Turkish delights part of Oriental Studies DPhil

Published on
Thursday 21 May 2015
Category
College & Community

Cailah is in her second year having completed an MSt at Wolfson in 2013. She is based in the Khalili Research Centre (part of the Oriental Institute), which houses three Wolfson Governing Body Fellows.

Cailah’s thesis topic concerns illuminated Islamic manuscripts produced in Anatolia in the later medieval period (roughly the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). In addition to analysing their visual features, such as their bindings or calligraphy, Cailah will use information found in the manuscripts to construct a cultural history of the period.

Before her trip to Turkey this year, Cailah had also visited libraries in Dublin, Paris, and Vienna. She will make one more research trip later this year, to the Bodmer Collection in Geneva, and will have the opportunity to present her findings at a conference organised by the University of Edinburgh later this year.

Most of Cailah’s research trip to Turkey was spent in libraries in Istanbul, but she also had the opportunity to visit museums and libraries in Ankara, Konya, and Bursa. Some of these institutions, such as the Beyazıt Manuscript Library (Istanbul) and the Mevlana Museum (Konya) are located in fascinating historical buildings and are worth visiting in and of themselves. The Mevlana Museum, for example, draws nearly 2 million visitors a year, so it was fortunate that the museum staff were able to take manuscripts off display for Cailah to see.

Besides examining some beautiful and extremely rare manuscripts, Cailah spent some of her free time sightseeing. Some highlights included the Green Mosque in Bursa, the Anıtkabir (mausoleum of Atatürk), the Sahip Ata Museum in Konya, and the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul.

Having now gathered nearly all the material for her project, the research trip was extremely useful for Cailah, and it wouldn’t have been possible without generous funding from the University and the Barakat Trust.

Cailah Jackson