Talk:Tughra

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s quality scale.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s importance scale.

	Turkey Portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Turkey, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Turkey-related topics. Please visit the the participants page if you would like to get involved. Happy editing!
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the project's quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	edit · history · watch · refresh To-do list for Tughra:
No to-do list assigned; you can help us in improving the articles in the same category

Contents 1 Pronounciation 2 This needs to be retitled 3 Overt bias on this page 4 Jemiljan

[edit] Pronounciation

How is this pronounced? Tom Harrison ^(talk) 21:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

What does Vladimir Putin's Tughra look like? Did he use Cyrillic or Arabic script?--Fox Mccloud 18:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The "g" or "gh" is pronounced like a french "r".

Actually no, in modern Turkish the "ğ" of "Tuğra" is not at all pronounced, it is just a vowel binder. the pronouncuation would rougly go like [tu:ra]

--Eae1983 (talk) 23:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually as soon as I have the time, I will do a major overhaul of that page and move it to "Tuğra". Also needs to be precised the artistical development of the new generation Tuğras in the 18th century by Mustafa Rakım, maybe the greatest of calligraphers.

--Eae1983 (talk) 23:48, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Actually, I think that would be a serious mistake to re-title the article and move it to tuğra as you've suggested. That would make the article more "Ottoman-centric" than it already is. The Ottomans neither originated the form, nor were they the only ones to employ it. Furthermore, there is no rule to say that Modern Turkish ( Çağdaş Türkçe) spelling should take precedence over other Turkic linguistic variants. The origin of the word in Oghuz was certainly not spelled "Tuğra" like it is Turkey today, and the word is not even pronounced that way in other Turkic dialects and even Oghuz derivatives such as Azeri, Turkmen, and Chaghatay, where the letter Ghayn غ is very much pronounced and NOT silent! See my comments below for more comprehensive sources on this topic. On the other hand, I do think that an expansion on the artistic development by Ottoman calligraphers such as Rakım would be most welcome. Do you know of any copyright-free images that we can add in?--Jemiljan (talk) 21:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This needs to be retitled

The monogram of an Ottoman Turkish Sultan is correctly known as a Toughra. The Toughra was also used by the Nizam of Hyderabad, and appears on the obverses of some of the coins of Pakistan as well.

The Crimean Khans also used the Toughra, as did the Mahdi of the Sudan. - (203.211.75.43 00:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC))

• I disagree, as I believe that the transliteration you've employed may perhaps be a more antiquated English or even French style. The Encyclopedia of Islam uses ṭug̲h̲rā. See my comments below regarding a comprehensive range of sources to use to expand this article and make it more inclusive. This issue aside, it would be nic e to find copyright-free images from the subcontinent to use. Do you know of any? --Jemiljan (talk) 21:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Overt bias on this page

This page is extremely biased in the sense that it focuses entirely on the Ottoman context. In fact, it seems to have been translated verbatim from the Turkish language wiki page [1]. A tughra (spelled tuğra in Modern Turkish, also pronounced "ṭug̲h̲rā" in other Turkic dialects) was used as early as the Seljuq dynasties, as well as the Mamluks. The usage extended well beyond Ottoman territories. the formats also do not resemble the Ottoman ones, which are very distinct.

On the origin of the term, from the [[Encyclopedia of Islam]]. the article was originally written by J. Deny in the first edition [2], and was subsequently revised and expanded by C. Bosworth and Muhammad Yusuf Siddiq:

1. Origin of the term. The oldest mention of the word is in Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī , Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk, fol. 232, tr. Atalay, i, 462, tr. Dankoff and Kelly, i, 346: “the tug̲h̲rag̲h̲is the seal (ṭābiʿ) and signature ( tawḳīʿ ) of the king; Og̲h̲uz dialect (g̲h̲uzziyya) and not known to the [Western] Turks; I do not know its origin”. From this, there emerges that tug̲h̲rag̲h̲(with final g̲h̲) is the old, eastern Og̲h̲uz form from which came tug̲h̲ra in the Western Og̲h̲uz language of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. Thence it was borrowed into Persian and re-borrowed into Ottoman and Čag̲h̲atay Turkish as a loan word. In Sald̲j̲ūḳusage, the initial unvoiced dental acquired the orthography ṭ under the influence of the word’s back vowel harmony. In the Arabic used by chroniclers and secretaries during Mamlūk times, it acquired the Arabic sound plural ṭug̲h̲rāwāt, on analogy with ag̲h̲āwāt, bās̲h̲āwāt, etc., and there evolved the form II verb ṭag̲h̲g̲h̲ara “to affix the ṭug̲h̲rā on a document”. From Ottoman, the word spread into Serbian and Bulgarian as tugra and into Romanian as tura. Its etymology remains as mysterious today as it was in al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī’s time. Various fanciful suggestions of the sources were reviewed by Deny in his EI 1 art .; Doerfer surmised that it might have been borrowed from some pre-Turkish culture. See idem, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, iii, 342-6 no. 1344; Clauson, An etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth century Turkish,471.

