Tughra

The tughra, the highly stylised calligraphic rendition of the sultan’s name, had long been affixed to official documents and put on coins. The parts of the tughra were composed by the calligrapher to a traditional design.

Courtesy of tugra.org

The tughra did have a written meaning, but was not really calligraphy to be read as words, but rather to be recognised as a symbol of the sultan.

The written meaning within the tughra of Sultan Abdulaziz III

Working within a tradition that forbade pictorial representation, on stamps the tughra served a similar purpose to representations of the monarch’s head on British stamps for example. To the Ottomans, the tughra represented the validating authority of the caliph and head of state and served this purpose up to the end of the empire.

The tughra of Sultan Abdulaziz III as it appeared on the first Ottoman stamps

Notably, the tughra did not appear on the Duloz and Empire stamps. 
© John Dunn.