“Turkish” tobacco pipes: history of study

DOI:

Цитирование. Кладченко О. В. «Турецкие» курительные трубки: история изучения // Вестник Волгоградского государственного университета. Серия 4, История. Регионоведение. Международные отношения. – 2023. – Т. 28, № 5. – С. 213–224. – (На англ. яз.). – DOI:

Introduction. Having arrived in Turkey at the beginning of the 17th century, tobacco smoking spread rapidly throughout the vast territory of the Ottoman Empire. Numerous attempts have been made to ban smoking, including the danger of fires, but they have been unsuccessful. By the mid-17th century, smoking had come into fashion, and along with smoking, pipes had spread. The Ottoman pipe was the result of a fusion of European and West African pipe-making traditions. The Turks borrowed the European technology of stamping pipes in two-part forms and a three-part structure of African smoking set. Such a pipe consisted of a bowl with a short stem where a long chibouk was inserted and ended with a mouthpiece. Turkish pipes were made of clay, most often in two-part molds, and wedges were hammered into the product to create the openings. The surface of the pipes would be decorated in various ways: the surface was subjected to glossing and ornamentation, performed with the help of various end stamps or rouletted bands, as well as cogwheels covered with slip. Sometimes the pipes were gilded and decorated with inlay [7, p. 47]. Together with other goods, pipes were imported to every corner of the Ottoman Empire. Local craftsmen quickly learned to copy the original products quite accurately. The most correct with respect to the entire pipe array is that the term “Turkish” is used in quotation marks to refer to both Turkish products and imitations of them, thus combining both original products and copies [23, p. 31].

“Turkish” pipes are a bright and beautiful material. They have long attracted the attention of researchers, and extensive literature has been devoted to their study.

• V.V. Lavrov has already attempted to make the history of the pipes study in 2018 [41]. In the report, published as an article, the author reviewed only seventeen of the most famous works on “Turkish” pipes, which is far from exhausting the wide range of both domestic and foreign literature on the subject.

Methods of research. The study uses methods of historical knowledge, allowing to explore all the features and reflect the evolution of research on the problem in question. The comparative-historical method allows identifying the common features, differences, and peculiarities of individual studies devoted to the issue under consideration. The problem-chronological method distinguishes separate directions in the research of smoking pipes

(creation of typological schemes, deciphering of stamps, identification of centers of production). All the literature considered in the publication is arranged in chronological order and reflects the evolution of the researchers’ views.

Analysis. The very first publications, in which the pipes found at the sites of Central and SouthEastern Europe were singled out as a special category of archaeological material, date back to the 1940s–1960s. However, the tobacco pipes in them were, as a rule, simply listed among other archaeological material [2; 49; 53; 86].

From the late 1960s to the late 1980s, the foundations were laid for the study of “Turkish” smoking pipes. The works created during this period are still the basis on which all researchers rely.

One of the first attempts to create a classification based on the study of the Varna Museum’s collection of tobacco pipes was made by Bulgarian researcher M. Stancheva [67–69]. The attributes that were used by her as typoforming are the color of clay (red clay, light brown, brick-red, white clay, black clay) and “style,” corresponding to the shape of flower buds (lilies, narcissus, tulips). The authors did not study the composition of clay; only the color of the surface of the finished product was taken into account. Classifications based on the same principles were proposed by A. Kharlambieva [30] and V. Ilcheva [28]. When creating the classifications, Bulgarian researchers proceeded from the fact that almost all the “Turkish” pipes from the territory of Bulgaria were local products, made in Sofia, Varna, and Veliko Tarnovo. They also based the typology on the color of the clay of the finished product and on the floral “styles.” This tradition is well-established, and such names are still used in most publications. “Floral” names of types or “styles” can be considered justified, since the artistic culture of the Ottoman Empire is all permeated with floral themes. However, not all “styles” are unambiguously defined as a particular type of flower, so in the works of different researchers, the same type of product may have different names.

