It is widely believed that the first tulips sprang from the scrubby slopes of the Pamirs and flourished among the foothills and valleys of the Tien-shan Mountains, where China and Tibet meet Russia and Afganistan. The flower drifted further west with merchants and traders but it was the Ottoman Sultans who brought it to wider cultural prominence. Although it was Suleiman the Magnificent (1495-1566) who most fully celebrated the flower through art and decoration, it was the passionate gardener Mehmed II (1451-1481) who was responsible for the formal colonisation of the tulip as he removed it from the wild and transplanted it into the gardens of his newly built palace – The Adobe of Bliss (Topkapi) – in the eastern end of Istanbul.