Page with illuminated calligraphy, Hadith (Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad)

Ottoman calligraphers often demonstrated their skills by writing different styles and sizes of Arabic script on rectangular sheets of paper, which were then illuminated, mounted on pasteboard with colored and marbled papers, and assembled into accordion fold albums, known as muraqqaʿ. This calligraphic panel containing Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, was composed by the 18th-century Ottoman calligrapher Mehmed ‘Atâ, known as Mestçi-zâde. The heading is written in the thuluth style of script and the five small lines of calligraphy are written in the naskh style. To make the verse markers, an illuminator used gold to paint pinwheel medallions. Nearly one hundred years after the calligraphic panel was inscribed, the famous Istanbul paper marbler, Mehmed Necmeddin Okyay (1883-1976), made the marbled papers used in the decorative panels and the inner and outer borders, each of which presents different aesthetic and technical skills. The thin inner border, lined with gold margins, uses multiple colored pigments to create diagonal, zigzagging lines, while the outer border is a monochrome stone pattern made by dropping pigment onto a tragacanth bath and letting it spread out. The decorative panels each feature a single stylistic tulip on a blue stone-patterned background.