Tel Aviv University

Department of Middle Eastern Studies

Modern Middle East History
Prof. Meir Litvak

THE SULTAN’S HAREM IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE:

The Power within the Walls

THEODORA TSIPOURA
September 2012
 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 3

THE HAREM OF THE OTTOMAN SULTAN 3

ROYAL MOTHER AND CONCUBINES 5

PRINCES AND PRINCESS 9

EUNUCHS AND PAGES 11

CONCLUSIONS 14

BIBLIOGRAPHY 17

2
 Introduction

The subject of this paper is the Harem of the Sultan during the Ottoman Empire,
especially after the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, which was followed by
important changes in the dynastic politics. The purpose of the paper is to
examine to what extent, for what reason and in what ways the inhabitants of the
imperial harem would acquire power and influence the politics of the empire. The
main thesis is that different members and categories of the harem would manage
to gain leverage beyond the harem walls and become important players in the
Ottoman political scene. The physical proximity to the Sultan and the center of
power would not let the harem unaffected, but, by contrast, some of the power
would be passed to it. Such conclusions not only challenge the common
portrayal of the harem as a symbol of despotism and submission but they have a
lot to say about the Ottoman society and culture, primarily about the nature of the
harem, the role of women and the function of slavery.

The Harem of the Ottoman Sultan

The Islamic harem has been intriguing the Western imagination for centuries,
weaving a myth around it. Seen through an orientalistic prism, the harem
conjures images of sex and sensuality, allowing a man sexual access to more
than one woman whose sole purpose is his satisfaction. As such, it has often
been criticized by Western accounts “for its encouragement of sexual laxity and
immorality”1 and at the same time it has been used as a popular theme for
paintings, novels and exotic narratives. Furthermore, it has been perceived as an

1
Ahmed, L. “Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem.” Feminist Studies 8, no. 3 (1982), p.
524

3
oppressive institution, “a microcosm or Oriental despotism”2, confining women
and depriving them of any power3.
However, these popular orientalistic perceptions are challenged by a closer
examination and “the historical and geographical variability revealed by scholarly
research” To start with, the word harem, far from being a world of sexual
pleasure, refers to the “female members of a household or to the dedicated
architectural enclosure in which they live”. That includes, apart from wives and
concubines, a man’s mother, sisters, aunts and other female relatives. Thence, a
harem is nothing else than part of a sexually segregated household and, by
extension, sexually segregated world. This segregation makes the harem a world
of women, inaccessible, unapproachable, protected by men. Indeed, “the Arabic
root ḥ-r-m, from which “harem” is derived, generally refers to prohibition,
unlawfulness, veneration, sacredness, inviolability – in other words, it conveys
the notion of a taboo”4. Under this light, the harem can be seen both as a space
and as an institution.
Similarly, the harem of the Ottoman Sultan is nothing more than that part of
his household inhabited by his female relatives, wives and concubines joined by
an extended administrative staff. Indeed, “the Top Kapi harem was not inhabited
by women alone; large sections of the harem were designated for men – young
boys and pages, princes, eunuchs, and, most important, the Sultan himself”. As a
result, because of its importance and size, it acquired a far stricter structure and
more complicated etiquette than the smaller scale harems of the lay Muslim.
This transformation into a highly articulated institution occurred in the post-
Süleymanic era due to the consolidation of the imperial family in Istanbul. As
Leslie Pierce explains, “As the Sultan became an increasing sedentary palace
ruler, the members of his family, heretofore scattered among provincial capitals,

2
Space: Harem." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. General Editor Suad Joseph. Brill Online,
2012, retrieved form http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-women-and-islamic-
cultures/space-harem-COM_0283
3
Boer I., “Despotism from under the Veil: Masculine and Feminine Readings of the Despot and the
Harem”, Cultural Critique, no. 32, (1995-1996): 43-73
4
Space: Harem." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. General Editor Suad Joseph. Brill Online,
2012, retrieved form http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-women-and-islamic-
cultures/space-harem-COM_0283

4
were gradually relieved of their public duties and gathered into the imperial
capital”5.
The lapse of the prince governorate led to the concentrated of all the princes
in the capital, followed by their mothers who used to accompany them upon their
appointment. At the same time, the women of the harem, who used to live in
separately in the Old Palace until Süleyman’s rule, were gathered at the New
Palace, the famous Top Kapi Palace. As a result, the proximity of the harem to
the center of the imperial government endowed its members with power and
influence beyond the harem walls.

