divan
Illustration — Portrait de Monsieur Levett et Mademoiselle Glavany Assis Sur un Divan en Costume Turc by Jean-Étienne Liotard (Louvre) A divan is a piece of couch-like sitting furniture or, in some regions, a box-spring-based bed. Primarily, in West Asia (especially the Ottoman Empire), a divan was a long seat formed of a mattress laid against the side of the room, upon the floor, or a raised structure or frame, with cushions to lean against. Divans received this name because they were generally found along the walls in Middle Eastern council chambers of a bureau called divan or diwan (from Persian, meaning a government council or office, from the bundles of papers they processed, and next to their council chambers).
divan
Jean-Étienne Liotard · Public domain
- Field
- couch
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Illustration — Portrait de Monsieur Levett et Mademoiselle Glavany Assis Sur un Divan en Costume Turc by Jean-Étienne Liotard (Louvre) A divan is a piece of couch-like sitting furniture or, in some regions, a box-spring-based bed. Primarily, in West Asia (especially the Ottoman Empire), a divan was a long seat formed of a mattress laid against the side of the room, upon the floor, or a raised structure or frame, with cushions to lean against. Divans received this name because they were generally found along the walls in Middle Eastern council chambers of a bureau called divan or diwan (from Persian, meaning a government council or office, from the bundles of papers they processed, and next to their council chambers).
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
No house-authored Note is published until its assertions and sources pass the VALÉORINE evidence contract. The documentary article remains available in full while that enrichment is being consolidated.
Documentary enrichment in progress · no unsupported statement published
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for divan. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
wikipedia incomplete · checked 25 September 2026
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
getty · 500779174 · gnd · 4824599-9 · wikidata · Q2354542
In this article
Overview
Divans are a common feature of the liwan, a long, vaulted, narrow room in Levantine homes. The divan in the sense of a sofa or couch entered the English language in 1702 and has been commonly known in Europe since about the middle of the 18th century. It was fashionable, roughly from 1820 to 1850, wherever the romantic movement in literature penetrated. All the boudoirs of that generation were garnished with divans. They spread to coffee-houses, sometimes known as divans or Turkish divans, and a cigar divan remains a familiar expression. This is preserved today in Bulgarian, and in Hungarian as dívány, Italian as Divano, in Estonian as diivan, in Polish as dywan, in Romanian and Spanish as divan, and Russian as диван (divan).
Piece of couch-like sitting furniture without armrest
Primary material
Documents and archives
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 4824599-9, Divan.
Unverified · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q2354542: divan
Unverified · Wikidata
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 4824599-9, Divan.Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Partially resolvedauthority record
Unverified
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Furniture
924 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- diphrosTerminology
- director's chairTerminology
- dish drying cabinetTerminology
- display caseTerminology
- Dogmatic SarcophagusTerminology
- dollhouseTerminology
- Dolphin lamp standardTerminology
- Doña María de Aragón AltarpieceTerminology
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own an object connected with divan?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.