Ahmed III gave many similar entertainments in his own gardens on Seraglio Point, sometimes fêtes of lights, sometimes fêtes of flowers. Of the latter he had such an admiration that he created at his court a Master of Flowers, whose credentials, ornamented by gilt roses, ended thus: “We command that all gardeners recognise for their chief the bearer of this diploma; that they be in his presence all eye like the narcissus, all ear like the rose; that they have not ten tongues like the lily; that they transform not the pointed pistil of the tongue into the thorn of the pomegranate, dyeing it in the blood of inconvenient words. Let them be modest, and let them keep, like the rosebud, their lips closed. Let them not speak before their time, like the blue hyacinth, which scatters its perfume before men ask for it. Finally, let them humbly incline themselves before him like the violet, and let them not show themselves recalcitrant.” The tulip does not seem to be mentioned in this document, but the culture of tulips under Ahmed III and his congenial Grand Vizier became as extravagant a rage as ever it did in Holland. Indeed, tulips were first introduced into the Low Countries from Constantinople, by the Fleming Ogier de Busbecq, ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Süleïman the Magnificent. Under the Latinised form of his name he has left a quaint memoir of his two embassies. The word tulip is a corruption of the Turkish word _dülbend_—turban—which was a favourite nickname of the flower among the Turks. Ahmed III always celebrated tulip time, inviting the grandees of the empire to come and admire his tulip beds. He devised a way of illuminating them at night with the small glass cup lamps used in mosques. Mahmoud I was of a taste to continue this pretty custom. He also laid out special tulip and hyacinth gardens behind the summer palace he built at the water’s edge. Alleys of cypress-trees were there, and a great pool of marble, and about it the slaves of the harem would sing and dance in the fairy light of the illuminated flowers.