Tulipomania - Mike Dash [104]
The following notes abbreviate authors and titles of works cited; for full information, please refer to the Bibliography.
Chapter 1. A Mania for Tulips
The principal source of information on events in Alkmaar in February 1637 is A. van Damme, Aanteekeningen Betreffende de Geschiedenis der Bloembollen: Haarlem, 1899–1903 (Leiden: Boerhaave, 1976). On the appearance and behavior of Dutch tulip traders, see both Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), and the more recent and more analytical A. T. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Value of a tulip Garber, “Tulipmania,” p. 537n, states that in 1637 each guilder contained 0.856g of gold. One gram of gold was thus worth 1.17 guilders. A Viceroy bulb sold at auction in Alkmaar on February 5 fetched 146 guilders per gram, making it worth 125 times its weight in gold.
Richest man Israel, Dutch Republic, p. 348.
Tulip fortunes Garber, “Tulipmania,” p. 550.
Chapter 2. The Valleys of Tien Shan
The early history of the tulip is very largely obscure. Its Asian origins are discussed by Turhan Baytop, “The Tulip in Istanbul During the Ottoman Period,” in Michiel Roding and Hans Theunissen, eds., The Tulip: A Symbol of Two Nations (Utrecht & Istanbul: Turco-Dutch Friendship Association, 1993), and the enthusiasm for wild tulips in Persia rather briefly by Wilfrid Blunt, Tulipomania (London: Penguin, 1950).
Asian origins of the tulip Baytop, “Tulip in Istanbul,” pp. 50–56.
Early appreciation of tulips Certainly the Hittites, who dominated much of Asia Minor two thousand years before the birth of Christ, already appreciated the beauty of wild bulbous flowers. Ancient inscriptions record that the advent of spring was marked each year in the Hittite realm by a celebration called the An.tah.sum-sar, which may be translated as “bulb festival” and which appears to have coincided with the first flowering of the crocus. (Today many Anatolians still celebrate a similar festival, called Hidrellez, each May, during which they go on picnics and eat a couscous of bulgur wheat and mashed crocus bulbs.) The flowering of tulips may have held a similar significance for peoples of the steppe, who experienced winters harsher than anything encountered in the crocus country of Asia Minor, and among whom the arrival of spring must have been at least as eagerly anticipated. See Baytop, “Tulip in Istanbul,” p. 51.
The tulip in Persia Hall, Book of the Tulip, p. 44; Blunt, Tulipomania, pp. 22–23; Schloredt, Treasury of Tulips, p. 62.
History of the Turks The Ottoman portion of the tulip’s story is much better documented than its very early history. An accessible summary of Turkish history in this period is Inalcik, Ottoman Empire.
The tulip in Ottoman history to 1453 Demiriz, “Tulips in Ottoman Turkish Culture and Art,” pp. 57–75.
The story of Hasan Efendi Ibid., p. 57.
Babur and the Turkish gardening tradition Pallis, In the Days of the Janissaries, p. 198.
The tulip as a religious symbol The Turks were not the only people to regard the flower as a religious symbol. Among the Pennsylvania Dutch—German immigrants who traveled to the east coast of America from the seventeenth century—stylized three-petal tulips were used as a motif that symbolized the Holy Trinity. They were often used to adorn important papers such as birth certificates. See Schloredt, Treasury of Tulips, p. 43.
Chapter 3. Within the Abode of Bliss
Horticulture is hardly central to the history of the Ottoman Empire, and it features scarcely at all in conventional histories. The best guides to the story of the tulip’s time in Turkey have been accounts of Istanbul. The best of these is certainly Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924 (London: John Murray, 1995). For the Ottoman palaces, the indispensable source is Barnette Miller, Beyond the Sublime Porte: The Grand Seraglio of Stambul (New Haven: Yale University Press,