In 1980, the work of J. Hayes was published. In which the pipes from the excavations in the residential quarter of Istanbul, Saraçhane [26], were comprehensively studied. The pipes were dated according to the accompanying numismatic materials. The author proposed a classification based on which the pipes were divided into five groups according to date, clay color, and surface treatment method. In the first group that J. Hayes dated from the 17th to the beginning of the 18th century, he attributed eight types of products made from light gray clay, sometimes with Arabic inscriptions. The next group of J. Hayes includes early pipes with a red or brown surface, with or without burnishing, and sometimes the pipes are equipped with stamps. The author dates this group to the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. The group of red-burnish pipes of the 19th century by J. Hayes includes large pipes on a flat base, a richly decorated surface, and stamps in a circular field. Among the late J. Hayes (after 1850) included a group of pipes, many of which are red-burnish; there are also pipes with stamps. To the latter group, the author attributed three types found in one, two, and three copies. They are dated from the 17th and early 18th centuries.

In 1983–1985, the most important articles by R. Robinson, who proposed her classification of pipes from the layers in Kerameikos, Athenian Agora, and Corinth, based on the shape of the bowls [51; 52], show that pipes with discoidal, round, and faceted bowls were produced at different times in the period between the 17th and 19th centuries [52, p. 149].

The earliest pipes, according to R. Robinson, were, in imitation of the European ones, made of light clay, small in size, with a long stem. Since the late 17th century, pipes in Constantinople began to be made of red clay, and in the 18th century, on the pipes, there’s a so-called “keel” – an embossed transition from the stem to the bowl. Raw materials for pipe production were brought from Lake Van [52, pp. 152, 153, 161-163]. R. Robinson also noted centers of pipe production in the Ottoman Empire – the cities of Lüleburgaz in Turkey and Sofia and Varna in Bulgaria. In addition, pipes were mass-produced in the Tophane area of Istanbul, where the earliest pipes date back to the late 18th century.

The next stage in the study of the pipes was in the 1990s. At this time, the data on the dating of the pipes were clarified, and special studies using natural scientific methods were carried out for the first time [60]. Written sources were involved, and the historical names of some types of pipes were restored [83, p. 135]. This analysis examines the distinctive features of local copies of Turkish originals [83, p. 135].

Since the 1990s, the British researcher J. Simpson has been actively studying the Ottoman pipes up to the present time. He revised the materials from excavations in Istanbul presented by J. Hayes and specified the numismatic data. He attributed the first group of J. Hayes’ pipes to the 17th and early 18th centuries, the second to the 18th century, and the third and fourth to the early and mid-19th centuries [59]. Earlier, he had already criticized and clarified the erroneous dating of his predecessors, who attributed the pipes to the 13th and 14th centuries [57]. In his 2002 work, J. Simpson clarifies his observations about the dating of tobacco pipes to the 17th and early 18th centuries. He attributes the pipes, richly decorated with cogwheels, to the 18th century, the glazed pipes to the middle of the 18th century, and the lily-shaped red-burnished pipes with a round bowl and a disc-shaped base to the beginning of the 19thcentury [64, pp. 160, 164-166]. In addition to the works mentioned above, he has articles on pipes and tobacco smoking, as well as on the use of coffee in the Ottoman Empire, including the Middle East [58; 62; 63; 65; 66]. He also made interesting observations about the use of tobacco pipes in Muslim burials [61, p. 17]. J. Simpson conducted a special study of the contents of Ottoman tobacco pipes, which involved the use of aerosols used to detect opiates and cannabinoids. The analysis showed that only a small number of pipes were used for smoking drugs, while the majority was used for tobacco. The presence of narcotic substances was detected reliably only on two pipes [60].

J. Humphrey made the classification based on a collection of 1800 whole and fragmented pipes found during excavations in Mytilene [27]. He distinguished seven groups of pipes based on the shape of the bowl and the date of production, placing them in chronological order: he attributed the grey-clay and white-clay pipes to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the pipes with a spherical cannellated bowl to the end of the 17th – beginning of the 18th century; since the 18th century, bowls had increased, which was associated with a decrease in the cost of tobacco; at the same time, a disc-shaped base appeared on the pipes. J. Humphrey also described forty-four specimens, which he identified as hash pipes.

Their bowl had a two-chamber structure; the lower and upper chambers were separated by a membrane with three holes and an open socket for a chibouk at the place of the stem [27, p. 6]. The author expected to create a more complete classification, which would take into account another 1600 finds from Mytilene [27, p. 7].

