Talk:Tughra

message: What does Vladimir Putin's Tughra look like?  Did he use Cyrillic or Arabic script?--Fox Mccloud 18:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Arabic, if you search for "Тугры российских президентов" [Tughras of Russian Presidents] you'll see photos from a couple sites about an art exhibition. I'd post the images, but not sure if they are under copyright. —Petropetro (talk) 20:53, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Putin's Tughra

message: Actually as soon as I have the time, I will do a major overhaul of that page and move it to "Tuğra". Also needs to be precised the artistical development of the new generation Tuğras in the 18th century by Mustafa Rakım, maybe the greatest of calligraphers.
--Eae1983 (talk) 23:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: This needs to be retitled

message: This page is extremely biased in the sense that it focuses entirely on the Ottoman context.  In fact, it seems to have been translated verbatim from the Turkish language wiki page .  A tughra (spelled tuğra in Modern Turkish, also pronounced "ṭug̲h̲rā" in other Turkic dialects) was used as early as the Seljuq dynasties, as well as the Mamluks. The usage extended well beyond Ottoman territories.  the formats also do not resemble the Ottoman ones, which are very distinct.
On the origin of the term, from the Encyclopedia of Islam.  the article was originally written by J. Deny in the first edition , and was subsequently revised and expanded by C. Bosworth and Muhammad Yusuf Siddiq:
1. Origin of the term.
The oldest mention of the word is in Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī , Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk, fol. 232, tr. Atalay, i, 462, tr. Dankoff and Kelly, i, 346: “the tug̲h̲rag̲h̲is the seal (ṭābiʿ) and signature ( tawḳīʿ ) of the king; Og̲h̲uz dialect (g̲h̲uzziyya) and not known to the [Western] Turks; I do not know its origin”. From this, there emerges that tug̲h̲rag̲h̲(with final g̲h̲) is the old, eastern Og̲h̲uz form from which came tug̲h̲ra in the Western Og̲h̲uz language of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. Thence it was borrowed into Persian and re-borrowed into Ottoman and Čag̲h̲atay Turkish as a loan word. In Sald̲j̲ūḳusage, the initial unvoiced dental acquired the orthography ṭ under the influence of the word’s back vowel harmony. In the Arabic used by chroniclers and secretaries during Mamlūk times, it acquired the Arabic sound plural ṭug̲h̲rāwāt, on analogy with ag̲h̲āwāt, bās̲h̲āwāt, etc., and there evolved the form II verb ṭag̲h̲g̲h̲ara “to affix the ṭug̲h̲rā on a document”. From Ottoman, the word spread into Serbian and Bulgarian as tugra and into Romanian as tura. Its etymology remains as mysterious today as it was in al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī’s time. Various fanciful suggestions of the sources were reviewed by Deny in his EI 1 art .; Doerfer surmised that it might have been borrowed from some pre-Turkish culture. See idem, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, iii, 342-6 no. 1344; Clauson, An etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth century Turkish,471.
2. History.
(a) In the central Islamic lands before the Ottomans.
The rulers of the first two great Turkish empires of the Middle East and the eastern Iranian lands, the Sald̲j̲ūḳs and the Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āhs (virtually nothing is known of Ḳarak̲h̲ānid chancery practice) seem to have used the terms ṭug̲h̲rā and tawḳīʿ more or less interchangeably for the sultan’s emblem or monogram. The sources for Sald̲j̲ūḳhistory tend to use the word tawḳīʿ for the emblem of Ṭog̲h̲ri'l Beg and subsequent sultans (sc. the Ḳin)ḳ tribal emblem of the bow and arrow used by the first Sald̲j̲ūḳ tribal chiefs—Temür Yalig̲h ̲being allegedly the cognomen of the eponymous ancestor, Sald̲j̲ūḳ’s father Duḳāḳ—and known from Sald̲j̲ūḳcoins if not from actual documents, and the club or mace, čumāk, mentioned by Rāwandī ,Rāḥat al-ṣudūr, 98, as also being Ṭog̲h̲ri'l Beg’s emblem ). The Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad [q.v.] had as part of his ṭug̲h̲rā, according to al-Nasawī, Sīrat al- Sulṭān Ḏj̲alāl Dīn Mingburnu, ed. Ḥāfiz Aḥmad Ḥamdī , Cairo 1953, 324, and Ḏj̲uwaynī-Boyle, i, 349, the motto z̦ill Allāh fi ʾl-arḍ“the shadow of God on earth”, and it is recorded that official documents and investiture patents from his chancery bore his ṭug̲h̲rā (ibid., i, 154, 329); but his son and successor Ḏj̲alāl Dīn [q.v.] refused, in his reduced state, to use such a grandiloquent formula (al-Nasawī, loc. cit.). In the surviving collections of ins̲h̲āʾ from the Sald̲j̲ūḳand Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āhī periods, the term ṭug̲h̲rā does not appear on the documents themselves, but there are mentioned in them the dīwān-i ṭug̲h̲rā and the official charged with drawing it, the ṭug̲h̲rāʾī (first known in the person of Ṭoghri̊l’s ṭug̲h̲rāʾī , the Turkish amīr Ḵh̲umārtigin, but most notably this was the professional title by which the famous Sald̲j̲ūḳ official, poet and stylist Muʾayyid al-Dīn Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (d. probably in 515/1121 [see al-ṭug̲h̲rāʾī ]), who filled this office in the reign of Malik S̲h̲āh , was always known, even though he went on to become a vizier; cf. S.M. Stern, in his very thorough study of the signature in documents, 123-65, at 149 n. 1). It does seem reasonable to assume, with S.M. Stern, that, as Sald̲j̲ūḳand Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āhī chancery practice was elaborated, the ṭug̲h̲rā of these rulers reduced the tribal mark element to stylised lines, dropped the pious mottos of each ruler (as detailed by Rāwandī ) and incorporated the ruler’s titles in a stylised pattern with elongated shafts of letters, foreshadowing later developments which were to culminate in Ottoman practice. See on the general topic of the ṭug̲h̲rā during this period, Cl. Cahen, La ṭuġrā seljuḳide, in JA, ccxxxiv (1943-5), 167-72; Stern, Fāṭimid decrees. Original documents from the Fāṭimid chancery, London 1964, 143-52; H. Horst, Die Staatsverwaltung der Grosselǧūqen und Ḫōrazm“āhs (1038-1231), Wiesbaden 1964, 35-6.
