Türkiye · Painting & Manuscript Arts
Tezhip (from the Arabic zeheb, gold); practitioner: müzehhip / müzehhibe; illuminated work: müzehheb
The illumination of manuscripts, calligraphic panels and documents with gold and color. Gold leaf is mixed with gum arabic and water into a putty and worked by finger or tool into a fine paint; the pattern, usually designed as a half or quarter of a symmetrical whole, is drawn, laid in gold first and burnished with a mühre, a tool with a polished agate at its tip, before the colored motifs are painted one by one and the fine outlines and details added. Historically the colors were natural pigments ground by hand on a wet marble slab with a hand stone (deste-seng) and bound with acacia gum, and they have kept their brightness for centuries. The art grew from 14th-century Konya into the classical style of the Ottoman palace studio (nakkaşhane) under Mehmed II and Bayezid II, and in Istanbul illuminators were once certified each year at an icazet ceremony. A Turkish idiom describes the work: 'to dig a well with a needle.' The art of illumination was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List in 2023 by Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Inscribed 2023, Representative List: 'Art of illumination: Təzhib / Tazhib / Zarhalkori / Tezhip / Naqqoshlik' (Azerbaijan, Iran, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Uzbekistan)
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