orange. It says the tiles on the mihrab wall of the Great Mosque of Kairouan are similar, and, as an inference, that similar tiles at Qal'at Bani Hammad must have been imported from Egypt. Cut tile mosaic, in turquoise, purple, green and cobalt glazes cut to shape and set in plaster, was used mainly on religious buildings. ¹

The Seljuks developed lustre. At Kubadabad, near Beysehir (1226–1236), the design was painted on a matt white, purple or turquoise glaze with a silver or copper oxide mixture and fired again at low heat. The mina'i technique, with seven colours painted over a fired glaze and fired again, is found in Anatolian Seljuk art, in the entry's account, only at the Alaeddin kiosk in Konya. Incised tile was used for inscriptions at Sivas and Malatya. ¹

An incised cartouche on the Kaykawus tomb at Sivas gives the master's name as Merendli. The inscription at the Sircali Medrese (1243) names an artist from Tus, and the entry understands that his family came from Tus and spread the craft through Konya. Muhammad al-Majnun is written in tile in the Yesil mosque's royal lodge, and the entry calls it the craftsman's signature. Ali ibn Ilyas Ali of Bursa was, the entry says, taken to Samarkand by Timur in 1402, learned new techniques there and returned with masters from Tabriz, and the work at the Yesil mosque is attributed to him. The chief court illuminators Shahkulu and Kara Memi designed patterns for the tile masters. ¹

At the Yesil mosque in Bursa (1419–1422) the design was incised or pressed into a red body and then coloured glazes were applied, or outlines were drawn on a white slip in a chrome-manganese mixture so that raised lines kept the colours from running. Blue-and-white tile appears at the Muradiye in Edirne (1436) under a transparent glaze. From the second half of the sixteenth century slip, outline and colour were painted under the glaze, and coral red joined the palette. The entry says the tiles of the Selimiye in Edirne were ordered from Iznik by decrees of 1572, and that, according to the records, 21,043 tiles were used in the Sultan Ahmed mosque. ¹

Beyond Anatolia, the entry says mosaic tile developed in Iran under the Ilkhanids in the fourteenth century, that Timurid tile at Samarkand and Bukhara in the fifteenth century used painted coloured glaze, and that tile was widely applied in the Maghreb and Spain without giving names or dates. In Egypt it was used less, and only in the Mamluk period. Kutahya replaced Iznik in the seventeenth century and was the only centre in the eighteenth. ¹

From the first half of the seventeenth century the coral red turned brown, colours faded and glazes lost their shine. Iznik tile-making ended in the early eighteenth century. A workshop at the Tekfur Palace set up with Iznik materials under Ahmed III and Damad Ibrahim Pasha lasted about twenty-five years. A revival in the early twentieth century is seen at the tomb of Mehmed Resad (1918). ¹

• TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "ÇİNİ", Şerare Yetkin, vol. 8, Istanbul 1993, pp. 329–335. ¹