Between Representation and Reality: A Critical Evaluation of Narratives of the 1720 Festival and Unknown Archival Sources

Between 18 September and 7 October 1720, the Ottoman court hosted a grand scale public festival in Istanbul for the circumcision of Sultan Ahmed III’s four sons. This festival has been a point of scholarly interest in Ottoman historiography and art historiography since the 1960s, where it has largely been studied through an uncritical assessment of related narrative sources, especially the pictorial narratives. Due to this one-dimensional consideration, however, the line between the representation of the festival and the event itself has often been blurred. Moreover, the social and material aspects of this huge event are largely overlooked. This article addresses the subjectivity of festival narratives by critically evaluating the textual and pictorial representations of the 1720 festival and comparing them with hitherto unknown archival sources of the event. A general discussion of the nature of narrative and empirical sources for the study of the festival follows. Finally, the article discusses divergences between these disparate sources by focusing on a particular example related to the festival’s banquets.