Gilded frontispiece of an endowment deed

h. 1169 [1756]

Ottoman vakfiyes (endowment deeds) are valuable sources of information on the economic, social and cultural history of the empire. The endowment exhibited here belongs to Hacı Ahmed Ağa, a black eunuch in the harem of Sultan Osman III (r. 1754-57), and concerns a school and sebilhane (fountain for the distribution of drinking water) that he built in Cairo when Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire. It describes properties in the provinces of Mansura, Garbiye and Kalyub that were to provide income for the endowments, and the way in which this income was to be spent. The text begins with prayers in Arabic for Sultan Osman III and continues in Turkish, giving information about Ahmed Ağa and explanatory detail about the endowment. At the end of the text are the names and occupations of the witnesses. At the top of the first page of the endowment deed is an illuminated panel with a dome-shaped lappet. The margins of the first two pages are filled with halkâr gilding and the spaces between the lines are gilded. Halkârî is a style of gilded decoration consisting of floral motifs painted in watered gold. It was used for the areas surroundings writing and illustrations in albums, the first or last pages of some manuscripts, and sometimes the margins of all the pages. The illumination and halkâr decoration of this frontispiece are clearly the work of a master artist executed around the 1750s. The black leather binding with blind stamped decoration is not original