The role of female slaves in the succession of the Ottoman Empire – 06/08/2023 – Science

Your image of an Ottoman harem might change after reading this article. Some of the most powerful women in history passed through there.

“In more than 600 years of Ottoman history, almost all mothers of sultans were technically enslaved,” history professor Alan Mikhail, from Yale University in the United States, told BBC News Mundo (the BBC’s Spanish service). United.

Women maintained considerable influence in the political power game in one of the greatest empires known to mankind.

Many of them managed to “not disappear into the harems”, without becoming simple “sexual objects” or “mere providers of children” for the sultans, as Ebru Boyar wrote in the book “Ottoman Women in Public Space”. “, in free translation). “They were visible political actors at different levels and in different roles.”

Changes

Although love was present in the marriages of some princes and sultans of the Ottoman Empire, there were also other unions motivated by political and strategic reasons.

To form alliances, for example, the daughters of other leaders in the region were chosen as wives, according to Boyar, who is a professor at the Department of International Relations at the Technical University of the Middle East, in Turkey.

But there was an important trend: “The sultans preferred to have their children, the princes, the future sultans, with their concubines rather than their wives,” according to Mikhail.

When sultans wanted to procreate, they would go to the harem and choose an enslaved woman. In this way, the “free” women, who had a certain political advantage for belonging to a certain family (for being the daughter of the leader of a principality, for example), were left aside, according to Boyar.

Sultans preferred women “without connections” as mothers to their heirs. Furthermore, in Islamic law, children are legitimate regardless of whether they were born in or out of wedlock. And this practice had important implications.

“If you had a son with your wife and another with a concubine, they both had the same legal rights to ascend the throne”, according to Boyar. “The sultans had these concubines that they bred with, without worrying about having to marry them.”

The law allowed them to have up to four wives and several concubines.

many applicants

With the Ottoman conquests and other methods of capture, many women were forcibly taken to the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

During the classical period of the empire, Mikhail claims that many of these women came from southern and eastern Europe —for example, from the territory that today forms Romania and Ukraine, as well as southern Russia, the Black Sea region and the Caucasus. .

“And, once in the harem, they legally became the property of the sultan, who had the right to have sexual relations with them”, says the professor. But what made a concubine powerful was having a child, “especially if it was a boy.”

It was important to have several male heirs, since many children died at a very young age, due to various health complications. And also because, when reaching a certain age, according to Mikhail, the prince was sent to the battlefield, where he was in danger of dying.

“The Ottoman dynasty was hereditary, and if there were no male children, it was over,” he explains. Therefore, “it was very important that there were many children available; if something happened to one of them, there would always be another child.”

From harem to power

Mother and son lived in the harem and, in a way, formed “a team”, according to the professor.

In the rivalry to be the Sultan’s successor, mothers became key because they tried to position their sons to succeed.

“Which son will be favored by the father? Which will receive the best education? Which son will reach an important position in the empire when he grows up?” These were questions of the time, according to Mikhail.

In this way, a kind of competition emerged, not only between the heirs, but also between their mothers.

When they grew up, somewhere between the ages of ten and fifteen, the sons, to prove they were worthy to succeed their father, were sent to occupy positions of leadership in the empire. They might, for example, be in charge of a small town.

Mikhail explains that when a sultan’s son left, he took his mother and a small retinue of tutors and advisors with him.

“We know that an 11, 12 or 13 year old boy, who is appointed governor of a city, will not be prepared to assume this responsibility”, continues the professor. “So it’s clear that mothers are starting to play a very important role in running these small towns and cities.”

Officially, the governor of the city was the prince. But the reality was different, as historians have verified through documents, court records and letters. The mother did much of the administrative work.

But the biggest prize was in the capital of the empire.

“Of course, if your son becomes sultan, your position within the family changes, you are the imperial mother, you become an exalted figure within the dynasty”, according to the historian. “This is a very powerful position, and at different times in Ottoman history, mothers wielded a lot of power in the palace.”

“In over 600 years of Ottoman history, almost all mothers of sultans were technically enslaved and their origins were generally not in the Ottoman Empire. They were probably born Christian and then, when they entered the harem, converted to Islam. “

The place

One of the main tourist attractions in Istanbul, Turkey is Topkapi Palace, which was the administrative center and residence of the Ottoman imperial court between about 1478 and 1856.

“When you enter the palace, you notice that the harem is right next to the government offices of the Ottoman Empire,” according to Mikhail.

Thus, women were “at the center of power”, very close to the sultan, his advisers and the grand vizier, who was the main political office in the Empire, equivalent, in current terms, to that of prime minister.

