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Beyan-i Menazil-i Sefer-i Irakeyn (1537)

Matrakci Nasuh, Beyan-i Menazil-i Sefer-i Irakeyn (Account of the Stages of the Campaign in the Two Iraqs), 1537. Istanbul University Library (T 5964). A manuscript documenting Suleiman I's 1534–1535 Iraqi campaign with 109 topographic city and landscape paintings — the first systematic topographic cityscape tradition in Islamic painting.

Scholarly Significance

Anchor Ottoman topographic painting with Matrakci Nasuh's Beyan-i Menazil — the first systematic cityscape paintings in Islamic art.

Notes

·The manuscript documents Suleiman I's Irakeyn (Two Iraqs) campaign of 1534–1535, which captured Baghdad from the Safavids. Matrakci Nasuh accompanied the campaign and produced his topographic record after the return to Istanbul.
·The 109 topographic paintings are unlike any previous Islamic visual tradition: they show cities and landscapes from a high bird's-eye viewpoint with no figures, capturing the general layout, main buildings, rivers, and fortifications of each location visited on the route from Istanbul to Baghdad and back.
·Key views include Istanbul (the most detailed 16th-century image of the city), Baghdad, Tabriz, Aleppo, and many smaller sites — a unique cartographic and visual survey of the Ottoman-Safavid frontier world.
·The Istanbul view shows Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia, the Hippodrome, the Golden Horn, and the Bosphorus in a continuous panorama — the primary visual source for early 16th-century Istanbul topography.
·The style is flat, schematic, and cartographic rather than scenic: buildings are shown as elevations or combined plan/elevation. The tradition Matrakci established was continued in Ottoman campaign manuscripts (Hunername, Shahinshahname) but with more conventional miniature figures.
·Matrakci was likely the sole painter; the manuscript was produced in Istanbul after the campaign's return.