2. History. (a) In the central Islamic lands before the Ottomans. The rulers of the first two great Turkish empires of the Middle East and the eastern Iranian lands, the Sald̲j̲ūḳs and the Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āhs (virtually nothing is known of Ḳarak̲h̲ānid chancery practice) seem to have used the terms ṭug̲h̲rā and tawḳīʿ more or less interchangeably for the sultan’s emblem or monogram. The sources for Sald̲j̲ūḳhistory tend to use the word tawḳīʿ for the emblem of Ṭog̲h̲ri'l Beg and subsequent sultans (sc. the Ḳin)ḳ tribal emblem of the bow and arrow used by the first Sald̲j̲ūḳ tribal chiefs—Temür Yalig̲h ̲being allegedly the cognomen of the eponymous ancestor, Sald̲j̲ūḳ’s father Duḳāḳ—and known from Sald̲j̲ūḳcoins if not from actual documents, and the club or mace, čumāk, mentioned by Rāwandī ,Rāḥat al-ṣudūr, 98, as also being Ṭog̲h̲ri'l Beg’s emblem ). The Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad [q.v.] had as part of his ṭug̲h̲rā, according to al-Nasawī, Sīrat al- Sulṭān Ḏj̲alāl Dīn Mingburnu, ed. Ḥāfiz Aḥmad Ḥamdī , Cairo 1953, 324, and Ḏj̲uwaynī-Boyle, i, 349, the motto z̦ill Allāh fi ʾl-arḍ“the shadow of God on earth”, and it is recorded that official documents and investiture patents from his chancery bore his ṭug̲h̲rā (ibid., i, 154, 329); but his son and successor Ḏj̲alāl Dīn [q.v.] refused, in his reduced state, to use such a grandiloquent formula (al-Nasawī, loc. cit.). In the surviving collections of ins̲h̲āʾ from the Sald̲j̲ūḳand Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āhī periods, the term ṭug̲h̲rā does not appear on the documents themselves, but there are mentioned in them the dīwān-i ṭug̲h̲rā and the official charged with drawing it, the ṭug̲h̲rāʾī (first known in the person of Ṭoghri̊l’s ṭug̲h̲rāʾī , the Turkish amīr Ḵh̲umārtigin, but most notably this was the professional title by which the famous Sald̲j̲ūḳ official, poet and stylist Muʾayyid al-Dīn Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (d. probably in 515/1121 [see al-ṭug̲h̲rāʾī ]), who filled this office in the reign of Malik S̲h̲āh , was always known, even though he went on to become a vizier; cf. S.M. Stern, in his very thorough study of the signature in documents, 123-65, at 149 n. 1). It does seem reasonable to assume, with S.M. Stern, that, as Sald̲j̲ūḳand Ḵh̲wārazm S̲h̲āhī chancery practice was elaborated, the ṭug̲h̲rā of these rulers reduced the tribal mark element to stylised lines, dropped the pious mottos of each ruler (as detailed by Rāwandī ) and incorporated the ruler’s titles in a stylised pattern with elongated shafts of letters, foreshadowing later developments which were to culminate in Ottoman practice. See on the general topic of the ṭug̲h̲rā during this period, Cl. Cahen, La ṭuġrā seljuḳide, in JA, ccxxxiv (1943-5), 167-72; Stern, Fāṭimid decrees. Original documents from the Fāṭimid chancery, London 1964, 143-52; H. Horst, Die Staatsverwaltung der Grosselǧūqen und Ḫōrazm“āhs (1038-1231), Wiesbaden 1964, 35-6.

