Nakkaş Osman

Who is Nakkaş Osman?

Nakkaş Osman was the chief miniaturist for the Ottoman Empire during the later half of the sixteenth century. The dates of his birth and death are poorly known, but most of his works are dated to the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

The oldest known illustrations of Nakkaş Osman's were made between 1560 and 1570 for a Turkish translation of the Persian manuscript Firdawsis Shahnama. Among the works he illustrated, he is known to have been the chief illustrator of the various official histories written by Sayyid Lokman for Murad III that were produced in this era, including the Zafername, the Şahname-ı Selim Han and the Şehinşahname. He was also one of the illustrators of the Siyer-i Nebi, an epic on the life of Muhammad written around 1388, then illustrated around 1595.