An important figure in the Ottoman power structure was the chief black eunuch, who served as the kızlar ağası (chief of women), or harem ağası (chief of harem). In charge of the royal harem and a large group of eunuchs who worked under his direct supervision, the chief black eunuch enjoyed close proximity to the sultan and his family.
THE LIVES OF THE WOMEN OF A HAREM
In the following excerpt from one of her letters, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), the wife of Edward Wortley Montagu, the ambassador of England to the Ottoman court, describes a visit to the wife of the vizier:
I was invited to dine with the Grand Vizier’s lady, and it was with a great deal of pleasure I prepared myself for an entertainment which was never given before to any Christian. I thought I should very little satisfy her curiosity, which I did not doubt was a considerable motive to the invitation, by going in a dress she was used to see, and therefore dressed myself in the court habit of Vienna, which is much more magnificent than ours. However, I chose to go incognito to avoid any disputes about ceremony, and went in a Turkish coach, only attended by my woman that held up my train and the Greek lady who was my interpretress. I was met at the court door by her black eunuch, who helped me out of the coach with great respect, and conducted me through several rooms, where her she-slaves, finely dressed, were ranged on each side. In the innermost I found the lady sitting on her sofa, in a sable vest. She advanced to meet me, and presented me half a dozen of her friends with great civility. She seemed a very good woman, near fifty years old. I was surprised to observe so little magnificence in her house, the furniture being all very moderate and, except the habits and number of her slaves, nothing about her that appeared expensive.
Source: Letters of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (London: Printed for Thomas Martin, 1790), Letter XXXIII. Available online at Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17520/pg17520-images.html.
Another important figure was the chief of the white eunuchs, who acted as kāpi ağasi (chief of the Gate of Felicity). Beginning with the reigns of Murad III (r. 1574–1595) and Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603), the white eunuchs lost ground, and black eunuchs gained greater control and access to the sultan. Regardless of their race, ethnic origin, or the degree and intensity of castration, the palace eunuchs enjoyed privileges—such as lavish clothing and special accommodations—in keeping with their high status. Included among these privileges was access to the best education available. It is not surprising, therefore, that many chief eunuchs were avid readers and book collectors who established impressive libraries.
The ağa or the chief of the black eunuchs of the royal harem was not only responsible for the training and supervision of the newly arrived eunuchs; he also supervised the daily education and training of the crown prince, as well as the work of a network of pious endowments. He used his position and access to the throne to gain power and influence over the sultan and government officials. His daily access to the sultan and close relationship with the mother and favorite concubines of his royal master made him an influential player in court intrigues. By the beginning of the 17th century the chief eunuch had emerged as one of the most powerful individuals in the empire, at times second only to the sultan and the grand vizier and in several instances second to none.
See also: Empire and Administration: Administration, Central; Sultans: Ibrahim; Kösem Sultan; Mehmed III; Murad III
Further Reading
Freely, John. Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul. London: Penguin Books, 1999.
Hathaway, Jane. Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2005.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Lewis, Bernard. Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.
McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. London and New York: Wesley Longman Limited, 1997.
Gāzi
Gāzi was originally a title for a warrior who fought in the name of Islam. A gāzi acted as a defender of the house of Islam (dār al-Islam) against the house of war (dār al-harb). The dār al-Islam referred to the lands and countries where the rules of Islam prevailed through the reign of a Muslim dynast and a Muslim majority population, while the dār al-harb constituted the countries and lands that were ruled by non-Muslim rulers and laws. A gāzi fought aggression by non-Muslims against Muslim-populated lands, while at the same time expanding the domain of Islam by attacking lands and countries ruled by non-Muslim sovereigns.
The founder of the Ottoman dynasty, Osman I, and his successors carried the title of gāzi. Some scholars have argued that the origins of the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the religious zeal of the Turkish gāzis to convert the Christian population of western Anatolia and the Balkans. The early Ottoman principality was based on the active participation of a charismatic Ottoman ruler who carried the title khan or hān and acted as the chief gāzi, a warrior who fought in the name of Islam. Ottoman power and authority derived from Turkish nomadic military units organized and led by the gāzis who fought with the Ottoman ruler. As the power and territorial possessions of their kingdom expanded, the Ottoman rulers added new titles, such as sultan (king, ruler) and padişāh/padishāh (sovereign), but never abandoned the title of gāzi. In the 19th century the title of gāzi was bestowed on military commanders who had displayed exceptional courage and outstanding leadership in battle. In modern Turkish gāzi refers to a veteran who has served in one of the branches of the Turkish armed forces.