It seems very probable that such dynasties which arose out of the decaying great Sald̲j̲ūḳempire as the Zangid Atabegs and then the Ayyūbids took over the use of the ṭug̲h̲rā from the Sald̲j̲ūḳ chancery. The Ayyūbid sultans had, like their Fāṭimid predecessors in Egypt and southern Syria, pious royal mottos as part of their ʿalāma [q.v.], and presumably a signature with the names and titles of the monarch. In the absence of actual documents with representations of the ṭug̲h̲rā in them, Stern surmised that the graphic form was in the style of the ṭug̲h̲rā, with elongated shafts to the letters and possibly also some vertical lines to set them off ( Fāṭimid decrees, 154-5; cf. also his Two Ayyūbid decrees from Sinai , in idem (ed.), Documents from Islamic chanceries, Oxford 1965, 15-17). Further snippets of relevant information come from men- tions of the ṭug̲h̲rā in the manual on secretaryship of Ibn S̲h̲īt̲h̲ al-Ḳuras̲h̲ī (d. 625/1228; see on him W. Björkman, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatskanzlei im islamischen Ägypten, Hamburg 1928, 34-6), the Maʿālim al-kitāba , Beirut 1913, 43, and in the brief annals of Ibn Abi ʾl-Dam (d. 642/1244 [q.v.]), in which he gives a model diploma of al-Malik al-Kāmil of Egypt for his own patron al-Malik al-Muz̦affar of Ḥamāt which, he says, ended with a ṭug̲h̲rā (cited by Cahen, La correspondence de Ḳiyāad-Dīn ibn al-Athīr. Liste de lettres et textes de diplômes, in BSOAS, xiv [1952], 42-3).
It should be noted that, around this time, we begin to find the word ṭug̲h̲rā confused in Arabic literary and popular usage with the similar Arabic word ṭurra, literally “border of a piece of cloth”, “upper border of a document”, obviously arising from the part of the document where the ṭug̲h̲rā was normally affixed; already Ibn Ḵh̲allikān, Wafayāt, ed. ʿAbbās, ii, 190,defines the ṭug̲h̲rā as “the ṭurra which is written with a ¶ thick pen at the top of documents above the basmala”, and ṭurra became the commonly-used form in later Egyptian popular parlance.
From the Ayyūbids , the use of the ṭug̲h̲rā passed to their supplanters, the Mamlūks . A full description of Mamlūk practice here is given by al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī in his Ṣubḥ al-aʿs̲h̲ā , xiii, 162-6, cf. Björkman, op. cit., 44, 168, illustrated by two drawings of the ṭug̲h̲rās of al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Ḳalāwūn and his grandson al-Malik al-As̲h̲raf S̲h̲aʿbān b . Ḥusayn [q.vv.]. According to al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī , the ṭug̲h̲rā was not used after S̲h̲aʿbān’s reign (764-78/1363-77), confirmed by al-Maḳrīzī’s (d. 845/1442) information in his Ḵh̲iṭaṭ that it was no longer used in his time. Al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī gives considerable detail on the usage and the exact format of the ṭug̲h̲rā used on mans̲h̲ūrs or investiture patents for high military commanders. When the ṭug̲h̲rā was complex, containing many strokes, a fine (d̲j̲alīl t̲h̲ult̲h̲) pen had to be used; when there were fewer strokes, the larger type of script called muk̲h̲taṣar al-ṭūmār was used. A specially-appointed person in the dīwān al-ins̲h̲āʾ prepared the ṭug̲h̲rās, and the secretaries then inserted them in spaces left blank for them in the ṭurra or upper part of the document above the basmala . The ṭug̲h̲rā was composed of the sultan’s honorifics, or his name and his honorifics, written on one line, with highly-prolonged upright strokes (muntaṣibāt) to letters like ṭāʾ, z̦āʾ, kāf , lām , etc. In al-Nāṣir’s ṭug̲h̲rā, the 35 upright strokes are alternately single and in groups of two strokes, necessitating some re-arrangement for artistic purposes of certain letters in thewords, and below the line of titles is the prayer k̲h̲allada Allāh sulṭānahu “may God prolong his dominion!” (see Pl. XXV, fig.1). In that of S̲h̲aʿbān , the 45 upright strokes are in groups of two, again with the prayer for long life beneath the line of the sultan’s titles, but also with his name S̲h̲aʿbān b . Ḥusayn in large script ( ḳalam al-ṭūmār) written across the central verticals (see Pl. XXV, fig. 2).
In a summary article on this topic by the late Dr. Annemarie Schimmel in the Grove Dictionary of Art wrote: 
"The use of the tughra can be traced back to the Saljuq dynasty in Iran (reg 1038–1194); the nom de plume of the Saljuq vizier and poet Tughraاi (d 1120), for example, shows that a high-ranking member of the bureaucracy was in charge of drawing the tughra. The tendency to place the ruler’s name in conspicuous letters at the top of a document began early; the elongation of the vertical letters of the name and sometimes of a benediction is already found on Indo-Muslim documents from the Sultanate period (1206–1555) as well as in Egypt under the Mamluks (reg 1250–1517)."
 
