Chamber of the Sacred Relics, Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul

This entry describes the Chamber of the Sacred Relics at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul as documented by the palace's own museum administration, the Turkish state body responsible for the site, which holds and displays objects associated with the Prophet Muhammad and other early Islamic figures, including the Prophet's mantle, that passed to Ottoman custody after the sixteenth century transfer of the caliphate. As an institutional source it carries no single named author, the museum authority speaking in its own voice about a collection it directly holds and maintains, which is why the atlas records it as an official body rather than a scholarly monograph. Its limit is that it is a custodial and descriptive institutional source rather than an independent critical historical study, so a claim about the relics' documented provenance is better checked against dedicated academic scholarship on the collection.