The "BATTLE OF MOHACS" ILLUSTRATION: WINDOW INTO REALITY

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology and Civilization, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt

المستخلص

War is a social activity that involves the mobilization and organization of individual men.It is an activity to inflict damage in every way; its aim is victory.Wars are divided to location, whether on land or at sea; type, whether defensive or offensive and circumstance, whether civil or internal, just or unjust. War between two states with the same religion or with different belief systems has always been a source of terror or horror. However, confronting on the battle field between the armies of two nations, states or empires 'big war' has consequences that are different from those of an ongoing 'small war'. Despite, both types bring fear, pain, sorrow, and a change in the conditions of the lives of people.
An awareness of Ottoman army structuremight help to add to our understanding of Ottoman "Battle of Mohacs" illustration composition. During the sixteenth century, Ottoman warfare has been explored regarding the so-called Military revolution and the role military technology played in early modern warfare.
The illustration of the "Battle of Mohacs" is realistic; its realism is, in fact, confirmed by the inclusion of textwhich attempts to ensure correspondence between what is depicted visually and what is to be understood strategically.  Battle of Mohacs scene is a picture of 'arrested moments' what is depicted corresponds to a short passage in the text and brief moments in the narrative, but the setting of the scene represents the whole battle "after and during" by an imaginary line determines the moment of the battle 'time reference'.  Suleyman the Magnificent supervised the battle from a hill later named Turk Hill. It was of a short duration but extremely bloody and resulted in the complete collapse of the Hungarian Kingdom. The miniature illustrating this battle shows Suleyman the Magnificent and his soldiers on the hills drawn up in rows, with the superb organization of the army clearly visible. Thus the stylized picture provides a contrast to the sometimes quite length description of the battle.  The Ottoman battles in Western painting demonstrate the dramatic degree to which the assumed or claimed content of an image may vary as it travels across cultural boundaries or narrative contexts. It also serves as a reminder
of the fact that glosses in European painting depicting Ottoman scenes can sometimes turn out to be highly creative.
The Ottoman illustration of the "Battle of Mohacs" represents a victorious Turkish army. The figure of Suleyman dominates the picture; the severed heads at his feetsymbolize the greatness of his victory. Sporadic skirmishes are still going on in the foreground, but the general scene is of victorious army advancing in well-ordered lines.  The landscape details of the picture are of minor value: The hills and dales are merely imaginary. It provides a ground for a play-by-play depiction of military movements across a valley where each event, site, and important character is viewed.  The overall images suggest an artist who knew about perspective but did not know how to place people within it. As a result, the painting seems to represent event and figures as in a diagram, this creating a realism of military pragmatism more than artistic ambition.
The studied way in which so many people, horses, objects of all sorts are depicted in the battle scene suggests that an artist was showing off his talents and that the painting was an exhibition of available models for other battle images. It is reasonable to conclude that the primary objective of the painter was to display and make available every detail of the painting. Thus, the image acts as a window not only onto the world but also onto the Word.  Perceptions of reality are related to social presence beyond its textual content. Perceptions of reality are related to social codes than to universal experience.  Radical as the changes undertaken by the military were, the aim was not to revolutionize visual culture to adapt techniques of military objectives. The Battle of Mohacs miniature can therefore lead historians who tend to rely on pictures as accurate historical document. In addition, Islamic painting will remain a source of testimony of the relation between "illustrations" and "Art object".

نقاط رئيسية

معرکة موهاتش، الصراع العثمانی الأوروبی، هزیمة المجر