See also: Sultans: Orhan Gāzi; Osman I (Osman Gāzi)
Further Reading
Alderson, A. D. The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Gibb, H. A. R., and Harold Bowen. Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East. London: Oxford University Press, 1951–1957.
Ibn Battuta. The Travels of Ibn Battuta. Translated by H. A. R. Gibb. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Köprülü, Fuad M. The Origins of the Ottoman Empire. Translated and edited by Gary Leiser. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Sugar, Peter. Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1805. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Harem
In Europe, the “oriental harem” conjured up images of exotic orgies and violent assassinations, in which a turban-clad monarch acted as a bloodthirsty tyrant, forced by his oriental instincts to murder his real and imagined enemies while sleeping with as many concubines as he fancied every night. According to this wild and romantic image, the sultan’s power over all his subjects was unfettered and his control over the women of the harem unlimited (Tromans: 128). Thus in the European imagination the harem not only symbolized free sex but also a masculine despotism that allowed men, especially the sultan, to imprison and use women as sexual slaves. The meaning of women’s lives was defined by their relationship to the male master they served. They dedicated their entire lives to fulfilling the fancies of a tyrant who viewed them as his chattel (Tromans: 128).
In this ima
ginary world, constructed by numerous European stories, travelogues, poems, and paintings, Muslim men appeared as tyrannical despots in public and sexual despots in private (Tromans: 128). In sharp contrast, Muslim women appeared as helpless slaves without any power or rights, who were subjected to the whimsical tyranny of men. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Europeans who traveled to the Ottoman domain were shocked when they realized how different the reality was (Tromans: 128). First, they quickly recognized that the notion of each Muslim man being married to four wives and enjoying a private harem of his own was not only absurd but laughable. If Islam allowed Muslim men to marry four wives, it did not necessarily follow that the majority of the male population in the Ottoman Empire practiced polygamy. As late as the 1830s the number of men in Cairo who had more than one wife did not exceed 5 percent of the male population in the city (Tromans: 128). By 1926, when the newly established Turkish Republic abolished polygamy, the practice already had ceased to exist (Tromans: 128).
The imperial harem in the Topkapi Palace was home to the sultan’s mother and his wives. (Burcin Tuncer/iStockphoto.com)
Far from being devoted to wild sexual orgies, the Ottoman palace was the center of power and served as the residence of the sultan. The palace comprised two principal sections, the enderun, or the inner section, and the birun, or the outer section (Sugar: 34–35; Inalcik: 76). The two sections were built around several large courtyards, which were joined by the Gate of Felicity, where the sultan sat on his throne, received his guests, and attended ceremonies (Sugar: 34–35; Inalcik: 77). The harem was the residence of the sultan, his women, and his family. A palace in its own right, the harem consisted of several hundred apartments and included baths, kitchens, and even a hospital.
Three separate but interconnected sections formed the harem. The first section housed the eunuchs, while the second section belonged exclusively to the women of the palace. The third and final section was the personal residence of the sultan. The apartments of the imperial harem were reserved for the female members of the royal family, such as the sultan’s mother (vālide sultan), his wives, and his concubines. Many concubines in the royal harem came from the Caucasus. The “sultans were partial to the fair, doe-eyed beauties from Georgia, Abkhazia, and Circassia” (Croutier: 30). There were also Christian slave girls and female prisoners of war who were sent as gifts to the sultan by his governors. These girls underwent a long process of schooling and training, which prepared them for a new life in the imperial palace. The most powerful woman of the harem was the mother of the sultan, who lived in her own apartment surrounded by servants and attendants. Her apartment included a reception hall, a bedroom, a prayer room, a resting room, a bathroom, and a bath. It was second in size only to the apartment of the sultan.
See also: Empire and Administration: Administration, Central; Palace; Primary Documents: Document 3; Document 6
Further Reading
Alderson, A. D. The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
Croutier, Alev Lytle. Harem: The World Behind the Veil. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Sugar, Peter. Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1805. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Tromans, Nicholas. “Harem and Home.” In The Lure of the East: British Oriental Painting, 128. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Ismail I, Shah of Iran (1487–1524)
Shah of Iran (r. 1501–1524) and the founder of the Safavid dynasty (r. 1501–1722), which unified Greater Iran after centuries of disunity and fragmentation. His rise to power corresponded with the reigns of the Ottoman sultans Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512), Selim I (r. 1512–1520) and Süleyman I (r. 1520–1566).
Ismail was born in Ardabil in present-day northwestern Iran in 1487. He was a descendant of Sheikh Safi al-Din Ishaq Ardabili (1253–1334), the founder of the Safaviya, a Sunni Sufi order based in Ardabil. The descendants of Sheikh Safi al-Din, who were known as the Safavids, converted to Shia Islam at an unknown date. They also claimed to be the direct descendants of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, through the seventh Shia imam, Musa al-Kazim.