Royal Mothers and Concubines

The more influential women within the Harem – and consequently, the whole
empire – were the Sultan’s mother, the Valide Sultan, and his favorites. For a
period of approximately one hundred years, from the mid-sixteen, to the mid-
seventeen centuries, some of them manage to acquire and exercise so much
power “that this period is often referred to, in both scholarly and popular writings,
as ‘the Sultanate of women’”6.
Formally, the Valide Sutlan was the highest person in the hierarchy of the
harem. She had the most prestigious title and was responsible for the
administration and surveillance of all its members. Despite the fact that she had
been brought to the harem as a slave, her status derived from being the Sultan’s
mother, which made her member of the imperial dynasty. Similarly, a favorite’s
status derived from giving birth to the Sultan’s children, and especially boys. This
made them mothers of potential heirs to the throne and thus potential Valide
Sultans. However, we cannot exclude the possibility of a concubine to have
acquired some influence based on her personal relationship with the Sultan.

5
Peirce L., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York. Oxford
University Press, 1993. p. 119
6
Peirce L., “Beyond Harem Walls: Ottoman Royal Women and the Exercise of Power”, in Servants of the
dynasty: palace women in world history, Anne Walthall ed, University of California Press, 2008, p.81

5
 Indeed, the first in the line of the Sultanate of woman, the infamous favorite
Hürrem, seemed to have had a very intimate and affectionate relationship with
the Sultan. Their special connection is demonstrated not only in the love letters
and poems they exchanged7 but also in his special treatment towards her8. More
specifically, the Sultan encroached on several common practices hat had been
established by the dynastic tradition. He had three sons with Hürrem, despite the
principle of one son for each concubine, which seek to secure the equal
opportunities among the heirs. Moreover, not only did he practically become
monogamous, staying faithful to her, but he actually married her. That was
unusual for the Sultans before him who would rely on concubinage rather than
marriage for reproduction. Hürrem enjoyed a special status within the empire,
although she died before her son ascended to the throne. However, all her
influential successors increased their power and prestige once they became
Valide Sultans, even if naturally they started as favorites.
Süleyman’s mother had died by the time Hürrem rise to power and the latter
herself died before her son ruled. However, after Hürrem, a competition between
two generation of women, the Valide Sultan and the favorites, rose because each
one identified themselves with their interest of their own sons. The rest of the
powerful women of the empire after Hürrem were in chronological order:
Nurbanu, Selim II’s favorite and Murad III’s mother, Safiye, Murad III’ favorite and
Mehmed III’s mother, Kosem, Ahmed I’s haseki and Murad IV’s mother, Turhan,
haseki of Ibrahim I and mother of Mehmet IV9. Each of them would try to ensure
their own sons ascendance to the throne, even at the expense of their own
fathers, because that would make them the most powerful women in the empire.
Their power was not only symbolic but increased after the change in the dynastic
rules of succession. Although until Süleyman, all of a Sultan’s sons had equal
opportunities to the throne; the principle of primogeniture was applied from then

7
Freely J., Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul, London, Penguin Books, 1999, p.
54-55
8
Yermolenko G., “Roxolana: ‘The Greatest Empresses of the East’”, The Muslim World 95 (2005), p. 235
9
Peirce L., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York. Oxford
University Press, 1993, p.288

6
on. That meant that a prince could become a Sultan before he reached maturity,
and therefore he would need guidance and protection, a role now assumed by
the Valide Sultans who oftentimes acted as regents.
The power that these women possessed and exercised, was demonstrated in
different ways and levels of the empire’s policy. First of all, they had a great
symbolic leverage represented by their ceremonial roles and their charitable
work, especially in the post-Süleyman era. Their ascendance to the post of
Valide Sultan would be a gloriously celebrated event and each of her public
appearances would be honored. Their death would be mourned by the Ottoman
subjects more than the Sultan’s himself, since the latter’s issue of succession
would cause more anxiety than sorrow. Their burial to the Sultan’s grave, with
other members of the family, as opposed to the older tradition of being buried in
the province their sons served, would now be used to symbolize the unity of the
dynasty10.
Moreover, Valide Sultans and princesses of the imperial family would emerge
as great builders of the empire, assuming the construction of monumental
buildings as well as charitable institutions. According to Yermolenko: “Hürrem’s
endowment […] in Istanbul […] contained a mosque, medrese, imaret,
elementary school, hospital, and fountain. […] The fact that it was the third
largest building in the capital, after the complexes of Mehmed II (Fatih) and
Süleyman (Süleymanie mosque), testifies to Hürrem’s great status11”.
Nevertheless, the Valide Sultan’s and the significant favorites’ role was not
limited to the symbolic aspects but they assumed direct power over the empire’s
internal and external policy. First of all, they would act as the Sultan’s adviser, as
his confidants, his ears in the capital while away in one of his military campaigns.
Hürrem is an excellent example as “she regularly sent letters to the Sultan, in
which, in addition to expressing her great love and longing for him, she also
informed him of the situation in the capital and of any events that required his