One of the works, which covers the problematics related to the “Turkish” tobacco pipes as an archaeological source to the fullest extent, belongs to Turkish researcher E. Bakla [7]. He examines the goods of the largest Turkish workshops located in the cities of Lüleburgaz, Istanbul, Sivas, Konya, Kayseri, Diyarbakir, Kütahya, and Iznik [7, pp. 35, 36]. The author mentions many masters, including renowned Istanbul Christian masters of Armenian origin [7, pp. 41, 42]. E. Bakla reports that not always the same master made the pipe and applied ornaments to it, which may explain the presence of two different marks on one product [7, p. 43]. E. Bakla expressed the original idea that it makes sense to create a classification of pipes not on the basis of morphology but on the basis of the color of the product [7, p. 52]. He highlighted red clay pipes covered in red slip; pipes made of white clay or porcelain; and pipes covered with colored glazes. Nevertheless, the author further considers the morphological features, highlighting the following variations of the bowls of the pipes: conical bowl, cylindrical, tulip-shaped, hemispherical, hemispherical with cylindrical rim, crater-shaped, crater-shaped with flower base, octagonal cylindrical bowl, flattened spherical bowl. When describing the parts of a tobacco pipe, E. Bakla uses the term “connector” instead of the term “keel”, which is common in European and Russian literature. The author categorizes the varieties of this part into several types: triangular, rectangular, hand-shaped, flower-shaped, as well as its absence [7, p. 53]. E. Bakla pays special attention to the decoration of the edge of the stem, noting such variants as flattened roller, criss-cross pattern, hexagonal, wavy, and inscription. The author does not try to date pipe types as a whole; he gives dates only for reliably dated, marked specimens, most often of high artistic value [7, pp. 41, 42].

In Russia, the first special study of “Turkish” tobacco pipes was published in 1996. I.V. Volkov and G.L. Novikova discuss pipes from the collection of the Museum of History of Moscow [83]. By comparing data from Charles Peyssonel’s treatise “On Trade in the Black Sea” and a synchronous collection of pipes from Anapa, the authors determined the name of the pipe style: “tahta-chibouk” [83, p. 135]. Otherwise, the authors agreed with the “flower” typology of styles proposed by Bulgarian scientists; however, they stipulated the possibility of restoring the real names of the styles from written sources and, in the case of successful identification, the need to go to them [83, p. 135]. The authors identified features by which Turkish pipes could be distinguished from those made in Moscow and made an interesting suggestion that some local articles were deliberately made with low quality in order to create a background for better-made pipes and pass them off as Turkish [83, p. 137].

In the article published three years later, I.V. Volkov suggested the principles of measurement and description of the pipes and also described the prospects of the study of pipes, supposing that with proper study they can become “amphorae of new time” [80, p. 226] as important dating material.

A number of special articles on Turkish tobacco pipes from excavations in the city of Azov belong to I.R. Gusach. She has published closed complexes with tobacco pipes, which are important for more precise dating [22], and it is noted that in the closed complexes there are whiteclay, grey-clay, and red-clay “Turkish” tobacco pipes, which indicates that such pipes coexisted for some period of time.

In the 2000s and 2010s, the attention of researchers turned to separate problems of studying pipes, such as stamps and ornamentation [3–5; 8; 24; 25; 74; etc.], images of smoking pipes on works of art [20], and analysis of written sources on the history of tobacco smoking [84]. In addition, large monographs with detailed catalogs of “Turkish” smoking pipes were created for the first time [19; 23].

An important observation was made in 2006. The Russian archaeologist I.V. Volkov, based on a well-dated closed complex in the city of Azov, made an observation about the prevalence of red-clay pipes as early as the 17th century, refuting the conclusions of R. Robinson [81, p. 494].

In 2007, an important work by E. Bakla devoted to the applied art of the Ottomans was published. In this work, the author paid more attention to the reading of marks on the tobacco pipes [8]. It contains well-done photos of 190 different stamps, 70 names of masters, and 120 illegible marks [8, pp. 137-142]. This is by far the most comprehensive catalog of readable stamps on Turkish smoking pipes.

