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Bazaar Coincidence

The Renaissance Bazaar
by Jerry Brotton
Oxford University Press


Bazaar to Piazza
by Rosamond E Mack
University of California Press


It is indeed bizarre that two books should almost simultaneously be published on the relationship between the Eastern market as represented by the bazaar and the evolution of the Italian Renaissance. Even more bizarre is that the two university publishers – Oxford and California – should have chosen not only the same painting (Gentile Bellini’s Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria) but also the same details to embellish their covers.

This accidental parallelism apart, the two books are very different in their approach. Jerry Brotton inclines towards a series of imaginative essays, suggesting that there is still much work to be done investigating the formation of Renaissance thought, and that the answer lies in the east. Not only artifacts from the Eastern bazaars, but also the transmission of Islamic science and philosophy played a key role. He zooms in on Holbein’s The Ambassadors as a key item, and attaches iconic significance to many of the objects in the painting: “…one of the strings on the lute is broken, a deliberate symbol of discord” – and there is much in the same vein. More entertaining is his interpretation of Michelangelo’s David (“Rude when nude”), refuting its current status as a gay icon and instructing us to understand it as a straight political statement.

This is only the beginning: Brotton casts his net wide, covering the age of discovery, the invention of printing and, finally, literature and the world of the imagination. It all began in the East, he concludes, and for enlightenment we must go back to the bazaar.

In contrast to Brotton’s slightly flip approach in his book, Rosamond Mack attempts to be totally comprehensive. She has thoroughly documented the evidence for trade, for individual crafts such as silk and carpet-weaving, ceramics, glass, metalwork and bookbinding, as well as the visual arts. There seems to have been no stone unturned, nor any nook or cranny into which she has not peered between Italy and the mysterious East. Indeed, the book is a compendium of all you ever wanted to know on the subject, with excellent colour and monochrome illustrations, and eighty pages of notes, bibliography and index to boot.

Inevitably her text draws on numerous seminal articles by other scholars, and is none the worse for that, but it somewhat lacks the excitement of the chase. Judging from the cheerful photograph on the back flap, she is well pleased with her industry. In years to come, generations of students will be grateful for her diligence.

Which leads to a final question, posed by neither author. What exactly do we mean by “bazaar”? Both the Oxford English–Arabic Dictionary (1972) and Al-Mawrid (1999) define the term as “eastern market” and specifically use suq as a synonym. More informative is the inimitable Hobson-Jobson (1985 ed), which is worth quoting at length: “Hindu etc, from P. bazaar, a permanent market or street of shops. The word has spread westwards into Arabic, Turkish and, in special senses, into European languages, and eastward into India… it seems to have come to S. Europe very early… Pegolotti (Mercantile Handbook, c 1340) gives ‘bazarra’ as a Genoese word for ‘market place’.”

There seems no distinction between bazaar and suq, yet one belongs to the northern tier of Central Asian trade and the other to the heartlands of Islam. It would be interesting to see if there are structural, social and economic differences between the two, and whether this has any bearing on the authors’ thesis. After all, the greatest medieval market of all was the annual fair at Mecca, forbidden to the unbelievers.

Other Highlights from Cornucopia 27
  • Grape Expectations

    Wine is now the most popukar alcoholic drink on the planet, says Esat Ayhan, ‘and we in Turkey are benefitting from this positive wind.’ Owner for the past twenty-two years of a fashionable Cihangir şarküteri, stocking everything from De Cecco pasta to bacon and paté, Esat Bey took the opportunity to expand its renowned La Cave wine section into an entire floor devoted to the grape.

  • Beaufort’s Hunt

    Francis Beaufort’s epic 1812 survey of Turkey’s southern coast and its classical sites sparked a European treasure hunt. It also very nearly cost him his life. By Nicholas Courtney with photgraphs by Kate Clow and James Mortimer


  • Wish you were here

    Max Fruchtermann (1852 –1918) was the publisher who took the postcard to Turkey and thereby took Turkey to the world. His cards sold by the million. Mert Sandalcı – historian, archivist and librettist – has assembled thousands of these cards into three mammoth volumes. Elizabeth Meath Baker leafs through their pages.


  • The Birth of the Big Apple

    Wild apples, with their pink or white blossom in spring, are still a common sight in Turkey. They are collected in the autumn, when they ripen, and preserved for winter.
    More cookery features


  • The Platonic Bowl

    The pots of Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye have an ideal serenity and timeless beauty, as visitors to her retrospective in Istanbul have discovered. But their cool simplicity belies the passion that goes into creating them. Alistair McAlpine met the artist in Paris.

  • Drama in the Round

    Robert Ousterhout, who fell in love with the Kariye Camii, the Church of the Chora, 25 years ago. Here he makes an impassioned case for preserving this 14th-century masterpiece.



  • Travels with Turhan

    Brian Mathew pays tribute to the late Turhan Baytop, Turkey’s pre-eminent botanist

  • Fine fast food

    Most fast food is heavy, greasy and bad for your health. Güllaç pancakes, by contrast, are beautiful organza-thin leaves, light as a feather and made from the simplest ingredients. What’s more, they keep for an age. Berrin Torolsan sees the best gullaç in the making


  • Parallel Lives

    Both were ambitious men with a penchant for poetry who suffered extremes of fortune. David Barchard charts the ties between two dominant figures in nineteenth-century Turkey, the British Ambassador Stratford Canning, and the Ottoman sultan Mahmut II


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