TÜRK SANATINDA DÖNÜŞÜM ALEGORİSİ: ANİ’DEN YER EJDERİ VE BALIK FİGÜRLÜ KEMİK ESER

Abstract

Ani Ruins on the Turkey-Armenia border is an important medieval settlement that hosts many movable and immovable cultural assets belonging to different civilizations. Ani, which marks the beginning of Anatolian Turkish-Islamic urbanism and Turkish-Islamic architecture, is also important in terms of exhibiting the first products of the period in handicrafts. In this study, the bone artifact recovered from the excavation of Ani Seljuk Dwellings, which constitutes a unique example in Turkish art in terms of the formation of figures and the composition it forms, is analyzed. In the bone artifact with the figures of a ground dragon and a fish found in the Seljuk Houses excavation in 2021, the moment of transformation of the figures is included. In the research conducted, a similar figure and composition formation could not be found in the animal style examples spread throughout the Eurasian art scene. In order to reveal the importance of this rare example, the methodology of the study includes the introduction, iconography, its place in the animal style, and its area of use. In addition, the bone artifact was compared with examples with dragon and fish figures in Turkish art, and the type of the dragon- headed figure on it was tried to be determined. Although this figure has common elements with the winged horse depictions in Turkish legends such as Tulpar and the dragon-stallion, it has been seen that it is fundamentally different from these legends and has important connections with the figure of the ground dragon.The research aims to introduce the bone artifact, which constitutes a rare example in animal style, to the scientific world.

Keywords

• ani ruins
• iconography
• animal style
• ground dragon
• fish