A certain contribution to the study of marks and inscriptions on catalog pipes was made by A. de Haan [24; 25]. He made a curious observation that due to the fashion for European-made pipes in the second quarter of the 19th century, in Turkey, firstly, there was a decline in production and, secondly, Turkish-French marks appeared [24, p. 84], designed to make the pipes more recognizable in the French market. The researcher also discovered highly artistic pipes from the Levant. This group consisted of only eight specimens decorated with gold, which were usually found only on the products of Tophane masters [25]. These pipes were made on a potter’s wheel [25, p. 31]. The author suggested that despite their high quality, the pipes, most likely, were not made in Istanbul [25, p. 33].

Pipes from the cities of Smirna (Izmir) and Hasankeyf in Turkey were studied by G. Ayhan [3–5]. She also wrote an interesting article about the images of birds on the pipes, among which stand out both the artistic images and widespread brands in the form of a bird, which, according to Ayhan, masters in Varna marked their products [4, p. 9].

The major monograph by F. Gosse, based on the study of the collection from underwater excavations in the bay of the quarantine port of Pomegues Island (Marseille), deserves special attention [19]. This port existed during the 17th and 18th centuries [19, p. 4]. Ships from Istanbul, Smyrna, Tripoli, Sidon, Tunis, and other countries were entering the port [19, p. 2]. A separate chapter of the book is devoted to “Turkish” pipes [19, p. 121]. F. Gosse has developed his own detailed typology of pipes. It was based on the proportions of pipes and an accurate fixation of the mathematical values of their parts [19, pp. 178179]. The author distinguishes rims of cylindrical, truncated-conical form and also “venturi” form (smoothly narrowed to the center of the cylinder); bowls of pipes, according to this typology, have spherical, ellipsoidal horizontal and vertical forms. In addition, the author described 21 decoration motifs on catalog pipes [19, p. 166]. F. Gosse compares his typological scheme with J. Hayes’ typology and clarifies some of his dating [19, pp. 180-181]. F. Gosse’s typology was the first case of a departure from the “floral” tradition of classifying Ottoman tobacco pipes. The author emphasizes that he did not set out to identify production centers, but he highlights the styles: Turkish, Greek, Syrian, and Balkan, each with its own morphological features. There is a catalog with a detailed description of 500 samples of Ottoman tobacco pipes with exact measurements of their parts and photos; it is very convenient for using [19, pp. 200-312]. The catalogue also divides the pipes according to the author’s classification into styles, and within the styles, into types based on geometric shapes.

In 2010, V. Todorov published a collection of clay pipes from excavations in the city of Silistra (Bulgaria) and proposed his classification, which is based on the description of types according to the simple geometric forms that make up the pipe [71]. In total, the author distinguished 14 types of pipes with 22 subtypes, displaying them visually in a convenient graphical scheme [71, pp. 818, 819]. V. Todorov also divided the marks on the pipes into seven categories: marks containing a proper name; marks containing a word with a symbolic meaning; marks with senseless letter combinations; marks containing one or two letters woven into the ornamentation; marks resembling Arabic script but with unrecognizable letters; branded with a criss-cross pattern; stamps with different images – a six-rayed star, a flower, a circle with dashes, a bird [71, p. 821, 823].

Despite the great versatility of these typologies, which distinguishes them from “flower” typologies, they have not become widely used. Researchers prefer to use the “flowery” names of the pipe types. Obviously, it was the floral imagery that pipe makers tried to embody under the influence of the so-called “Tulip Era” in all areas of art [23, p. 30].

The differences between local pipes and the Ottoman ones attracted the attention of L. L. Bekić [11; 12]. On the material of the early 17th and 20th centuries from Slovakia and Croatia, he identified and described the pipes produced on the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire using Ottoman samples, noted their differences in ornamentation with the original, and described the lead molds with relief ornamentation in which the pipes were made.

