The Amentü Ship: From Creed to Calligram to Cinema
- Burcu Ustabaş
- Sep 22
- 5 min read
Starting at İstanbul’s Atlas Cinema Museum and sailing back in time
Meeting the Amentü Ship at Atlas Cinema Museum
Step into the İstanbul Cinema Museum (Atlas Sineması) on İstiklal Caddesi and you’ll find a luminous section devoted to Tonguç Yaşar and Sezer Tansuğ’s short animation Amentü Gemisi Nasıl Yürüdü? (1969). The display includes materials tied to the film’s making, often described by the museum and press as original drawings/illustrations from the production, presented alongside broader Yeşilçam-era artifacts. The museum positions the piece as both a milestone of Turkish animation and a bridge between devotional calligraphy and moving image.
If you plan a visit: Atlas Pasajı, No: 131, Beyoğlu. Ticket and visitor information are available on the museum’s website.
A Three-Minute Film that Set a Course
The short assembles the creed-ship from animated letters; the heart is struck, tears fall, and the ship finally “walks” (sails) an allegory of belief set in motion. After İstanbul screenings, the film reached Annecy (1973) and is often cited as the first Turkish animation shown there..
Yaşar and Tansuğ didn’t invent the motif; they re-animated a well-known Ottoman calligraphic image in which devotional text is composed as a ship (sefîne istifi). Their 1969 short translates this “text-picture” into time-based media and helped canonize it in Turkey’s film memory. Festival notes and filmographies document early screenings (including Adana Altın Koza) and the Annecy selection.
The Poem from the Animation
The film is structured around this evocative poem, penned by Sezer Tansuğ (the film’s scriptwriter):
Turkish (Original):
Bu ne amentü gemisiydi ki yürümezdi
Vav’lar soluya soluya kürek çekti
Hz. Ali’nin yüreği
“Yâ Hak” okunu gerdi
“Yâ Hak” oku varıp yüreği deldi
“Ah mine’l‑aşk” dedi
Gözlerinden yaşlar indi
Vardı geminin altına erişti
Amentü gemisi yürüdü gitti
English (Refined Translation):
What kind of ship of faith was this, unmoving, still?
The vavs rowed—gasping breath upon breath.
The heart of Ali trembled and shook,
He drew the bow “O Truth.”
The arrow of “O Truth” flew and pierced the heart;
“Ah, from the depths of love,” it cried.
Tears fell from his eyes,
Reaching beneath the ship’s hull,
And the Amentü ship sailed onward.
This poem crystallizes the film’s emotional and theological arc: faith in standstill, love in motion.
What Is the Amentü Ship?
In Turkish usage, Amentü gemisi refers to ship-shaped calligrams sefîne that compose a boat from sacred words. Often, the repeating Arabic letter waw is stacked as rhythmic “oars,” binding the articles of belief named in the creed (God, angels, scriptures, prophets, the Last Day, divine decree, resurrection). The result is both picture and prayer, image and dhikr. Born in the Ottoman world, the motif spread across paper calligraphy, reverse-glass painting, wall decoration, and souvenirs, and eventually sailed into modern animation.
Texts accompanying these compositions (and later commentaries) stress a Sufi idea: “love” (aşk) is what sets the ship in motion. In allegorical readings, creed without love is a vessel at rest; love pierces the heart, and the ship sails. This symbolism survives most famously in the 1969 animation (and in poems that echo its logic).
Before Cinema: Where the Ship Sailed
Paper calligraphy panels (levha) were collected for homes and tekkes; these are signed works that anchor the genre art-historically.
Reverse-glass painting (camaltı): By the early 19th century, artisans painted ship silhouettes whose hulls spell Amentü billahi. Oars appear as repeated vav letters; names of the Seven Sleepers are often placed between them. Flags may read “Yâ Melikü’l-Mülk,” “Maşallah,” and borders carry invocations or verses such as Fetih 1 or Ayetü’l-Kürsî (Ayat al-Kursi). A documented 1809 example in the Ömer Bortaçina Collection shows this full program.