10
Peirce L., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York. Oxford
University Press, 1993, p.191
11
Yermolenko G., “Roxolana: ‘The Greatest Empresses of the East’”, The Muslim World, Volume 95,
2005, p. 237

7
immediate attention or action”12. Similarly, Paolo Contarini, the Venetian
ambassador, reports that Murad relied a lot on his mother guidance since “he
could have no other advice as loving and loyal as hers”13.
In addition to that, the women of the dynasty would assume ambassadorial
functions exchanging letters and gifts with ambassadors and rulers of the
European powers. Nurbanu, for example, “carried on a correspondence with
Catherine de’ Medici, the queen mother and regent of Henry III of France,
promoting good relations between the French and the Ottoman courts” 14 while
Safiye “maintained an extensive foreign correspondence, most notably with
Queen Elisabeth of England”15. The Valide Sultans were so active in the politic
realm of the empire that Murad Iyigun examines the correlation between their
country of origin and the military campaigns of Ottoman empire and he founds
that a Western background made it less probable for the Ottomans to conduct
holly war against European Lands. Although this result could be attributed to the
Sultan’s awareness of his own ethnic background, we cannot exclude that his
mother influence had a positive effect on the relations with the Christian
territories16.
Finally, some of the women accumulated so much power that they ruled the
Sultanate themselves. Kosem during the reign of her grandson Mehmet IV, “ran
the state much like a Sultan” and “was so greatly involved in governmental affairs
that she appointed and accepted the resignations of grand viziers”17. After
Kosem was murdered, her successor Turhan took the title “Glorious Mother”
(Walide’I Mu’azzama) because “she had been acting exactly as padisah until she
transferred the state to the Koprulus in 1656”18.

12
Yermolenko G., “Roxolana: ‘The Greatest Empresses of the East’”, The Muslim World 95 (2005): p. 228
13
Quoted in: Freely J., Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul, London, Penguin
Books, 1999, p. 82
14
Ibid., p.76-77
15
Ibid., p. 85
16
Iyigun, M.. "Lessons from the Ottoman Harem (On Ethnicity, Religion and War)", Institute for the Study
of Labor, Discussion Paper No. 3556, (2008)
17
Akgunduz, Ahmed and Said Ozturk. Ottoman History: Misperceptions and Truths. Istanbul:
Islamitische Universiteit Rotterdam Press, 2011, p.244
18
Ibid., p. 245

8
 Once the harem women’s influence is established, one cannot help
wondering how they acquired it, how they maintained it and how they managed
to exercise it being confined in their harem quarters. The answer lies in the
networks of power19 they established, whose influence surpassed by far the
harem walls. In pursuing that, they used bribing, which was facilitated by their
high stipends; personal connections with their slaves whom they would often
manumit to reinforce their loyalty; and alliances based on kinship, especially
marrying their daughters and grand-daughters to significant political figures – as
demonstrated in the following chapter. In few worlds, the women of the harem
would demonstrate admirable political experience and genius that could be
comparable with that of any man in the empire.

Princes and Princesses

The imperial harem was the residence of all the Sultan’s unmarried female
relatives, other than his mother: his sisters, daughters and aunts. But it became
the residence of his male relatives as well after the decline of the prince
governorate and the practice of fratricide. Until the reign of Süleyman the
Magnificent, the Sultan’s sons would be appointed as governors to some
province of the empire, in order to acquire experience and prestige. Since all the
heirs had a potential claim to the throne, it was usually the most capable of them
that would succeed the Sultan. At the same time, upon his ascension he would
murder all his brothers – and some times his own children – to eliminate
competition or the possibility of a coup. These executions would occur either on
the accusation of rebellion against the Sultanate or as “political murders”20.
However, after Süleyman the Magnificent, these two practices fell into desuetude
resulting in the concentration of male members of the dynastic family inside the