Dr. Sheila Blair in her recent book Islamic Calligraphy also mentions the description by Ahmad al-Qalqashandi of the practice among the Mamluks at a slightly later date than that of Orhan Gazi, and provides an example of al-Qalqashandi's design for a tughra of al-Ashraf Sha'ban (p. 340).   Additional sections for Central Asia and India should be added, together with relevant images, as well as the relationship of the tughra to firman and numismatics, as well as the influence of the form on later artistic calligraphic compositions, especially zoomorphic calligraphy.  I think that perhaps by starting with a good bibliography, the article can be re-vamped.  I can't do this now, but perhaps later this summer.
Additional Bibliography:
F. Babinger: ‘Die grossherrliche Tughra’, Jb. Asiat. Kst, ii (1925), pp. 185–96
P. Wittek: ‘Notes sur la tughra ottomane’, Byzantion, xviii (1948), pp. 311–34
E. Kühnel: ‘Die osmanische Tughra’, Kst Orients, ii (1955), pp. 69–82
A. Bombaci: ‘Les Toughras enluminés de la collection de documents turcs des archives d’état de Venise’, Atti del secondo congresso internazionale di arte turca: Venezia, 1963, pp. 41–55
M. Sertoǧlu: Osmanlı Türklerinde Tuǧra [Tughras of the Ottoman Turks] (Istanbul, 1975)
S. Umur: Osmanlı Padişah Tuǧraları [Tughras of the Ottoman sultans] (Istanbul, 1980) 
J. Reychman and A. Zajączkowski, Handbook of Ottoman Turkish diplomatics, The Hague and Paris 1968, 141-3.
Sayyid Aḥmad Ḵh̲ān , Āt̲h̲ār al-ṣanādīd,Kānpur 1846
Muḥammad G̲h̲ulām,Tad̲h̲kira-yi k̲h̲us̲h̲niwīsān, ed. H. Hidayet Husain, Calcutta 1910
G. Yazdani, A new inscription of Sultan Nusrat Shah of Bengal , in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1911-12), 5-7
Shamsud-Din Ahmad, Inscriptions of Bengal , Rajshahi 1960
--Jemiljan (talk) 21:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Overt bias on this page

message: Decades ago, when I was a child, I read a magazine article about the tughra that said it had originated as an inked palm-print, around which a scribe had written the sultan's name and titles.  The loops off to the left are the thumb-print, the three flag-poles are the three middle fingers, and the stroke going off to the right is the little finger. J S Ayer (talk) 03:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hand print? 

message: Talk it out guys. We've got a citation for this particular tidbit, but it seems to be somewhat controversial, so let's talk it out and see if we can't get some consensus. Vanisaac (talk)
I am deleting the sentence about the finger origin of the Tughra of Murad I
Because.
*1. This is the First Ottoman Tughra, the tughra of Orhan I.
So this already proves that the origin was not by Murad I,
*2. About fingers being a origin, this does not seems likely, because there is actually something written in the Tugra, the name of the Sultan and the preceding sultan is written, it is not only simple symbol.
*3. The finger myth is anachronistic. The Tughra evolved over time and the late Ottoman Tughra is very different than the Tughra of Murad I.  Murad I Tughra  does not like it is made or to be inspired by fingers but a calligrapher. 
Tughra of Murad I
300 px
Tughra of last Sultan Mehmed VI
300px
*4. Furthermore according to this serious source 
First encyclopaedia of Islam: 1913-1936,
It describes the history of the tughra [] 
Tughra's were older than the Ottomans and were used by other muslim dynasties
So basically the fingers story, which is based on this source[] is just a myth and should be deleted.§  — Preceding unsigned comment added by DragonTiger23 (talk • contribs) 17:12, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit war over the three fingers of Sultan Murad I 

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thread_title:  External links modified