Ribāṭ of Gurjī Khātūn (“the Georgian Lady”)

The Marʿashī Library of Qum owns an unstudied manuscript containing official documents from the Rum Saljuq dynasty. The manuscript includes an Arabic text for the foundation of a ribāṭ. Its patron was unmistakably the Georgian wife of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kay-Khusraw II (d. 644/1246), the unfortunate sultan beaten by the Mongols at Kösedağ. The building was a caravanserai, most probably located at the stage of Düden, immediately northeast of Antalya. Its construction can be dated to around 636/1238. It was part of a cluster of buildings erected with sultanic patronage on the road from Antalya to Konya. Gurjī Khātūn’s aim in founding the ribāṭ was to establish her son, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kay-Qubād II, as indisputable heir apparent over the other (and older) offspring of the sultan. Beyond the light it casts on her long-term strategy to become wālida (Tk.valide, queen mother), the text allows us to refine our knowledge of women patrons, a subject that had been tackled so far mostly through the case of Māhparī Khātūn. Finally, the source in which this text was found proves that inscriptions (at least this one) were authored by personnel of the chancery, as supposed by van Berchem and by Redford after him.

Women, Art and Observant Franciscan Piety

Caterina Vigri (later Saint Catherine of Bologna) was a mystic, writer, teacher and nun-artist. Her first home, Corpus Domini, Ferrara, was a house of semi-religious women that became a Poor Clare convent and model of Franciscan Observant piety. Vigri's intensely spiritual decoration of her breviary, as well as convent altarpieces that formed a visual program of adoration for the Body of Christ, exemplify the Franciscan Observant visual culture. After Vigri's departure, it was transformed by d'Este women patrons, including Isabella da Aragona, Isabella d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia. While still preserving Observant ideals, it became a more elite noblewomen's retreat. Grounded in archival research and extant paintings, drawings, prints and art objects from Corpus Domini, this volume explores the art, visual culture, and social history of an early modern Franciscan women's community.

Women Patrons in Medieval Anatolia And a Discussion of Māhbarī Khātūn’s Mosque Complex in Kayseri

This article traces the role of female patrons of architecture in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Anatolia. At the center stands Māhbarī Khātūn, the mother of the Seljuk Sultan Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kaykhusraw II (R 1237-46). During the rule of her son, Māhbarī Khātūn was active as a patron of architecture, building most notably the Huand Hatun complex in Kayseri in 1238, and several caravanserais. The foundation inscriptions of these monuments, and the funerary inscription on Māhbarī Khātūn's cenotaph in the Huand Hatun mausoleum present the founder both as the mother of the sultan, and as a pious Muslim woman. The insistence on Māhbarī Khātūn's position as the sultan's mother points to her activity in a later stage of life, after the dead of her husband, 'Alā' al-Dīn Kayqubād (R 1220-37), when her status was akin to that of the valide sultan in later Ottoman practice. This article compares Māhbarī Khātūn to other known female patrons, active in Anatolia during Seljuk and Ilkhanid rule, who are mostly recorded in their foundation inscriptions. Thus, the importance of these inscriptions as sources to trace patrons who are marginal in the chronicles and hagiographies of the time, as is the case for female members of the Seljuk court, clearly emerges.