Ottoman Empire: Flags depicted in other sources

Last modified: 2007-06-23 by ivan sache
Keywords: crescent (white) | star: eight points (white) |
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• Flags from the Spanish Navy Museum (XVIth century)
• Horse tail standard (XVIIIth century)
• "Turkish Navy" in a Dutch flag book (XIXth century)
• "Ottoman merchant ensign" (XIXth century)
• Naval ensign and merchant flags in Steenbergen's chart (1862)
• Man of war and merchant flags in Webster's (1884)
• Ottoman Empire flag on Allen & Ginter cigarette cards (c.1885)

See also:

• Ottoman Empire

Flags from the Spanish Navy Museum (XVIth century)

Ottoman flags from the Spanish Navy Museum - Images by Eugene Ipavec, 22 July 2006

The Spanish Navy Museum in Madrid, shows two Turkish naval flags dated 1613; the first flag is swallow-tailed, green with a white crescent near the hoit, while the second flag is swallow-tailed, white with two red stripes near the edges of the flag and a red crescent near the hoist (and therefore a possible remote inspiration for the flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Nozomi Karyasu & António Martins, 8 October 2006

Horse tail standard (XVIIIth century)

There is an image of an Ottoman horse tail standard in the Relation d'un voyage du Levant (1718) by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort* (illustrations by Mr ... Aubriet), volume 2 inserted facing page 28. The image can be seen on the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The image is captioned:
Estendart Turc ou Queüe de Cheval appelée en Turc THOU ou THOUY.
That is: Turkish standard or horse tail, called in Turkish THOU or THOUY.

The related text reads:

lors des campagnes, la marche du Grand Vizir (1er ministre nommé par le Sultan de Constantinople) est précédée par trois Etendards ou Queues de cheval terminées chacune par une pomme dorée, ils sont l'enseigne militaire des Othomans appelée Thou ou Thouy. On dit qu'un Général de cette nation, ne sachant comment rallier ses troupes qui avaient perdu tous ses Etendards, s'avisa de couper la queue d'un cheval et de l'attacher au bout d'une lance; les soldats coururent à ce nouveau signal et remportèrent la victoire...

Which translates as:

During campaigns, the marching Great Vizir (1st Minister named by the Sultan of Constantinople) is preceeded by 3 Standards or horse tails each ending with a golden apple. They are the military ensigns that the Ottomans call Thou or Thouy. It is said that a General of this nation, not knowing how to rally his troops which had lost all their standards, decided to cut the tail of an horse an to tie it to the end of a lance; the soldiers ran to this new signal and claimed victory...

Marc Pasquin, 22 November 2004

*Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) should have been a priest but he was more interested in botany. He left the seminar of Aix-en-Provence and started to collect plant samples in Upper-Provence and build an herbarium, which he increased during his later expeditions. Tournefort's herbarium is kept today in the National Museum of Natural History (Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle) in Paris. After Provence, Tournefort studied the flora of Savoy and Dauphiny and joined the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier in 1697, which allowed him to describe the flora of the neighborhood of the city. In 1681, he explored the Pyrénées mountains and Catalonia, helped by several disciples.
In 1683, Tournefort had not published anything yet but was so famous that Fagon, Louis XIV's physician, ceded him the Chair of Botany in the Jardin du Roi (now the Jardin des Plantes in Paris). This new duty did not stop Tournefort, who traveled to Spain, Portugal, England and the Netherlands until 1686.
Tournefort published in 1694 Eléments de Botanique ou Méthode pour connaître les plantes (Elements of Botany, or a Method to know the plants), in French (3 volumes), and translated the book in Latin as Institutiones rei herbariae in 1700. In 1698, Fagon awarded him the title of Docteur en Médecine of the Faculty of Paris, for a thesis entitled An morborum curatio ad mechanicae leges referando? (Is it possible to cure disease using mechanical means?) The same year, Tournefort published Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs de Paris (History of the plants which grow near Paris). The next year, his lessons in botany were published as Schola botanica.
In 1700, Louis XIV asked Tournefort to study the flora of the Levant, with the help of the painter Claude Aubriet (1651-1743). Tournefort visited the Greek islands, Constantinople, the coasts of the Black Sea, Armenia, Georgia, the mount Ararat, and came back via Smyrna (today Izmir). He could not land into Egypt because of the black plague and came back to Marseilles in 1702 with a huge collection of plant samples, published in Corollarium institutiones rei herbariae (Supplement to the Elements of Botany) in 1703, with the description of 1,350 plants from Levant. Tournefort also described mineralogy, zoology, ancient history, customs and trade in the countries he had visited. The book Relation d'un voyage au Levant fait par ordre du roi, contenant l'histoire ancienne et moderne de plusieurs isles (Relation of a travel to Levant, made upon the king's order, including the ancient and modern history of several islands) was published in 1717-1718, after Tournefort's death. Back to France, Tournefort was appointed Professor of Medecine in the Collège de France and Director of the Jardin du Roi.

