1 Paper presented to the Livenarch IV Conference in July 2009 LivenArch IV, (Re/De) Constructions in Architecture, 4th International Congress, 9‐11 July 2009, KTU, Trabzon, Proceedings, Vol. 1 , Ed.: Ş.Ö. Gür, pp. 245‐252. ISBN: 978 975 01716‐2‐8. Early Constructions of Architectural Discourse: Notes on an Anonymous Ottoman Text Alev Erkmen As the title indicates, the following discussion will present a reading of an anonymous Ottoman text. Preserved in the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, this document consists of twelve hand‐written pages that bear no signature, nor carry a date. It is, therefore, technically identified only with its subject matter, and registered in the archive catalogue as “an anonymous detailed report on the methods of enhancing the national fine arts.” [1] However, while the manuscript itself records no date, several historical details of its content help resolve that it is a late nineteenth century text, dating from the early 1880s, most probably around 1882. [2] Presumably one of several reports on the same topic, it is written in the form of a technocratic transcript, first depicting the current state of the Ottoman arts, and moving on to list a series of suggestions to ensure the preservation of their “authentic” and “national” qualities. As such, the text does not set out to be either theory or history; however, as it cannot diagnose or prescribe anything about the fine arts without first historicising them, it nevertheless becomes a subject of historiography itself. All in all, its narrative is highly illustrative of the dominant cultural appraisals of the Ottoman intelligentsia, in a period when the rise of nationalist discourses bestowed the Ottoman world with unprecedented claims for cultural distinction and stylistic representation in the arts, and most particularly, in architecture. In summation, the text opens with the solemn verdict that all Ottoman fine arts, which once stood “at a point of perfection and advancement” (nokta‐i kemâl ve terakki), have gradually impaired and finally relapsed to a state of “complete corruption” (bi’l‐külliye mahvolmuş). It then proceeds with detailed analyses of each of the "eight fine arts of Ottoman culture" listed, in hierarchic order as: Architecture (mi’mârıik), painting (ressamlık), calligraphy (hattâtlık), illustration (nakkaşlık), engraving (hakkâklik), tiling (çinicilik), carving (oymacılık) and book‐binding (mücellidlik). Each analysis is an intermixed assortment of the description, evolution and current standing of the art in question. Outstanding historical figures/works in each field are referred to, and dismal comparisons are made between Ottoman works of the distant and immediate past.