Istanbul Alive Magazine April 2014 ISTANBUL ALIVE APRIL 2014 | Page 8

RHYTHM OF ISTANBUL İSTANBUL’UN RİTMİ

Soon after
Ambassador
Busbecq noticed
the flowers in the
Ottoman Empire,
tulips became one
of the most sought
alter luxury items in
Europe.
Büyükelçi
Busbecq'in Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu'nda
laleyi keşfinden
sonra, çiçek
dönemin arzu
nesnesi haline geldi.

tulip is not a native Dutch flower. Like many other products in western Europe,
such as the potato and tobacco, tulips came to the Netherlands from another
part of the world. Not introduced to the Netherlands until 1593, the tulip
was first seen by Europeans in Istanbul. It was there in1556 that Busbeq (A.G.
Busbequius), the ambassador sent by the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I to the
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, witnessed the flowers growing in the gardens of
Adrianople and Constantinople. Scholars now believe that the Turks had been
cultivating tulips as early as AD 1000. Most of these tulips probably originated in
areas around the Black Sea, in the Crimea, and in the steppes to the north of the
Caucasus. Soon after Ambassador Busbeq noticed the flowers in the Ottoman
Empire, tulips became one of the most sought alter luxury items in Europe. At
first, in the 1560s, trade and diplomatic interaction with the Ottoman Levant
allowed for a small number of tulips to be imported into Hapsburg Europe. In this
early stage, tulip ownership was primarily limited to wealthy nobles and scholars.
Antwerp, Brussels, Augsburg. Paris, and Prague are among some of the cities
where such tulips first began to circulate.A key figure in the history of European
tulip interest is the famous botanist Carolus Clusius. Chisius, who had achieved
great recognition for his work with medicinal herbs in Prague and Vienna,
accepted a position as head botanist of the Dutch university in Leiden in the year
1593. Previously, he had met with former Ambassador Busbeq in Vienna and
accepted several tulip bulbs and seeds. At Leiden's innovative hortus botanicus, or
botanical garden, Clusius cultivated the bulbs and seeds and thus introduced the
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• I S TA N B U L A L I V E

flower to Holland.
Through botanical experimentation,
Clusius and other horticulturists
produced new color variations in
tulips. This breeding of tulips with
new color combinations had two
important effects on the European
primarily Dutch tulip market. The
most elegantly and vividly colored of
the new tulips, such as the Semper
Augustus, which was white with red
flames, became exorbitantly priced.
Only the wealthiest aristocrats and
merchants could afford these striped
hybrid varieties. By the early 1630s,
however, flower growers had begun
to raise vast crops of more simplycolored tulips. These flowers, such
as the Yellow Crown tulips, could
be purchased cheaply by even the
poorer segments of society. With an
ever-growing number o bf&