19
Peirce L., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York. Oxford
University Press, 1993, p.143-149
20
Akgunduz, Ahmed and Said Ozturk. Ottoman History: Misperceptions and Truths. Istanbul:
Islamitische Universiteit Rotterdam Press, 2011., p.106

9
Harem, in the sector known as “cage” so that they didn’t threaten the Sultan’s
power.
As opposed to the princes’ curtailed power, princesses emerged as important
players of dynastic policies, especially in the hands of their mothers. As Leslie
Peirce maintains, “the most important links with centers of powers outside the
palace were forged by harem women through the marriages of their daughters,
the princess of the dynasty, to leading statesmen”21. Becoming a royal son-in-
low, a damad, “was a great honor which could advance an administrator’s
successful career, though restrictions were placed on the husband and pleasing
his wife was essential if he wished to avoid losing his office”22 Süleyman added
to this practice by marrying royal princess, his daughter as well as his sisters, to
officials ranked as highly as grand viziers23.
The marriage of princesses with damads had a lot to do with the change of
dynastic politics. First of all, their lavishly celebrated weddings would serve as a
demonstration of imperial magnificence and glory, compensating for the ones
that the confined princes were now forbidden to contract. In addition to this, they
would forge the loyalty that the Sultans in the post-Süleymanic period would not
achieve anymore, being secluded instead of fighting side by side with their
companions or collaborating in the royal councils. But the Valide Sultans and the
influential hasekis would benefit too from the practice of those marriages, forming
powerful alliances with mighty officials. The princesses, who enjoyed relatively
easy access to the harem, would serve as a link to the outside world, and in
combination with their mothers and their husbands they would shape a political
triangle, the most famous being the one of Hürrem, her daughter Mihrimah and
Rustem Pasha.
Indeed, Mihrimah, Süleyman’s only daughter, wielded more power during her
father’s rule than her brothers did. Her special place in the dynasty is

21
Peirce L., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York. Oxford
University Press, 1993, p.143
22
Isom-Verhaaren C., “Süleyman and Mihrimah: The Favorite’s Daughter”, Journal of Persianate Studies ,
No 4 (2011), p.71

10
demonstrated by her role as her father’s advisor, succeeding that of her mother
after her death24; her accumulation of great wealth25; her architectural patronage,
being “the first princess who commissioned a monumental mosque complex in
Istanbul”26; and eventually to the fact that “she was the only one of Süleyman’s
children to be buried with him in his tomb”27. Isom-Vehaaren attributes her
special relation with her father to closeness of her mother to the Sultan but also
to the fact that, unlike her brothers, she was not eligible for the throne and thus
did not pose a potential threat of revolt.
In other words, the competition of the Sultan with the other male members of
the dynastic family would increase the princesses’ influence, who would become
a strong card in the Ottoman politics. Their influence would in turn reinforce that
of the harem, that was their old house and still the residence of prominent
members of their family, for whom they would be united by blood ties as well as
common interests.

Eunuchs and pages

Eunuchs are figures that have also attracted the attention of Western
imagination and have been depicted in many different, often colorful, ways.
Despite the fact that, due to their anatomic particularity, they would attract scorn
and would be subjected to humiliation, some of them managed to become very
rich and powerful. Paradoxically, it was this exact anatomic particularity that
placed them not only between the two genders but also between the world of
men, allowing them to move freely from one to the other acting as go-
betweeners.
In the Ottoman palace, there were two separate corps of eunuchs: the black
eunuchs who guarded the harem, or the “Abode to Felicity”, and the ones who

24
Ibid., p. 76-78
25
Ibid. 83
26
Ibid., p. 79
27
Ibid., 84

11
guarded the threshold that led to the sultan’s audience chambers, known as the
“Gate of Felicity” and beyond that, to the male part of the harem28. The first
category increased their power after 1582, when Murad III appointed the black
Abyssinian eunuch Mehmed Aga as chief eunuch29. Since then, the chief black
eunuch became “the most powerful official of the Inner Service” 30, very often
reaching even the rank of the grand vizier. According to Toledano, such was the
power of the African eunuchs in the Ottoman court from the second half of the
sixteen century to the eighteenth century, that Ulucay calls the period the
“Sultanate of the African Eunuchs”31.
Not surprisingly, their influence was interwoven with that of the ladies of the
harem, with whom they more than often form political alliances. Their role as
intermediaries allowed them to control the flow of money, information, and power
between the harem and the outside world. The women and other residents of the
harem, even when powerful, did not have enough freedom of mobility in the
outside world. As a result, they would oftentimes rely on the eunuchs for any kind
of transactions and communication. Moreover, even within the harem, women
would be subjected to constant scrutiny and would be supervised by eunuchs
who were responsible for its administration and for not allowing the members of
the harem trespass their permissible limits. This role is imprinted even in the
architecture of the Top Kapi palace, where eunuchs’ quarters are strategically
placed at the margins of the harem, between that and the external court. The
internal layout enabled them to supervise every movement between the different
quarters, turning the palace into a panopticon32under the eunuchs’ fixed stare.

