The Ottoman Tughra: Five Parts of a Sultan’s Monogram
What a tughra is, its five named parts shown on a real museum sheet, and how its shape grew from Orhan Gazi in 1324 to the 1900s.
Table of Contents
A tughra is a sultan’s signature drawn as an emblem: his name, his father’s name and a short prayer, set in one shape that the Ottomans put at the head of decrees and on coins. It has five named parts. The tool below places them on a real sheet from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The short version
A tughra is a ruler’s seal and signature
drawn in five named parts.
- What it is: the Middle Turkic word tugrag meant the seal and signature of a ruler.
- What it holds: the sultan’s name, his father’s name and the prayer el-muzaffer dâimâ.
- Parts: kürsü, beyza, kol, tuğ and zülfe.
- How it was made: “pulled” (çekmek) by a senior civil servant, the nişancı, not written.
- First one: Orhan Gazi, 1324, as the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi dates it.
Five parts, one real tughra
Tap a number or a name
The tughra of Süleyman the Magnificent, a sheet from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each part is outlined on the photograph and described as the TDV encyclopedia describes it.
- Kürsü (sere)The base block. TDV says it holds the names of the sultan and of his father, with the prayer el-muzaffer dâimâ, “always victorious”.
- BeyzaTwo nested ovals that curve to the left from the kürsü, an inner one and an outer one. TDV dates the double form to Murad I.
- Kol (hançer)The arm: the beyzas run on to the right and downward as one long band. TDV has it appear under Yıldırım Bayezid.
- TuğThree upright staffs, the letter alif, rising from the kürsü. TDV notes that the number of alifs in the written name does not change the count of three.
- ZülfeThree strokes that curl down and to the left from the tops of the staffs. TDV finds a first zülfe mark on Orhan Gazi’s tughra of 1348, to the right of the alifs.
Numbers placed after the parts named in the TDV encyclopedia. The outlines are drawn by hand on the photograph and are approximate.
A seal, a signature, a drawing
The Tuğra entry of the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, by M. Uğur Derman, gives the Middle Turkic tugrag as “the seal and signature of the ruler”. Ottoman documents call it by several names, among them tevkī‘, nişan and tuğra.
Ottoman sources speak of “pulling” a tughra, çekmek, not of writing it. The senior civil servant who drew the sultan’s tughra was the nişancı, whom TDV’s Nişancı entry describes as a member of the Dîvân-ı Hümâyun, the imperial council. Learning to draw a tughra was called meşk-i tuğra.
The early tughras were simple lines that carried the sultan’s name and his father’s in Arabic form. Over time the titles şah and han and the prayer el-muzaffer dâimâ were added.
An origin story TDV sets aside
Hammer’s account of how the tughra began is, in TDV’s words, now set aside entirely.
How the shape grew
TDV follows the form from Orhan Gazi to the calligraphers of the 1900s. The numbers under each step are the parts in the tool above.
1324
Orhan Gazi
The first Ottoman tughra, as TDV dates it; none is known for Osman Gazi. In “Orhan b. Osman” three alifs rise and three nuns stretch to the left, the pattern the later tughras follow.
4Tuğ2Beyza
1348
Orhan Gazi
On his other tughra the nuns begin to curve, and a zülfe mark stands to the right of the alifs.
2Beyza5Zülfe
Murad I
The zülfe moves to the left and the curved nuns divide in two: an inner and an outer beyza. The prayer joins the tughra as muzaffer dâimâ.
5Zülfe2Beyza1Kürsü
Yıldırım Bayezid
The kol appears, and the title han is added to the father’s name.
3Kol1Kürsü
Mehmed II to Süleyman
Mehmed II writes the prayer as el-muzaffer dâimâ. Selim I adds the title şah, and Süleyman the Magnificent gives it to his father too: “Süleyman Şah b. Selîm Şah Han el-muzaffer dâimâ”.
1Kürsü
18th century
A rule of proportion is tried, with the kürsü as the measure and the whole height set at twice its length. TDV says the effort did not give the tughra harmony.