The Safavid family enjoyed enormous power and prestige among the Turkoman tribal groups who had settled in northern Syria and eastern Anatolia. Having converted to Shia Islam, these tribes emerged as the military backbone of the Safavid movement. Because they wore a distinct red headgear, comprised of 12 triangles representing the 12 imams of Shia Islam, they came to be known as the Qizilbash (Kizilbaş) or Red Heads.
Ismail’s father, Sheikh Heydar, was killed in battle when Ismail was only one year old. To protect the child, Sheikh Heydar’s followers took him to the lush, forested, and mountainous province of Gilan on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. There the young Ismail remained until he reached the age of 14. In 1501 Ismail emerged out of Gilan and rallied his followers in battle against the ruling Aq Qoyunlu (Ak Koyunlu) dynasty. Once he had defeated the Aq Qoyunlu, Ismail ascended the throne as the shah of Iran and the founder of the Safavid dynasty in Tabriz, the capital of the Iranian province of Azerbaijan.
In 1510, after he had imposed Safavid rule over much of present-day Iran, Ismail inflicted a humiliating defeat on a much larger Uzbek army near Marv (Merv) in the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan (present-day Turkmenistan). The Uzbek leader, Mohammad Sheybani, was killed as he tried to flee the battlefield. Having neutralized the threat posed by the Uzbeks in the east, Shah Ismail switched his attention to the west, seizing Iraq and entering Anatolia.
The popularity of Shah Ismail as a Shia saint and a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad spread throughout Anatolia, forcing the Ottomans to conclude that the only way to neutralize the magnetic Iranian monarch was to destroy his army and his followers in a single military campaign. The leadership of this anti-Shia campaign was assumed by the Ottoman sultan Selim, who ascended the throne in Istanbul in 1512. His principal objective was to revive the expansionist policies of his grandfather, Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481), who had aimed at the creation of a world empire. The two principal obstacles to the creation of an Ottoman-dominated Near East were the Safavid Empire, based in Iran and ruled by Shah Ismail, and the Mamluk Empire, based in Egypt. Between the two Muslim powers, the one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the security and legitimacy of the Ottoman state was undoubtedly the Safavid shah, who with support from Qizilbash tribesmen of Syria and Anatolia dreamed of re-creating the Persian empire of pre-Islamic Iran.
For Selim, the Ottoman invasion of eastern Anatolia could not confine itself to a military confrontation with Shah Ismail’s army. Aside from destroying the Safavid army, Selim was determined to uproot the social base of support, as well as the rural and urban networks, that the Safavids and their supporters had established in Anatolia. Thus, as the Ottoman army marched through central and eastern Anatolia, tens of thousands of men and women who were suspected of sympathizing with the Safavid cause were massacred and their bodies displayed on the roads as a reminder to those who contemplated joining the Shia Iranians.
After establishing the Safavid dynasty in Iran, Shah Ismail I defeated the Uzbeks near Marv in present-day Turkmenistan in 1510, killing the Uzbek leader Mohammad Shaybani as he tried to flee the battlefield. (Private Collection/Bridgeman Images)
The decisive battle between the Ottoman and Safavid armies was fought on the plain of Chaldiran (Chalduran) near Khoi, north of Lake Urumiyyeh in present-day northwestern Iran, on August 22–23, 1514. The Safavid army was defeated by a much larger Ottoman army after the sultan’s artillery and muskets destroyed the shah’s cavalry, which was armed principally with swords, spears, and bows. The Ottoman forces pushed into Azerbaijan and captured Tabriz, t
he capital of the Safavid state. However, the arrival of an early and harsh winter, incessant surprise attacks by Safavid irregulars who harassed and cut off the Ottoman army’s limited food supplies, and increasing pressure on the sultan from the janissary units to return home forced Selim to withdraw his armies back to eastern Anatolia. The two powers did not negotiate a peace treaty, and frontier raids and skirmishes continued for more than a century.
Although the Ottomans withdrew their forces from Azerbaijan, the victory at Chaldiran neutralized the immediate threat posed by Shah Ismail, allowing Selim to impose Ottoman rule over eastern Anatolia and much of Kurdistan. Ismail died in 1524 at the age of 36, leaving the throne of Iran to his infant son, Tahmasp.
See also: Empire and Administration: Abbas I, Shah of Iran; Sultans: Bayezid II; Selim I; Süleyman I; Primary Documents: Document 5
Further Reading
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. London and New York: Wesley Longman Limited, 1997.
Savory, Roger. Iran under the Safavids. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
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