28
Hathaway J., “Habesi Mehmed Agha: The First Chief Harem Eunuch (Darussade Agasi) of the Ottoman
Empire”, in The Islamic Scholarly Tradition : studies in history, law, and thought in honor of Professor
Michael Allan Cook, Asad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi, and Michael Bonner eds, 2011, p.181
29
Akgunduz, Ahmed and Said Ozturk. Ottoman History: Misperceptions and Truths. Istanbul:
Islamitische Universiteit Rotterdam Press, 2011,. p. 403
30
Freely J., Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul, London, Penguin Books, 1999, p.
31
Toledano E., “The Imperial Eunuchs of Istanbul: From Africa to the Heart of Islam”, Middle Eastern
Studies 20, No. 3 , (1984), p. 382
32
Lad J., “Panoptic Bodies: Black Eunuchs as Guardians of The Top Kapi Harem”, in Harem histories
: envisioning places and living spaces, Marilyn Booth ed, Duke University Press, Durham & London,
(2010): 135-176

12
 Another factor that increased the eunuchs’ leverage was, again, the change
in the dynastic policies that led to the concentration of the princes in the palace.
As the princes stayed confined in the palace, their education was meanwhile
overseen by the Chief Harem Eunuch while. When they reached maturity they
would be moved from the women’s quarters to the Cage, where a eunuch would
be appointed as their mentor and combination accountant33. It is natural to
assume that once one of those princes would be crowned Sultan, his entrusted
eunuchs would gain in power and they would increase their role in the political
scene
Despite the prevalence of the eunuchs, there were other members of the
administrative staff of the harem who managed to acquire power and influence.
According to Peirce
“High-ranking administrative officers of the harem – all of them women –
received large stipends and enjoyed considerable prestige, especially the
harem stewardess, chief of the administrative hierarchy. These women
oversaw not only the large number of servants who performed the
housekeeping tasks of the harem but also, more important, the training of
select young harem women who would wait on the Sultan or his
mother”34.
One of the most respected figures of the harem would be the imperial wet-
nurse, also known as sut anne or milk-mother. Selim for example, would have a
loving relationship with his former wet-nurse, and he would spend much of his
time playing chess with her35.
As a conclusion, we can say that the people who were the closer to the
Sultan, would gain his trust and oftentimes his affection, and they would benefit
from that both in terms of money and of political power. That would be the case

33
Hathaway J., “Habesi Mehmed Agha: The First Chief Harem Eunuch (Darussade Agasi) of the Ottoman
Empire”, in The Islamic Scholarly tradition : studies in history, law, and thought in honor of Professor
Michael Allan Cook, Asad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi, and Michael Bonner eds, 2011, p. 182
34
Peirce L., “Beyond Harem Walls: Ottoman Royal Women and the Exercise of Power”, in Servants of the
dynasty: palace women in world history, Anne Walthall ed, University of California Press, 2008, p. 91
35
Freely J., Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul, London, Penguin Books, 1999,
p.78

13
more often after the withdrawal of the Sultans to the palace and especially after
the transfer of his residence to the heart of the harem.