It seems very probable that such dynasties which arose out of the decaying great Sald̲j̲ūḳempire as the Zangid Atabegs and then the Ayyūbids took over the use of the ṭug̲h̲rā from the Sald̲j̲ūḳ chancery. The Ayyūbid sultans had, like their Fāṭimid predecessors in Egypt and southern Syria, pious royal mottos as part of their ʿalāma [q.v.], and presumably a signature with the names and titles of the monarch. In the absence of actual documents with representations of the ṭug̲h̲rā in them, Stern surmised that the graphic form was in the style of the ṭug̲h̲rā, with elongated shafts to the letters and possibly also some vertical lines to set them off ( Fāṭimid decrees, 154-5; cf. also his Two Ayyūbid decrees from Sinai , in idem (ed.), Documents from Islamic chanceries, Oxford 1965, 15-17). Further snippets of relevant information come from men- tions of the ṭug̲h̲rā in the manual on secretaryship of Ibn S̲h̲īt̲h̲ al-Ḳuras̲h̲ī (d. 625/1228; see on him W. Björkman, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatskanzlei im islamischen Ägypten, Hamburg 1928, 34-6), the Maʿālim al-kitāba , Beirut 1913, 43, and in the brief annals of Ibn Abi ʾl-Dam (d. 642/1244 [q.v.]), in which he gives a model diploma of al-Malik al-Kāmil of Egypt for his own patron al-Malik al-Muz̦affar of Ḥamāt which, he says, ended with a ṭug̲h̲rā (cited by Cahen, La correspondence de Ḳiyāad-Dīn ibn al-Athīr. Liste de lettres et textes de diplômes, in BSOAS, xiv [1952], 42-3).

It should be noted that, around this time, we begin to find the word ṭug̲h̲rā confused in Arabic literary and popular usage with the similar Arabic word ṭurra, literally “border of a piece of cloth”, “upper border of a document”, obviously arising from the part of the document where the ṭug̲h̲rā was normally affixed; already Ibn Ḵh̲allikān, Wafayāt, ed. ʿAbbās, ii, 190,defines the ṭug̲h̲rā as “the ṭurra which is written with a ¶ thick pen at the top of documents above the basmala”, and ṭurra became the commonly-used form in later Egyptian popular parlance.

From the Ayyūbids , the use of the ṭug̲h̲rā passed to their supplanters, the Mamlūks . A full description of Mamlūk practice here is given by al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī in his Ṣubḥ al-aʿs̲h̲ā , xiii, 162-6, cf. Björkman, op. cit., 44, 168, illustrated by two drawings of the ṭug̲h̲rās of al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Ḳalāwūn and his grandson al-Malik al-As̲h̲raf S̲h̲aʿbān b . Ḥusayn [q.vv.]. According to al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī , the ṭug̲h̲rā was not used after S̲h̲aʿbān’s reign (764-78/1363-77), confirmed by al-Maḳrīzī’s (d. 845/1442) information in his Ḵh̲iṭaṭ that it was no longer used in his time. Al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī gives considerable detail on the usage and the exact format of the ṭug̲h̲rā used on mans̲h̲ūrs or investiture patents for high military commanders. When the ṭug̲h̲rā was complex, containing many strokes, a fine (d̲j̲alīl t̲h̲ult̲h̲) pen had to be used; when there were fewer strokes, the larger type of script called muk̲h̲taṣar al-ṭūmār was used. A specially-appointed person in the dīwān al-ins̲h̲āʾ prepared the ṭug̲h̲rās, and the secretaries then inserted them in spaces left blank for them in the ṭurra or upper part of the document above the basmala . The ṭug̲h̲rā was composed of the sultan’s honorifics, or his name and his honorifics, written on one line, with highly-prolonged upright strokes (muntaṣibāt) to letters like ṭāʾ, z̦āʾ, kāf , lām , etc. In al-Nāṣir’s ṭug̲h̲rā, the 35 upright strokes are alternately single and in groups of two strokes, necessitating some re-arrangement for artistic purposes of certain letters in thewords, and below the line of titles is the prayer k̲h̲allada Allāh sulṭānahu “may God prolong his dominion!” (see Pl. XXV, fig.1). In that of S̲h̲aʿbān , the 45 upright strokes are in groups of two, again with the prayer for long life beneath the line of the sultan’s titles, but also with his name S̲h̲aʿbān b . Ḥusayn in large script ( ḳalam al-ṭūmār) written across the central verticals (see Pl. XXV, fig. 2).

