Żygulski, Zdzisław: Ottoman art in the service of the empire (New York, NY [u.a.], 1992)

HI. 64. Various Ottoman tents, after the Marsig)i,S^H?7M&arg. . . , vol. 2,pl. tg.

the Turkish side) of the great siege of Vienna in 1683, remain
unrivaled.^
Generaliy speaking, a tent may be defined as a movabie or foidabie
dwehing made of skin, fabric, or feit and pitched on poles fastened
to the ground by ropes and pegs or set on a wooden piatform. The
feit tent, or the ytoT is stiii used by nomads in Mongoiia whiie
Bedouins in Arabia use black tents made of goat's hair. Nomadic
American Indian groups aiso used tents, mainly of skins and hides.
Tents have always been used by soldiers, especially on campaigns or
maneuvers. They are also useful on expeditions, on safari, in cir-
cuses, for recreational purposes.
The oldest recorded information on tents comes from ancient
Greek, Persian, and Roman sources. No actual objects of that time
have survived but from iconography we can reconstruct the simple
forms of Roman military tents as seen on Trajan's Column in Rome:
the basic form was that of a house with vertical walls and saddle roof,
the officers' and chief commanders' tents being larger and sewn
from red canvas.'' We have written descriptions of sumptuous Per-
sian, Greek, and Egyptian tents, particularly from Hellenistic times,
made from gorgeous fabric, and threaded with gold. The influence
of this structure on the much later Ottoman art of tents is undeni-

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