In 2011, the history of tobacco distribution and smoking in the Crimea on the basis of written sources as fully as possible was illuminated by I.V. Zaitsev [84]. The author has not agreed with the opinion of V.H. Kondaraki that tobacco appeared in the Crimea even before the establishment of the Ottomans. He has believed that it appeared in Crimea in the first half of the 17th century and spread on the peninsula, from where it soon got to Moscow State [84, p. 13, 14]. I.V. Zaytsev has also noted that at Khan’s court there were posts of keeper of tobacco and a man in charge of delivery of chibouk, giving important statistical data about quantity of imported tobacco and prices on it based on the customs documents [84, p. 17, 20]. In the 17th and 19th centuries, the image of the Crimean resident in the Russian consciousness had already been inseparable from tobacco, pipes, and coffee [84, p. 23]. I.V. Zaytsev has also noted that pipes were spread throughout the Crimean Khanate [84, p. 24].

The work of A.-M. Gruia is devoted to the image of the smoker in a specific branch of European art of the 17th and 19th centuries [20]. The author traced the transformation of the image of a smoker on the stove tiles of Central and Eastern Europe. As smoking spread and became commonplace in different segments of society, the image of the smoker transformed from negative and comic to neutral. The short stem pipes with which the characters were depicted on the tiles were part of the image of a military man or a Turk. A.-M. Gruia also published a monograph on smoking in Transylvania in the early 17th and early 18th centuries, with a third chapter devoted to pipes [21]. According to the author, no traces of local pipe production had been found in Transylvania. There has been unconfirmed evidence of the existence of a workshop in the town of Oradea [21, p. 41]. The author has noted that since a significant part of the early findings of tobacco pipes were made during the excavations of military fortifications, soldiers played a significant role in the spread of smoking and smoking utensils [21, p. 48].

In 2014, the Bulgarian researcher K.N. Batchvarov published an important closed complex [9]: a collection of tobacco pipes was obtained as a result of underwater archaeological research on the wreck of a merchant ship dating from the coins of Sultan Selim III (1789–1807) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Most of the pipes found at the crash site bore signs of use and therefore were not goods for sale [9, p. 16].

A significant step in the study of pipes was the publication of catalogs of pipes from the collection of the Azov Museum, including 450 specimens, in 2016 by I.R. Gusach [23]. The researcher proposed her multistage typology. She introduces the concept of “Eastern type” pipes, which combine “Turkish”, Italian, Ukrainian, and conventionally “European” pipes. “Turkish” or Ottoman pipes are in turn divided by the color of the clay of the finished product into five categories, each divided into sub-categories, groups, and subgroups depending on the shape of the pipe, taking into account all its elements, not just the bowl. I.R. Gusach generally agreed with the dating of different types of pipes proposed for Azak by I.V. Volkov and other researchers, who turned to this material [23, pp. 40-61]. Summing up, the author leaves open the issue of determining the centers of production [23, p. 61].

A considerable amount of important information about the production and distribution of “Turkish” smoking pipes is contained in the works of the Israeli researcher A. de Vincenz, who has been actively publishing new material for the past ten years. Her works are mainly devoted to the materials from the excavations in the city of Ramla and in Jaffa, one of the main ports of ancient Israel [73–79].

The main focus of A. de Vincenz was on the marks and inscriptions on the pipes as details to distinguish production centers and individual workshops. Her special work is devoted to the name marks [74]. Petrographic analysis was carried out for some of the marked pipes, which showed that they were made from clay mined in the area of the modern settlement of Motza in Israel [74, p. 76]. The researcher considers the mark-drawings (rosettes, leaves, and birds) to be earlier than the name marks [79, p. 107]. Rosettes or marks with leaves, according to her observations, were still used in the 19th century but were becoming more complex and were usually located at the base of the stem [79, p. 108].

Finds of smoking pipes from the excavations in the Old City of Acre were described by

A. Shapiro [55; 56]. The author has developed her own typology based on the analysis of over 2000 tobacco pipes. As type-forming attributes, the material, size, shape, and ornamentation of pipes stand out. As part of her research, a petrographic analysis of some products was carried out, which allowed her to clarify the centers of production [56, pp. 78-84]. The author identifies among the tobacco pipes found in Acre those of Damascus, Istanbul, and local manufacture. A. Shapiro considers pipes of light gray clay with inclusions of quartz, limestone, and fine mica to be from the Damascus production of the late 17th and early 18th centuries [56, p. 79]. Gray-clay pipes covered with cherry-colored slip appeared, in her opinion, at the beginning of the 18th century and have been around for 150 years [56, p. 79]. The clay of these pipes contains inclusions of crushed olive seeds, limestone, and occasionally quartz. A. Shapiro suggests that these pipes could have been produced in Acre or its nearest vicinity [56, p. 81]. On the pipes of this group there are often marks, which the author interprets as stylized horseshoes and flower-shaped marks [56, p. 81-82]. The author attributed the Istanbul production to good-quality pipes made of brown-orange clay with an admixture of mica, covered with orange-red slip. Most likely, they were produced in Tophane [56, p. 84].