Wall painting (kalem işi) & applied arts: The motif appears in late-period mosque decoration and in domestic/coffee-house settings; it was also executed on wood, stone (including stone-print), and paper. Because such panels were believed to bring baraka or ward off harm, they spread widely.
In short, the Amentü (or Seven Sleepers) ship functioned as portable protection and pious décor, sitting at the crossroads of high calligraphy and vernacular piety.
An 18th-Century Touchstone: Hisârî’s Calligraphic Galleon
Calligrams are centuries old across the Islamic world, but ship-calligrams crystallized as a distinct Ottoman genre by the 17th–18th centuries. A touchstone is ‘Abd al-Qadir Hisârî’s Calligraphic Galleon (1766–67), ink and gold on paper, whose hull literally spells the names of the Seven Sleepers and their dog Qitmir. The Met Museum catalogues underscore its devotional-talismanic intent and explain the dense textual program around the frame. Scholars also trace earlier Ottoman examples and related “Noah’s Ark” compositions, placing the theme within yazı-resim (pictorial writing) and Sufi visual culture.
How the Iconography Works
● Hull & deck: Script forms the ship’s silhouette. Many Ottoman examples house the Seven Sleepers’ names in the hull; in Amentü variants, the creed text itself becomes the body of the boat .
● Oars: Rows of vav read both as oarsmen and as the grammatical “and” (ve) that binds the creed’s clauses turning grammar into motion .
● Flags & superstructure: Standards often carry Ayetü’l-Kürsî or invocatory phrases; some ships include a small köşk (pavilion) on deck .
● Sea & sky: Micro-script (ghubār) can render waves; borders frequently host Ottoman Turkish panegyrics to the Prophet, prayers, or Qur’anic excerpts.
Earlier Currents and the Ottoman Calligram Habit
Ship-calligrams belong to a broader Islamic practice of pictorial writing—words shaped into creatures, emblems, and objects—particularly cultivated in the Ottoman world (with Persian cognates). “Ship” was a natural subject in a maritime empire; Topkapı and other collections preserve related examples. Scholarship situates these works at the intersection of devotion, pedagogy, and talisman, not mere ornament.
From Atlas’s vitrines to an 18th-century album page, the Amentü ship is a single idea sailing across mediums; faith made legible as a vessel. In 1969, Yaşar and Tansuğ let it move; the museum now lets us see how that motion was always there in the letters themselves.
Sources & Further Reading
‘Abd al-Qadir Hisârî. 1766–67. Calligraphic Galleon. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accession no. 2003.241.
Atlas Cinema Museum Offical Page. "Amentü Gemisi Nasıl Yürüdü? filminde kullanılan orijinal cizimler ve film kareleri." https://www.atlas1948.com/atlas-1948/
GZT / Nihayet. “Amentü Gemisi Nasıl Yürüdü?” Nihayet Magazine, 2020. https://www.gzt.com/nihayet/amentu-gemisi-nasil-yurudu-3579510.
İstanbul Cinema Museum press and exhibition coverage (Atlas Sineması, İstiklal).
UC Berkeley exhibit notes on the Amentü ship calligram (Boat of Creed).
Koçer, Serap Erçin. 2023. “Yazı-Resim Süslemesine Bir Örnek: Amentü Gemisi.” Türk Kültürü ve Hacı Bektaş Veli Araştırma Dergisi 107 (September): 179–191. https://doi.org/10.60163/hbv.107.008.
Neumeier, Emily, and Irvin Cemil Schick. 2013. "Hat Sanatında Sefine İstifleri ve Nuh’un Gemisi." In Nuh Kitabı, edited by Emine Gürsoy Naskali, 221-232. Istanbul: Kitabev.
UC Berkeley Library. “The Boat of Creed: How is it composed?” In Reimagined Language: Calligraphic and Pictorial Islamic Art. https://exhibits.lib.berkeley.edu/spotlight/reimagined-language/feature/the-boat-of-creed-how-is-it-composed
Yaşar, Tonguç, and Sezer Tansuğ. 1969. Amentü Gemisi Nasıl Yürüdü? Screened at Adana Altın Koza and Annecy.
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