Water Festivals

Water Festivals

When Sultan Ahmed III brought the court back to Istanbul from Edirne in the early eighteenth century, he needed to reassert the court’s place, importance, and grandeur within the city. The 1720 princely circumcision festival - the first to be brought to the waterfront - served this function, and was an elaborate public spectacle that inaugurated the city improvements which came to be known as the conquest of the Bosphorus. Depicted in here in the Surname-i Vehbi by Levni, the festival drew massive crowds of Istanbul’s residents, treating its spectators to floating stages featuring roaring automatons, fireworks, acrobats, and even a horse-drawn carriage pulled along a tightrope. This Ottoman Baroque theater would inspire waterfront carnivals and amusement parks for the next decade, until the festivities - often thought to inspire impure behavior - were put to an end after the 1730 revolt, along with the Tulip Period attributed to Ahmed III.

Abdulcelil Levni