Page from an Album of Calligraphies of Prophetic Traditions (Hadith), ca. 1500; Ottoman Signed by Hamdullah ibn Mustafa Dede Turkey (Istanbul).
An Ottoman Curtain From the Tawassul at Medina (detail). Turkey. 13th century AH / 19th century AD
An Ottoman Woven Silk Tomb Cover. Turkey. 12th century AH / 18th century AD.
"When the turkish troops began hunting down the tribes, the men gave battle, while the women and children hid in deep caves. Thousands of these women and children perished, because the army bricked up the entrances of the caves. These caves are marked with numbers on the military maps of the area. At the entrances of other caves, the military lit fires to cause those inside to suffocate. Those who tried to escape from the caves were finished off with bayonets. A large proportion of the women and girls of the Kureyshan and Bakhtiyar threw themselves from high cliffs into the Munzur and Parchik ravines, in order not to fall into the turks’ hands."Nuri Dersimi on the Dersim Genocide (via herokarimi)
(Source: herovan)
Ottoman Qur’an Manuscript. Circa 1566.
Can we please bring the tarbouche back?
(Source: nativethoughts)
Yeni Camii (New Mosque) by © Sam.Seyffert on Flickr.
Blue Mosque, detail
Turkey considers Syria border buffer zone →
ANKARA — Turkey said on Friday it might set up a border “buffer zone” to protect growing numbers of Syrian refugees fleeing a violent uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
With the bloody revolt entering its second year, government forces battled protesters in at least three suburbs of the capital Damascus, opposition activists said. They also reported flare-ups in other towns and cities.
The UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan was due to brief the United Nations Security Council later in the day on his efforts to end the violence, but there was no sign of any breakthrough.
Assad faced growing international isolation as more Arab states announced they were shutting their embassies and the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it “strongly urged” its citizens to leave the country because of growing security concerns.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once a firm ally of Assad, said he was considering setting up a buffer zone along the border with Syria. Ankara might then withdraw its ambassador once its nationals had returned home.
“A buffer zone, a security zone, are things being studied,” he told reporters in Ankara, but said other ideas were also under consideration. “It would be wrong to look at it from only one perspective.”
Some 1,250 refugees have fled into Turkey from northern Syria in the last 48 hours, escaping an army onslaught in the frontier Idlib province.
Some 45 civilians had been killed in the region in the past day, including 23 whose bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, as well as five army deserters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported.
The Syrian government says it is grappling with an insurgency by terrorists and foreign-backed militants and denies accusations of brutality against civilians.
Ankara is wary of any military intervention in Syria, fearing a broader civil war could spill over its borders, but a buffer zone would need armed protection, analysts say.
Turkey set up such a zone along the border with Iraq during the Gulf War in the early 1990s when tens of thousands of refugees headed towards its territory …
Activists said security forces fired heavily in southern Damascus’s Qadam suburb on Friday to chase demonstrators off the roads. They also reported firing in the western suburb of Daraya and clashes with army deserters in Ghouta, east of the capital, which has seen gun battles in the past.
A Kurdish news agency in Turkey said many Kurds had staged a protest in Syria’s second city Aleppo as well as other centers. It reported one person shot dead in Hassaka in northeast Syria …
Underlining Assad’s growing isolation, four members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) announced the closures of their embassies in protest against its violent crackdown, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.
Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Qatar were to follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and halt diplomatic activity in Syria, the GCC was quoted as saying in a statement.
Russia, one of Assad’s few remaining friends, condemned the decision, saying it was vital to keep communication open …
Read Whole: Egypt Independent