Tournefort's classification of the plants was based on the morphology of the flowers, leaves, roots and stems of the plants, as well as on their flavor. He identified ten groups of flowers and placed the remaining flowers in an eleventh group. He was the first to separate the apétales (without petals and sepals, e.g., the oak, willow, beet, mistletoe and nettle flowers), monopétales (with the petals joined together), and polypétales (with many individual petals) flowers. This system was too rigid and was superseded by Linnaeus' system. However, Linnaeus himself acknowledged Tournefort's influence on his own taxonomical system.

After Encyclopaedia Universalis

Ivan Sache, 26 November 2004

"Turkish Navy" in a Dutch flag book (XIXth century)

Flag of the Turkish Navy - Image by António Martins, 3 September 2001

The flag is almost square (5:6 or 6:7), divided vertically red and white. On the red half is a very thin crescent pointing to the fly and a fairly dense eight-pointed star, both white.

António Martins, 3 September 2001

The flag is shown as #340 "Turkey Navy" on plate 10, together with #339 "Turkey flag of war", which is made of two white crescents (a thicker crescent at hoist and a thinner one at fly) placed on the same red-white vertically divided flag.

Nozomi Kariyasu, 3 September 2001

"Ottoman merchant ensign" (XIXth century)

Alleged Ottoman merchant ensign - Image by Miles Li, 9 April 2004

Many encyclopaedias from the XIXth century showed two flags purportedly from the Ottoman Empire. One was the current Turkish national flag, but usually with an eight-pointed star, as the naval ensign; the other, a green flag with a red disc at the centre bearing a white crescent (no star), was the "merchant ensign". There is, however, no evidence that the green flag ever actually existed, for we know that by the late XIXth century the naval ensign (red flag) was also used as merchant ensign.

Miles Li, 9 April 2004

Naval ensign and merchant flags in Steenbergen's flag chart (1862)

Ottoman flags shown in Steenbergen's flag chart, left, "Naval ensign"; right, "Merchant" - Images by Ivan Sache, 22 July 2006

Steenbergen's flag chart Vlaggen van alle Natiën [stb62] shows a red flag with a white crescent and star, the star being six-pointed, as "Turkey, Naval ensign", and a red flag with a red canton with a white border and charged with a white six-pointed star as "Turkey, Merchant".

Nozomi Karyasu, 22 July 2006

Man of war and merchant flags in Webster's (1884)

Ottoman flags shown in Webster's, left, "Man of war"; right, "Merchant" - Images by Željko Heimer, 23 July 2006

Lombard Antiquarian Map & Prints show on their website three flag plates quoted as "1884, Webster". Webster's dictionary is a common title given to English language dictionaries in the United States, deriving its name from the American lexicographer Noah Webster. In 1884, a revision of Webster's Unabridged (originally published in 1864 as An American Dictionary of the English Language, Royal Quarto Edition, Unabridged) was published, including place names; the plates on sale at Lombard's probably come from that Webster's.
On the plate entitled "Flag of Various Nations", a red flag with a white crescent and star, the star being eight-pointed, is captioned "Turkey, Man of war", while a red flag with a red canton with a white border and charged with a white eight-pointed star is captioned "Turkey, Merchant".

Ivan Sache, 22 July 2006

Ottoman Empire flag on Allen & Ginter cigarette cards (c. 1885)

Ottoman flag shown on a cigarette card - Image by António Martins, 18 September 2006

The Allen &Ginter's series of cigarette cards N9, Flags of all Nations [u9s8Xa] (seemingly not released before 1885 and perhaps even 1889) shows for "Turkey" (Ottoman Empire) a red flag with a white (rather banana-like) crescent pointing to the fly and with an eight pointed star between its horns. This may be an incorrect depiction of the seven-pointed star flag "for ocean-going vessels".

António Martins, 18 September 2006