1Kürsü2Beyza3Kol4Tuğ5Zülfe
1815
Mustafa Râkım Efendi
The calligrapher begins to rework the tughra in the early 1800s and reaches the peak of his changes from 1815. His tughra of Mahmud II over the entrance gate of Topkapı Palace, dated 1230 (1815), is one of TDV’s clearest examples. He also starts the habit of writing the sultan’s second name or pen name in the top right corner.
1905
Sâmi Efendi
His tughra of Abdülhamid II is, in TDV’s view, the strongest of the sultans’ tughras in calligraphy: some distances between fixed points of the letters repeat exactly in at least twenty-nine places.
1922
Tuğrakeş
After the nişancı’s office ended, those who drew the tughra were called tuğrakeş, a title that lasted until 1922.
Two sheets, one sultan
Both sheets, same parts
Pick a part: it is outlined on both
The museum lists both sheets as ink, opaque watercolor and gold on paper. Both are 52.1 cm high. The first is 64.5 cm wide, the second 59.7 cm, and they are shown here at those relative sizes.
- Kürsü (sere)On both sheets the dense block of stacked letters sits at the foot of the staffs.
- BeyzaOn both sheets the outer oval is the larger and the inner one lies inside it. Both are filled with gold and blue flowers.
- Kol (hançer)On both sheets the band leaves the kürsü and runs out to the right edge of the sheet.
- TuğOn both sheets the three staffs rise side by side. At the top the outer two are filled with gold and the middle one with white.
- ZülfeOn both sheets the strokes sweep down across the staffs to the left and end among the beyzas.
Numbers placed after the parts named in the TDV encyclopedia. The outlines are drawn by hand and are approximate.
TDV describes a practice that explains why a tughra could be a sheet of its own: illuminated tughras were prepared in advance and handed to the treasury against a receipt. When one was used it was glued above the text of a decree, and the nişancı wrote sahhü’l-vasl across both sheets to confirm the join.
Yazı tura: the tughra on a coin
TDV notes that an Ottoman coin carried the sultan’s tughra on one face and, on the other, a line beginning durube fî that gave the place and the date. That is why Turks still call the two sides of a coin yazı and tura.
On stone, gates and a law
From the 1700s the tughra was also cut in stone beside inscriptions. TDV counts two older exceptions: an inscription of 1431 over the gate of the Yedikule fortress in Thessaloniki, with Murad II’s tughra, and the inscription of the Nişancı Mehmed Paşa Mosque in Istanbul, which carries one of Murad III. In 1815 Mahmud II’s tughra was placed over the entrance gate of Topkapı Palace. TDV lists two mosaic tughras in Istanbul: Abdülmecid’s in Hagia Sophia and Abdülhamid II’s inside the dome of the German Fountain.
A law about tughras on buildings
The TBMM file for bill 2/2172 describes Law no. 1057, titled “… Üzerindeki Tuğra ve Methiyelerin Kaldırılması Hakkında Kanun”, as the law that provides for removing, or suitably covering, the tughras, coats of arms and eulogy inscriptions of sultans on state buildings.
Quick answers
What does a tughra say?
The name of the sultan and of his father, with titles such as şah and han and the prayer el-muzaffer dâimâ, as TDV lists them.
Who drew the sultan’s tughra?
The nişancı, a senior civil servant. After that office ended, the people who drew it were called tuğrakeş, until 1922.
Is a tughra the same as a seal?
The old Turkic word meant both seal and signature. Viziers, governors and some other state servants used a different mark, the pençe, which stood in the blank space to the right of the start of the text, not at the top.
Did every tughra look the same?
No. TDV describes changes in the kürsü, the length of the kol and the shape of the beyzas, tuğs and zülfes from reign to reign. Mustafa Râkım Efendi reworked the form in the early 1800s.
Sources
The parts, the dates and the customs come from the two TDV entries. The pictures are public-domain photographs from the Metropolitan Museum’s open access collection.
Open the source list
- Tuğra, M. Uğur Derman, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, checked 20.10.2026
- Nişancı, Erhan Afyoncu, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, checked 20.10.2026
- Tughra (Insignia) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent, 38.149.1 — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access, checked 20.10.2026
- Tughra (Insignia) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent, 38.149.2 — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access, checked 20.10.2026
- Bill file 2/2172, Law no. 1057 — TBMM, checked 20.10.2026
The outlines and numbers on the photographs and the coin drawing were made for this guide.