In 2021, an important step in standardizing the study of tobacco pipes was made by Polish researcher J. Puziuk, who compiled a Polish-English dictionary of archaeological terms used by the authors in describing and studying tobacco pipes [48].

In general, it can be noted that in the 2000s and 2010s, when post-medieval archaeology finally gained the status of a full-fledged section of archaeological science, there was a real “pipe boom”. New finds and museum collections of “Turkish” pipes are published all the time, which is not surprising: this material is quite attractive and widespread territorially. The bibliography of works devoted to various aspects of the study of tobacco pipes during this period is as extensive as the geography of the distribution of the pipes themselves. We shall note some of them to illustrate this process.

“Turkish” pipes from the territory of Poland were investigated by B. Milošević and N. Topić [42–44], M. Bis [10], J. Puziuk [46–48];

Hungary – S. Kondorosy [34–36], G. Kovács [38], A. Gaspar [17]; Serbia – V. Bikic [13]; Romania – I. Costea, A. Stănică, A. Ignat [14; 15], Z. Kopeczny, R. Dincă [37], C. Radu-Iorguş and others [50]; Ukraine – O. Kovalenko [39]; Turkey – İ. Aytaç [6] and H. Uçar [72].

“Turkish” pipes, both imported and local imitations, were also repeatedly studied in the works of Russian scientists: finds from the fortress of Aluston (Crimea) by D. Aliadinova [1], from the fortress of Anapa on the territory of the modern city of Anapa by L.Iu. Zazhigina [85]; from the collection of the Bakhchisarai Museum by T.N. Krasnova [40]; from Vologda town by N.G. Nedomolkina and V.V. Nedomolkina [45]; from Tara town by S.F. Tataurov [70]; from Kostroma by A.A. Saturin [54]; from Kaluga by L.I. Fedorova and others [16]; from Taman peninsula, Anapa and the Crimea by O.V. Kladchenko [31–33], Y.Y. Kargin [29], I.V. Volkov [82]. Tobacco pipes from the collection of the State Hermitage were published by M.N. Gavrilova [18].

Results. Thus, we can trace three stages in the study of “Turkish” smoking pipes. At the first stage (late 1960s – late 1980s), the first pipe classifications were created on materials from Istanbul, Keramikos, and Varna. A tradition was established to identify pipe types with the names of colors. During the second stage, which falls in the 1990s, written sources were involved in the study of pipes, the names of some types of pipes were restored, and the differences between copies made by local masters outside the Ottoman Empire were highlighted. The third stage, from the 2000s to the present, is characterized by widespread interest in pipe research. Materials from a large part of the territories of the former Ottoman Empire – Turkey, the Balkan Peninsula, the territories of modern Israel, the Crimea, and the Eastern Azov Sea area – are studied. Researchers became interested in certain issues related to “Turkish” pipes: stamps and ornamentation. Petrographic analysis was performed on a small number of samples. Large-scale catalogs of smoking pipes from Azov [23] and the Pomegues Port of Marseilles [19] have been published. In addition, during this period, the most important issue of standardization was raised: a dictionary of terms was compiled [48], and the first attempts were made to move away from

“flowery” schemes of pipe description. However, many questions still remain unresolved: only a few of the production centers have been identified, only a small part of the marks of masters have been read, most of the dating is broad, covers periods of 100–150 years, and is far from the expected transformation of clay pipes into “amphorae of the New Age” [80, p. 226].

NOTE

• ¹    The work was carried out within the framework of the state assignment of the SSC RAS for 2022 (0022-15, state registration number AAAA-A20-120122990111-9, directions of the PFNI 2021-2030: 6.1.3. “Archeology”).