In a summary article on this topic by the late Dr. Annemarie Schimmel in the Grove Dictionary of Art wrote:

"The use of the tughra can be traced back to the Saljuq dynasty in Iran (reg 1038–1194); the nom de plume of the Saljuq vizier and poet Tughraاi (d 1120), for example, shows that a high-ranking member of the bureaucracy was in charge of drawing the tughra. The tendency to place the ruler’s name in conspicuous letters at the top of a document began early; the elongation of the vertical letters of the name and sometimes of a benediction is already found on Indo-Muslim documents from the Sultanate period (1206–1555) as well as in Egypt under the Mamluks (reg 1250–1517)."

Dr. Sheila Blair in her recent book Islamic Calligraphy also mentions the description by Ahmad al-Qalqashandi of the practice among the Mamluks at a slightly later date than that of Orhan Gazi, and provides an example of al-Qalqashandi's design for a tughra of al-Ashraf Sha'ban (p. 340). Additional sections for Central Asia and India should be added, together with relevant images, as well as the relationship of the tughra to firman and numismatics, as well as the influence of the form on later artistic calligraphic compositions, especially zoomorphic calligraphy. I think that perhaps by starting with a good bibliography, the article can be re-vamped. I can't do this now, but perhaps later this summer.

Additional Bibliography:

F. Babinger: ‘Die grossherrliche Tughra’, Jb. Asiat. Kst, ii (1925), pp. 185–96

P. Wittek: ‘Notes sur la tughra ottomane’, Byzantion, xviii (1948), pp. 311–34

E. Kühnel: ‘Die osmanische Tughra’, Kst Orients, ii (1955), pp. 69–82

A. Bombaci: ‘Les Toughras enluminés de la collection de documents turcs des archives d’état de Venise’, Atti del secondo congresso internazionale di arte turca: Venezia, 1963, pp. 41–55

M. Sertoǧlu: Osmanlı Türklerinde Tuǧra [Tughras of the Ottoman Turks] (Istanbul, 1975)

S. Umur: Osmanlı Padişah Tuǧraları [Tughras of the Ottoman sultans] (Istanbul, 1980)

J. Reychman and A. Zajączkowski, Handbook of Ottoman Turkish diplomatics, The Hague and Paris 1968, 141-3.

Sayyid Aḥmad Ḵh̲ān , Āt̲h̲ār al-ṣanādīd,Kānpur 1846

Muḥammad G̲h̲ulām,Tad̲h̲kira-yi k̲h̲us̲h̲niwīsān, ed. H. Hidayet Husain, Calcutta 1910

G. Yazdani, A new inscription of Sultan Nusrat Shah of Bengal , in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1911-12), 5-7

Shamsud-Din Ahmad, Inscriptions of Bengal , Rajshahi 1960

--Jemiljan (talk) 21:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Jemiljan

Your contributions will be certainly welcome, but on the main article page. Besides this the Ottoman Tuğra is by far the most used form of the Tuğra. Secondly, if I move the page to "Tuğra" it will not change its pronounciation, (as you can pronounce the "ğ" as you like) but will save the article from the orientalistic retranscription.

Cheers!! --Eae1983 (talk) 13:57, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Eae, several points. First off, kindly observe that my handle is "Jemiljan", and not "Cemilcan". My handle clearly does not in any way make use of the Çağdaş Türkçe spelling, and with very good reason; the name is not in any way solely Turkish, as it is used in Persianate societies as well. "Jan", meaning soul or spirit, while common in Turkic dialects, is according to both Redhouse and Devellioğlu, of Persian origin. It is just as common in Farsi and Persianate dialects as it is in Turkic dialects. The name "Jemil" is of obvious Arabic origin, not Turkish.

Next, I don't think you have articulated a very good argument to convert this article to a Çağdaş Türkçe spelling of tuğra. After all, it is an exceptional spelling only employed in the 20th century, at a time when the usage of the tuğra itself had been entirely abandoned by the Republic of Turkey. Before that time, when the tuğra was actually used, the "yumuşak ğ" was not used for the transliteration of Turkish into Latin script. My Redhouse Yeni Lûghati clearly demonstrates this. As such, I find that you are not only necessarily advocating a "Turkocentric" position, but a "çağdaş" one at that, for a practice that is in no way reflective of the current time period that employs the spelling you advocate!

