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The Miraj forms part of the Night Journey that the prophet of Islam, Muhammad took during a single night around the year 621 CE. In the journey, Muhammad travels on the steed Buraq to 'the farthest mosque' where he leads other prophets in prayer. He then ascends to heaven where he speaks to God, who gives Muhammad instructions to take back to the faithful regarding the details of prayer.<br/><br/> Representations of the Prophet Muhammad are controversial, and generally forbidden in Sunni Islam (especially Hanafiyya, Wahabi, Salafiyya). Shia Islam and some other branches of Sunni Islam (Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i) are generally more tolerant of such representational images, but even so the Prophet's features are generally veiled or concealed by flames as a mark of deep respect.
The Miraj forms part of the Night Journey that the prophet of Islam, Muhammad took during a single night around the year 621 CE. In the journey, Muhammad travels on the steed Buraq to 'the farthest mosque' where he leads other prophets in prayer. He then ascends to heaven where he speaks to God, who gives Muhammad instructions to take back to the faithful regarding the details of prayer.<br/><br/> Representations of the Prophet Muhammad are controversial, and generally forbidden in Sunni Islam (especially Hanafiyya, Wahabi, Salafiyya). Shia Islam and some other branches of Sunni Islam (Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i) are generally more tolerant of such representational images, but even so the Prophet's features are generally veiled or concealed by flames as a mark of deep respect.
Al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik was a scholar and patron of the Fatimid court in Cairo in the middle of the eleventh century. He studied medicine, astronomy, and history, and composed a lost History of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir (r. 1036–1094). His only book to have survived, The Choicest Maxims and Best Sayings (Kitāb mukhtār al-ḥikam wa-maḥasin al-kalim or al-kilam), gives 20 biographies of some of the main Semitic, Greek, and Egyptian figures of wisdom and prophecy.<br/><br/> An important part of the biographical and gnomological materials may be compared with similar fragments attested in Greek literature. The Choicest Maxims was a medieval success, translated in at least four European languages from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.
Abu Ali Hasan ibn Ali Tusi (April 10, 1018 – October 14, 1092), better known by his honorific title of Nizam al-Mulk (Persian: 'Order of the Realm') was a Persian scholar and vizier of the Seljuq Empire. He held near absolute power for 20 years after the assassination of Alp Arslan in 1072.<br/><br/> Nizam al-Mulk was in turn assassinated en route from Isfahan to Baghdad on 14 October 1092. It is recorded that he was stabbed by the dagger of a member of the Assassins (Hashshashin) sent by the notorious Hassan-i-Sabbah near Nahavand, as he was being carried on his litter. The killer approached him disguised as a dervish.
Sultan Suleyman I (1494-1566), also known as 'Suleyman the Magnificent' and 'Suleyman the Lawmaker', was the 10th and longest reigning sultan of the Ottoman empire. He personally led his armies to conquer Transylvania, the Caspian, much of the Middle East and the Maghreb. He intoduced sweeping reforms in Turkish legislation, education, taxation and criminal law, and was highly respected as a poet and a goldsmith. Suleyman also oversaw a golden age in the development of arts, literature and architecture in the Ottoman empire.
Siyah Kalem or 'Black Pen' is the name given to the 15th century school of painting attributed to Mehmed Siyah Kalem. Nothing is known of his life, but his work indicates that he was of Central Asian Turkic origin, and thoroughly familiar with camp and military life. The paintings appear in the 'Conqueror’s Albums', so named because two portraits of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror are present in one of them.<br/><br/> The albums are made up of miniatures taken from manuscripts of the 14th, 15th, and early 16th centuries, and one series of paintings is inscribed 'work of Master Muḥammad Siyah Kalem'. Something of the style and techniques of Chinese paintings is apparent in these, and an acquaintance with Buddhist art, particularly in the depictions of grotesque demonic figures.
Siyah Kalem or 'Black Pen' is the name given to the 15th century school of painting attributed to Mehmed Siyah Kalem. Nothing is known of his life, but his work indicates that he was of Central Asian Turkic origin, and thoroughly familiar with camp and military life. The paintings appear in the 'Conqueror’s Albums', so named because two portraits of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror are present in one of them.<br/><br/> The albums are made up of miniatures taken from manuscripts of the 14th, 15th, and early 16th centuries, and one series of paintings is inscribed 'work of Master Muḥammad Siyah Kalem'. Something of the style and techniques of Chinese paintings is apparent in these, and an acquaintance with Buddhist art, particularly in the depictions of grotesque demonic figures.<br/><br/> Oghuz Khagan (Turkish: Oğuz Kağan) was a legendary and semi-mythological Khan of the Turks. Some Turkic cultures use this legend to describe their ethnic origins and the origin of the system of political clans used by Turkmen, Ottoman, and other Oghuz Turks. The narrative is often entitled Oghuznama, or narrative of the Oghuz.
Selim III (Ottoman Turkish: سليم ثالث Selīm-i sālis) (24 December 1761 – 28 or 29 July 1808) was the reform-minded Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807. The Janissaries eventually deposed and imprisoned him, and placed his cousin Mustafa on the throne as Mustafa IV.
Socrates (Greek: Σωκράτης, c. 469 – 399 BCE) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.<br/><br/> Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who also lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. It is Plato's Socrates that also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains strong in providing a foundation for much western philosophy that followed
Pictured here is the Sultan leaving Topkapi Palace for Friday prayers in one of the capital's mosques circa 1810 by an unknown artist. The once-a-week outing was the only time the Sultan appeared in public. The advisers to the Sultan, the viziers, wore green. Chamberlains wore scarlet. Religious dignitaries wore purple and mullahs light blue. The master of horse dressed head-to-foot in dark green. Court officers wore light red shoes. Those who worked in the Grand Vizier’s office, located just outside the palace walls, wore yellow shoes. And among non-Muslims, Greeks wore black shoes, Armenians violet, and Jews blue slippers.
Mehmed III Adli (May 26, 1566 – December 21/22, 1603) was sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595-1603. He remains notorious for having nineteen of his brothers and half brothers murdered to secure power. He also killed over twenty of his sisters. They were all strangled by deaf-mutes. Mehmed III was an idle ruler, leaving government to his mother Safiye Sultan, the valide sultan. The major event of his reign was the Austro-Ottoman War in Hungary (1593–1606). Ottoman defeats in the war caused Mehmed III to take personal command of the army, the first sultan to do so since Suleyman I. Mehmed III's armies conquered Eger in 1596 and defeated the Habsburg and Transylvanian forces at the Battle of Keresztes (Turkish for Battle of Hacova).