“Without a doubt, they could get involved simply by watching the government in action.”

And so came about what Mikhail calls a kind of survival of the fittest. “A mother who was able to learn faster and pass the learning on to her child would have an advantage in this world.”

The harem then became a multidisciplinary training space for future sultans, as reported by the researcher in the book “God’s Shadow” (“A Sombra de Deus”, in free translation) —a biography of Sultan Selim 1st, who lived between 1470 and 1520.

“The harem—often the subject of fantasy and myth, more opulent and better equipped than anything a commoner could have imagined—actually functioned more like a school than a seraglio. [a parte da casa muçulmana onde vivem as mulheres],” wrote the scholar.

In fact, he says that the three strongest candidates to succeed Sultan Bayezid II were the sons of concubines. All received the same kind of education in the harem: languages, philosophy, religion and military arts.

Selim 1st was chosen and his reign was marked by the enormous territorial expansion of the Ottoman Empire.

The fight

In the process of succession, half-siblings became opponents—some even enemies.

“It is possible that they did not have very close relations, since, although they were children of the same father, they would always be adversaries”, according to the professor. “Even as children, in the harem, they were trained to be contenders for the throne.”

Years later, in adolescence, the half brothers were sent to different cities, which further reduced the possibility that they would ever establish a close relationship.

“When one of the sons received the right to the throne, it was common, especially in the early periods of the empire, for his rivals to be eliminated – in this case, it was his half-brothers”, says Mikhail.

Selim I, for example, killed two of his half-brothers shortly after taking the throne.

“In the bloody world of the Ottoman succession, princes were at odds with each other and therefore needed a supportive retinue, first to protect them and then to help them maneuver their way to the throne. The princes’ mothers were key strategists of these imperial policies. The incentives for a mother were clear: if her prince triumphed, so would she,” explained Professor Alan Mikhail, in an interview with the MacMillan Center at Yale University.

The professor explains in his book that, although the eldest son would normally inherit his father’s throne, “technically, any man descended from Osman [o primeiro sultão do Império Otomano] would be entitled. Hence, most successions of sultans involved bloodshed.”

Of course, no mother of a prince wanted to have a dead child, or lose the prestige and fortune brought by the throne.

The favorite

What is certain is that the concubines who became “the sultan’s favorites” achieved “more political power than their predecessors” centuries before, according to professor Ebru Boyar. “When they entered the sultan’s heart, they entered political power.”

An example is Roxelana, of Ukrainian origin. She won the love of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and went down in history as “the great eastern empress”.

After being kidnapped, enslaved and sold in Istanbul, Roxelana arrived at Suleiman’s harem as a teenager. She became the sultan’s favorite, later his wife and the mother of several of his children.

Suleiman reigned between 1520 and 1566. But there was one detail: he already had a son with another woman —Mustafá, a strong candidate to be his successor.

“As a mother, [Roxelana] she becomes a strong and very competitive woman”, explains the researcher. “Having the best asset in her hand, Suleiman’s devotion, she guarantees that one of her sons will become the next sultan.”

Roxelana convinced Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting to overthrow him, and the sultan had him killed for treason. Selim II —one of the sultan’s sons by Roxelana— took the throne.

the bondage

“From the middle of the 16th century until almost the middle of the 17th century, there was visibility of female political figures in the palace, of women who had started out enslaved”, explains Ebru Boyar.

“But it is necessary to take into account that this type of slavery is not like what we understand in the West, nor how we understand it today”, according to her. “Although harem women were not free, some could achieve power and wealth.”

“When we hear the word ‘slave’, I think most people probably think of the transatlantic trade that took place from Africa to the Americas,” says Alan Mikhail. “Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was similar, but it had differences.”

“It was different in the sense that it was not always hereditary, as it happened in the Americas, nor was it a status for life”, explains the professor. “In the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere in the Muslim world, people could be freed from slavery.”

“Of course these women were not free,” he said. “They had no other option, they needed to be sexually available to the sultan. But their children could be born free and their status could potentially improve.”

In his book, Mikhail recounts that Gülbahar Hatun’s father —the mother of Sultan Selim I— converted to Islam to join the Ottoman army. But in addition, he sought to obtain “greater social advantage by giving his daughter as a concubine to the sultan”.

Hatun not only knew that he would lead “a more comfortable life in the palace than in his hometown […]but who would also have the possibility of becoming the mother of a sultan and, with that, becoming the most important woman in the Empire and one of the most powerful women in the world”.

And that’s what happened. Gülbahar Hatun imbued the heart of government with her influence, a characteristic of Ottoman royal mothers.

This text was originally published here.