Scenting the imperial residence: objects from the Topkapi Palace Museum collections

Following every major meal in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, the sultan was incensed with amber and aloewood, and every evening, an amber-and-aloewood-scented candle perfumed his bedroom, according to page-boy Albert Bobovi's seventeenth-century account of everyday life. Talikizade's Sehname (ca. 1596-1600) shows Suleyman the Magnificent seated with his son in his library, next to a censer emitting tendrils of smoke. Approximately sixty such censers are preserved in the Topkapi Palace Museum today. Taking as a vantage point this rich textual, pictorial and material evidence, this essay examines olfactory practices and objects employed in the imperial residence. Against the background of the Topkapi Palace's sensescape and Islamic and Ottoman traditions in general, we discuss the prominent examples of five incense burners and three rosewater sprinklers of varying material and date, in order to arrive at conclusions about the objects' form, function, and symbolic role in contributing to cleanliness, sacrality, as well as imperial and elite culture.