Of course, if you are in fact Turkish as I suspect, that form would certainly be most familiar to you personally. Yet if you are from India, Iran, or Egypt, would it be as familiar? The answer is certainly "no". As such, your position is not in any way reflective of the history of the topic at hand, which MUST written so as to be more inclusive of these historical precedents from outside of Turkey as those form within. After all, at the time that it was commonly used, it was certainly not the only region to employ it! Furthermore, the spelling and pronunciation tuğra that you prefer is that of modern Turkey, but it is certainly not common to all Turkic dialects who employed what they called a Tughra on official documents (i.e. Safavid, Afsharid, Zand, Qajar, and Pahlavi dynasties in Iran, or the Mughal, Bahmani, Adil Shahi, Qutb Shahi, Nizam Shahi, and Asaf Jahi dynasties in India. When viewed from this borader context, the Çağdaş Türkçe spelling that you prefer is very much the exception, and is certainly not the rule. This article must ::necessarily reflect these semantic nuances. This is not to say that the Ottoman form should be diminished in any way; a well written article would communicate all of these and other nuances inherent to this topic.

Above all, please remember that Wiki adheres to NPOV policies. Just because Ottoman Tuğra is common known today in no way makes that form, or that particular pronunciation pre-eminent, much less absolute. I don't have time to revise the article accordingly, but I strenuously object to the move to a modern Turkish spelling, for the many reasons outlined in the EI article I posted above. After all, that article has been peer reviewed by leading scholars in the field. I do think that the article by Annemarie Schimmel from Grove Art should also be considered, give that she was highly respected scholar in Turkey. Saygılarımla va Şimdilik Hoşca Kal! Jemiljan (talk) 01:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Dear جمــــيل جان، I am not approaching as you pretend, that subject under any turkocentric and imperialistic form. Now my assertions, as you sure did not get them, were talking about the fact that Modern Turkish Alphabet is a BETTER way of transliterating any form of Turkic language and / or Persian and / or Arabic, that is NOT written in latin alphabet into latin, especially in order not to get 7 different transliterations like "Toughra" "Tughra", "Togra", "Tougra", "Tugra" or even "Toghra".

Just one "Tuğra" is sufficient and can adapt to all these different pronunciations, regardless of how you pronounce the "Ğ", whether like a "غ" or like a "ڠ" or like a "ڴ" etc. This is why Azerbaijan also adopted that very way of spelling, regardless from the fact that they have a very different pronunciation of the "ğ" or of many other letters.

Otherwise, we are yet again caught under the leash of western orientalism.

Cheers! --Eae1983 (talk) 07:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Eae1983, I still disagree, as I find that your argument is still essentially based on a form of linguistic purism rather than an inclusive, objective NPOV.

I've several points to make in response. First, with regard to your comment:

"...Modern Turkish Alphabet is a BETTER way of transliterating any form of Turkic language and / or Persian and / or Arabic, that is NOT written in latin alphabet into latin, especially in order not to get 7 different transliterations like "Toughra" "Tughra", "Togra", "Tougra", "Tugra" or even "Toghra"."

1) If Modern Turkish were an acceptable orthography for transliterating all Turkic dialects, then it would be uniformly used by those other countries in question. The problem is that is not the case. Is Modern Turkish systematically used elsewhere in Wikipedia for such a broad concept as this one? Is it used for Arabic and PErsian on Wikipedia?

2) Is the current inclusion the Modern Turkish spelling at the very beginning of the article somehow deficient? Please articulate why that is so. Is there anything particularly wrong with adding in different transliterations to the article? You will find other Wiki entries do just that.

3) Other dictionaries that I've cited (EOI and Grove) use the same transliteration standard as used for this article. Your premise was unilateral, that Çağdaş Türkçe is the "best " orthography to transliterate all Turkic dialects, when I've cited precedent elsewhere.

"Just one "Tuğra" is sufficient and can adapt to all these different pronunciations, regardless of how you pronounce the "Ğ", whether like a "غ" or like a "ڠ" or like a "ڴ" etc."

4) Those Arabic script letters are not used interchangeably. For example, ڴ is used for the Azeri "ŋ" sound, which in Modern Turkish, simply becomes "n". It has nothing to do with yumuşak G.

"This is why Azerbaijan also adopted that very way of spelling, regardless from the fact that they have a very different pronunciation of the "ğ" or of many other letters."

5) The system for Latin transliteration used in the Republic of Azerbaijan, and generally used for the North Azerbaijani Language, is not entirely the same standard as that used in Turkey today. Specifically, the letters "Ə" and "X"! In contrast, Turkmen has a "J", "Ž", Ä, "Ý" and no "Ğ" yumuşak G! It appears that the Modern Turkish alphabet is not at all a universal standard.

6) Is there anything particularly wrong with adding different transliterations to the article?

