Emel Esin

Esin was born in 1912 or 1914 in Istanbul. Her father was Ahmet Ferit Tek, a soldier, diplomat and politician; her mother was Müfide Ferit Tek, a writer.

She studied at the École libre des sciences politiques in Paris, graduating in 1933. In 1969 she gained a doctorate from the University of Paris Faculty of Humanities, her thesis title being Le Dragon dans l’iconographie turque (The Dragon in Turkish iconography).

Her publications include Mecca the blessed, Madinah the radiant (1963: Elek Books) with photographs by Haluk Doganbey.

In 1963 her account of a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca as published in this book was banned in Pakistan because it contained reproductions of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Turkish miniatures showing prophet Muhammad unveiled.

Esin died on 26 February 1987 in Istanbul. In her will she established the TEK‐ESİN Foundation, which operates a library and archive to further research into Turkish history of art, in the restored 18th-century Ottoman Sadullah Pasha Mansion.

The National Portrait Gallery in London holds a photographic portrait of Esin, taken in 1930 by the Lafayette studio.

• Mecca the blessed, Madinah the radiant. Text, Emel Esin; photographs by Haluk Doganbey (1963, London: Elek Books)
• Turkish Miniature Paintings (1965, Rutland, Vermont: Charles Tuttle)
• Oriental miniatures : Persian, Indian, Turkish (1965, London: Souvenir Press), co-edited with William Lillys and Robert Reiff
• Aspects of Turkish civilisation in Cyprus (1965, Ankara: Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü)
• Antecedents and development of Buddhist and Manichean Turkish art in eastern Turkestan and Kansu: The handbook of Turkish culture, supplement to volume II, section of the history of art (1967, Istanbul : Mıllî Eğıtıim Basimevı)
• Turkish Art in Cyprus (1969, Ankara : Ayyildiz Matbaasi)
• Türk kosmolojisi (ilk devir üzerine araştırmaler) : Early Turkish cosmology (essays in Turkish with English abstracts) (1979, Istanbul : Edebiyat Fakültesi Matbaası)
• A history of pre-Islamic and early-Islamic Turkish culture: supplement to the handbook of Turkish culture (1980, Istanbul: Unal Matbaasi)
• The culture of the Turks : the initial inner Asian phase (1986, Ankara : Atatürk Culture Centre)