It is well known that Tulips were first introduced to western Europe from the Ottoman Empire mainly through The Low Countries at the end of the sixteenth century. Between 1568 and 1648 The Low Countries were wresting their independence from the mighty Habsburg Empire; and in 1612 the Ottomans were the first to recognise the young nation. From early on one of the slogans of the Dutch fighters against catholic 'Spain' had been 'Liever Turks dan Paaps' (Rather Turkish than Papist). The Ottomans - 'Turks', in the common parlance - and the Dutch were allies against their mutual adversary, Spain. Mercantile relations between the two nations were strong, but there was lots of warfare as well and many ships 'changed hands'. The crews, if not dispatched to another world - e.g. nailed by their ears to the decks and drowned - were often enslaved. Thus there were many Dutch christian slaves in 'Turkish' muslim hands, and vice versa.
Holland grew to be a foremost sea-power in the seventeeenth century. That made it necessary to expand the capacity for shipbuilding. To that end Amsterdam constructed a number of 'islands' on the city's wateredge. From where I'm typing this - de Oudeschans (the Old Redoubt or Bulwark) - I look across the water about 100 metres away upon one of them, Uilenburg, now a residential area with some warehouses and such. In the Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat you can see this (see inset) gable stone: INDE.TVRCKSE.SLAEF (In the Turkish Slave), depicting a Turkish 'slave' in chains. The stone derives from a house owned by a ship's surgeon, one Jan T(h)euneman (ca.1660-before 1729), whose family must have made good being able to afford such a building. He seems to have risen in social hierarchy, too. Mere ship's surgeons were not usually part of the distinguished Amsterdam medical guild, but he was admitted in 1687. Perhaps his fortune was earned through trade with the 'Turks'.
The Tulip of the main photo wasn't discovered until the middle of the nineteenth century, and I've posted a varietal form earlier (
www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/33432003762/in/photoli...). It's originally found on the very eastern fringe of that great seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire. Here it is in our own Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam established in 1638.