"Otherwise, we are yet again caught under the leash of western orientalism."

7) Is the current article "caught under the leash of Western Orientalism."? Citing such sentiments is not a very good premise to use for renaming this article (Much less putting your NPOV at risk. You would like to rename the article according to Modern Turkish transliteration conventions. As such, it falls to you to explain why that should be the case.

8) Does this article need to be revamped and expanded in a way that features that to encompass a much broader geographic and linguistic regions to discuss the historical development? Yes, in my view it does. Using the Modern Turkish transliteration convention would be less inclusive of these other contexts. Jemiljan (talk) 22:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

You have points, but can you tell me, what is YOUR proposition? As a calligrapher I am not very happy that something my culture brought to the zenith has to be written by the writing standarts of a culture (the Anglo Saxon one) that has absolutely nothing with the Tuğra, and I am pretty sure many eminent Turkish Calligraphers would pretty much object to that too. Now do you understand better my point? Anyways how do the "Northern" Azeris write "Tughra"?? --Eae1983 (talk) 23:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

PS + correction: What I meant by the letter ڴ is not the kâf-i nûni but I wanted to draw the gâf-i türkî (with a smaller stroke under the first big one) that is pronounced in modern Turkish as "Ğ" or even "V".

Eae, When you cite the "writing standards of Anglo Saxon culture" as a source of animosity, I must confess that you are making mountains out of molehills. This is NOT an article about solely Turkish views and attitudes, much less those of contemporary Turkish calligraphers (of whom I know quite a few myself- those I know would prefer to write the term in Osmanlıca rather than çağdaş huruf!). My position is simple: While the article needs to be thoroughly revised and expanded to better reflect all of the material from other countries, derived from the many sources I've posted previously, the mention of the modern Turkish spelling at the start of the article is sufficient. Revising this in no way diminishes the Ottoman contribution to the form, nor does it impose any kind of "Anglo saxon" cultural value on it. Instead, I find that your arguments stem from your desire to impose your own POV, that the article is somehow inadequate unless it were renamed to the modern Turkish convention! WIKI policy clearly states that articles should express NPOV, not an Turkish point of view that is also essentialist and ethnocentric! While I personally admire Ottoman tuğras, I also happen to think that the roundly-styled Mamluk tughra are under-appreciated in Turkey, for the simple fact that they are not familiar with that tradition. They are quite beautiful! Have you ever seen one? This article should feature an example of that rather than "tughras" for contemporary figures like Akihito (which I am skeptical as to whether he even knows it exists!) . For that matter, have you ever read or heard before some of the historical facts from the EI and Grove articles that I posted previously?

Your insistence on modern Turkish written in Latin script simply does not reflect the usage or pronunciation of the word as it was broadly used. Simply put, while the Osmanlı hattatlar did create beautiful tuğralar, they were not the only ones to do so- the convention was very widespread, and not all forms resembled the Osmanli style, nor were they even entirely derived from that convention! Just because they created the "best" examples in your opinion in no way supports your contention. Once again, I will reiterate- you basically want to impose your own modern convention for an article about an antiquated practice. Back when people were writing a tuğra at the order of the Sultan, the modern spelling convention didn't even exist!

Why insist on renaming the article (as if there was some kind of problem) and instead improve the material in it? The glaring problem with this article is that it CITES NO SOURCES! It basically focuses on only one tradition, and then mentions of all things Putin and Akihito! This is sloppiness at its best. Your time might be better spent on providing scholarly sources about this topic written in any language. I would welcome your imput as to recent Turkish language scholarship on this subject. For example, perhaps M. Uğur Derman or Mühittin Şerin has written something pertinent in recent years? Actually, I know that Derman has done so for his catalogs written about the Sabancı collection.

"Anyways how do the "Northern" Azeris write "Tughra" That's an easy question to answer. In the Republic of Azerbaijan, where they do use Latin script, you will find a yumuşak g but it is not pronounced the same way as in Istanbul. Southern Azeris, (i.e. those that live in Iran- the provinces of East Azarbaijan Province and West Azarbaijan Province), do not employ the Latin script at all! They still use Arabic script! Their language, as it is written today, is probably the closest surviving example related to the Osmanlıca dili.Jemiljan (talk) 17:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

You are right, this article a lot of information to be added. I will look at it as soon as I have the time. Let's not forget we are two on that track! :) --Eae1983 (talk) 14:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

PS: You can prounounce a "ğ" the way you like! :)