The Tesselaar Tulip Festival

I don't know how it goes in other countries or if anything special is done, but here, every year there is a 4 week Tulip Festival to celebrate the coming of spring.

Now why do I write about this you may ask?

Hmm.. Well, apart from loving flowers and the tulip being one of my favourites, I wanted to mention the significance of tulips for Turks (the Ottomans) and our history...

Have any of you noticed the official logo for Turkey?

As you can see, the tulip has been used as the symbol of Turkey...

There is a misconseption that the tulip is from Holland whereas tulips are indegineous to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and central Asia. They were first imported to Europe from Turkey (Ottoman Empire) in the 16th century.

The reason that tulips are associated with Holland rather than Turkey is because the Turks "forgot" about the tulip while the Dutch continued to grow and export them globally for hundreds of year to date.

The tulip craze of the Ottomans coincides with the corruption of the Ottoman Empire. Until that time all the gardens and parks in Turkey (especially Istanbul) were adorned with tulips, roses, carnations and daffodils. So much so that after having seen the streets, houses and mansions of Istanbul amongst all the greenery and flowers, an English woman named Miss Julia Parabe is quoted to say, "If only Shakespeare had seen the Bosporus before writing the garden scene in Romeo and Juliet".

Due to their infatuation with the tulip, the corruption period of the Ottoman Empire was called the "Tulip Period".

The tulip also has significance amongst the sufis. This is due to the letters used in the Turkish name of the tulip (lale - pronounced laa-leh). In its Arabic form, both "lale" (tulip) and "Allah" (God) contain the same letters and in the same order. There are also a couple more things about this, but I wanted to give your eyes a feast with this post rather than a lesson in history. :) Sorry if I bore your brains out at times... It's just that the symbol of the tulip, the story behind it in our history and culture etc etc just intrigues me.

As I was saying... the Tesselaar Tulip Festival in Victoria, Australia. I really really wanted to go last weekend on the 19th-20th of September, 2009 as it was the Turkish Weekend and the Turkish culture was showcased, but I missed out. :( Oh well, I am still going to try and go within the next couple of weeks before it's over.

Hey! If anyone in Melbourne is interested, let me know, we can do a group thing on a nice sunny day?

Anyhow, I couldn't go last week, but thankfully a photographer I know went and shared all the amazing photos he took. By the way, a little advertising for my photographer friend. His name is Hakan Dalar and he's established in Melbourne. His work is amazing, fantastic, wonderful, professional... What more can I say? If you are in Australia, then I would definitely recommend his services. He also works interstate, so he's not bound to Victoria only. :) I have provided the link for his website, but it's not up yet. If you are interested and would like to see examples of his work, you can currently contact him and see a very large portfolio through his Facebook account.

Now that I'm done with the advertising, you can enjoy the photos... ahhh they're absolutely gorgeous mashaallah!