14
 Conclusions

Putting the Harem under the microscope makes a lot of orientalist myths
collapse and helps us reach some usefully conclusions about the nature of the
Ottoman society. First of all, the mythology of the harem, full of sexual
connotations and lustful fantasies, is inaccurate. The imperial harem, as any
other harem in the Muslim world, included also women whose relationship with
the master lacked any sexual component. In addition to this, few of the hundred
concubines of the palace would ever reach the Sultan’s bedroom. However, even
when they did, “sex for the Ottoman Sultan, as for any monarch in a hereditary
dynasty, could never be purely pleasure, for it had significant political meaning”.
Since “sexual relations between the Sultan and chosen women of the harem
were embedded in a complex politics of dynastic reproduction”36, carnal
gratification was not the primary mission of the harem and the female slaves.
Secondly “the erroneous assumption that the seclusion of women precluded
their exercising any influence beyond the walls of the harem or that women were
meant to play only a narrow role within the family, subordinate to its male
members”37 does not hold true. During the “Sultanate of women”, high ranking
dynastic women, especially the Sultan’s mother and his favorites, managed to
exercise direct political power forming domestic alliances and negotiating with
foreign ambassadors and rulers. There is no doubt that these women
demonstrated an admirable ability to manipulate the circumstances and master
the dynastic harem’s etiquette. However, their influential role cannot be attributed
exclusively to their personal charismas but it may have something to say about
the role of women in the Ottoman society in general.
One of the lessons for Ottoman women is that the sexual segregation did not
deny them any leverage outside the domestic space. Women in Islamic medieval
societies, unlike their European counterparts, had the right to have property and

36
Peirce L., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Oxford University
Press, 1993, p.3
37
Peirce L., “Beyond Harem Walls: Ottoman Royal Women and the Exercise of Power”, in Servants of the
dynasty: palace women in world history / edited by Anne Walthall, p.82

15
they often used it to establish pious institutions38, an undoubtedly public act. In
this context, women‘s control over public issues was to some extent sanctioned.
However there was still some ”tension between sexuality and authority”39.
Women’s visibility was legitimized when they were acting like mothers as
opposed to wives or concubines, because their status was free of sexual content.
That is the reason of Hürrem’s unpopularity, even demonization40, as opposed to
the respectable figures of the Valide Sultans who ruled after her.
Finally, the examination of the royal harem contradicts the Western notion of
slavery which “we identify with the lower end of the social existence”. The
Sultan’s mother, favorites and entrusted eunuchs had all started their career as
slaves. Their presence in the top echelons of society is a paradox in a scholar
tradition that deals with slaves in the context of marginality. This phenomenon
has been described as “elite slavery” or “kul/harem slavery” and signifies the
importance of slaves as “a vital social, cultural and political component of
Ottoman life”41.
Their significance can be attributed to the fact that the slaves, uprooted from
their place of origin would be deprived of ties of kinship and ethnicity that could
threat their loyalty to their owners. That was even more true for eunuchs who had
an especially close relationship with their master or mistress because they were
not only “a foreign element in society, but unlike other slaves, in most cases they
did not form alternative family ties by marriage” 42. In a similar way, the option of
the Ottoman dynasty to base its reproduction on slave concubines and not
marriage with members of other dynastic families, could be seen as a political

38
Düzbakar Ö. Charitable Women And Their Pious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire: The Hospital of
the Senior Mother, Nurbanu Valide Sultan , Journal Of The International Society For The History Of
Islamic Medicine , (5), 2006, p. 12
39
Peirce L., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Oxford University
Press, 1993, p.279
40
Yermolenko G., “Roxoana: ‘The Greatest Empresses of the East’”, The Muslim World, Volume 95,
2005, p.232-233
41
Toledano, Ehud. “Representing the Slave’s Body in Ottoman Society” In Thomas
Wiedemann and Jane Gardner. Ed. Representing the Body of the Slave. Portland:Frank Cass, 2002, p.57
42
Toledano E., “The Imperial Eunuchs of Istanbul: From Africa to the Heart of Islam”, Middle Eastern
Studies 20, No. 3 , (1984), p. 381

16
strategy. Having no obligation towards any other royal house, the Ottoman ruling
family could maintain its independence and prestige43.
The Sultanic harem will continue to inspire stories and will stay covered by a
veil of mystery mainly because of the limited access it allowed to not only the
Western but also domestic eye. The voices, thoughts, feelings and expectation of
its inhabitants, with some rare exceptions44, will stay silenced like the voices of
most women and slaves in history. But their actions have left their mark in history
and their academic research gives us an insight into the dynastic politics and the
function of Ottoman society.

43
More reasons for this preference are cited in: Akgunduz A., Ozturk S., Ottoman History: Misperceptions
and Truths, IUR Press, Rotterdam, 2011, p. 143-144
44
See for example The concubine, the princess, and the teacher : voices from the Ottoman harem, Douglas
Scott Brookes ed, Austin : University of Texas Press, c2008 which contains original memoirs by residents
of the imperial harem during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire

17
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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