The Hidden World Of The Ottoman Imperial Harem | Harem | Chronicle

[Music] in the 16th century istanbul was the capital of the greatest islamic empire the world has ever known ruled by suleiman the magnificent it stretched from baghdad to budapest [Music] the center of power was top kapi palace and in the heart of topkapi was the harim [Music] into it came hundreds of women from all over the empire and beyond the personal slaves of the sultan [Music] but in the imperial palace sex could equal power [Music] this is the story of those women and of the closed and secret world of the ottoman harem [Music] in 1520 a newcomer entered the imperial palace in istanbul her name was alexandre lizovska she was the daughter of a priest from the ukraine captured by slave hunters to join the army of servants and concubines in the service of the sultan [Music] they were slaves not of turkish extraction either slavs captured by the tartars probably or from the caucasus who were very prized for their looks white skin dark hair and delicate bone structure [Music] and they were predominantly christian the enslavement of free-born muslims was forbidden by the quran in our history writing about the harim and the sultan's women or talking about them is a sin and is forbidden so nobody has written anything and we always have to decorate these stories in our imagination and foreign travellers have also done this people went to the ottoman empire in the 16th 17th and 18th centuries and they were very taken with the idea that they were all these women locked up together they soon came up with stories that filled in the gaps of their ignorance about what was going on in the harem most of those involved a lot of sex a lot of rather abusive treatment of young women [Music] the first englishman to catch a glimpse into the imperial harem was a london mechanic sent by queen elizabeth the first to the palace of the great sultan to install her gift of an organ [Music] through the great i did see 30 of the grand senor's concubines that were playing with a ball at first sight i thought they had been young men but when i saw the hair of their heads hanging down on their backs i didn't know them to be women and very pretty ones indeed [Music] they were britches so thin i could discern the skin of their thighs through it i stood so long looking upon them that he you had showed me began to be very angry and stamped with his staff to make me give overlooking [Music] the inner part of the palace especially the harem was officially called the abode of felicity because the sultan had a special relationship with god this was the reason why all the means of happiness were actually supplied the best food the best things to drink the best music the best singing the best manuscripts with figures in them which is frowned upon by strict muslims [Music] you have the means to be happy but it's very difficult to tell whether they actually were happy a descendant of suleimans one of the last princes to have lived in the harim considered that his ancestors would have found it more lonely than lavish the prince lived a long luxurious life with a very lonely life in a way because all he had there were hundreds of women around him i lived amongst them and i was more or less brought up by them i didn't realize it at the time that it was anything extraordinary because i was used to it you think everybody else lives that way [Music] but to the priest's daughter soon to be known as harem it would have been anything but ordinary when the girls first arrived they would be examined to make sure that they didn't have any physical defects have any diseases [Music] women come to the harem at an early age they are cleaned according to our traditions and taught how to wash before prayers the type that turkish men like is what we call balaketli flesh firm like a fish and another detail they say i have a goodbye meaning the belly should be shaped like a quince in our literature too when we describe women we say cheeks like peaches lips like cherries similes like these and that's what men expect the islamic religious law permits polygamy a man could marry up to four women at any given time and could also have concubines on the side but as the numbers of polygamous marriages were really very few only the ruling class for example like your sultans would have a harem when he was a young ruler it was said by foreign diplomats that suleiman very lustful frequently visited the palace of the women and there in the phrase did justice i.e made love and indeed the sultan was encouraged to behave a bit as a prize stud to cover more and more mass so that the biological future of the dynasty was secured i think the reason that the ottomans chose to reproduce through concubines is it gave them more reproductive freedom um the difference between having a child with a concubine and having a child with say a royal princess is that the princess the married woman has many more rights as a mother concubines because they are slaves have fewer rights over children [Music] the sultan was considered to be above society separate from it that was the very ideology of the state you can imagine that a relationship by marriage to a free muslim woman the daughter of some important writer in istanbul or some would immediately make the sultan related to a segment of society and this may cause divisions with other segments etc these are the personal slaves of the sultans they don't have any family they don't have any connections we don't know the feelings of the women who entered the harem there must have been fear and terror as well as other emotions but also the delight of material comforts and there was a possibility of becoming the sultan's consult the imperial harem in 16th century istanbul was one of the most secret societies in the world even in the early 20th century shortly before it was abolished it was difficult to discover precisely what went on here i asked my mother and my mother's sisters about their grandmother's life in the haram and they said that because it was prohibited to talk about the life in the haram she could tell nothing to them modern historians have been less restricted and their discoveries have challenged the old western fantasies it's not where women lounged around and spent their time the sort of orientalist image we have we should think of the harem as a unique place as a collection of females who are more highly educated more highly trained and trained in a variety of ways than women in this general society so i think we might think of the imperial harem as the only female university in the empire the latest undergraduate was the priest's daughter alexandre lizovska now known as hurem the laughing one when a woman like khuram arrived in the harem she would be given further education and by education i mean some religious training a knowledge of islam she would be taught the etiquette of the court she would be trained in the skill that most harem women were adept at that is embroidery wonderful things the embroidery that she produced could be sold through agents on the market so it was a profitable skill it wasn't just a gentle womanly skill sarai adam [Music] and how to be respectful and well behaved at all times and never be angry they had lessons every day and most learned to read and write and to read the quran had the prying eyes of western travellers pierced the outer walls they would have perceived a vastly different harem from the sexual paradise or inferno of their imagining making love is the one thing most inmates of the harim were not doing at least if they were following the rules relatively few got to spend a night with the sultan living there must have been very claustrophobic if you've got a relatively small space with several hundred women living in it access to the outside world is very limited the views over istanbul if you could get them must have been quite had quite an effect on people it was a very comfortable place but it was more like a comfy prison than a comfy bordello and the prison warders were the eunuchs only men who had been castrated were allowed into the harem on a regular basis and like the women most would spend their entire lives here the enclosure of women itself seems very objectionable perhaps even more objectionable is the mutilation of young men in order to provide eunuchs to staff and protect the harem it was forbidden by islamic law to castrate a muslim or perform the operation on others so it was carried out by coptic christian priests in egypt the method of castration and there are two types one is cutting the testis and the other twisting and crushing them sometimes there's a method called clean shaven and which meant that they removed everything and it made it almost impossible for them to perform their usual body functions according to one ambassador they kept silver quills in their turbans and they would use those quilts in order to urinate one of the duties of the eunuchs was to ensure that the concubines did not have sex with anyone but the sultan men women or whatever else came to hand cucumbers were not led into the haram because they were used as a penis it is said but the guards themselves were not beyond suspicion the process of castration was very frightening and difficult for the boys and often out of fear their testicles would retreat [Music] they would remain intact and sometimes over time they would be able to function sexually there are many accounts of the eunuchs having relationships with the women in the harem this was one reason why the eunuchs in the harim were exclusively african it was one way of making sure that these men couldn't inseminate the female members of the imperial family without everybody noting that she'd given birth to a half-black child [Laughter] but for hurrem as for most newcomers to the harem there was little opportunity for dalliance with eunuchs or anyone [Music] if the girls were higher in the power structure of the harem they would be given their own quarters but the rest of the girls would share their rooms [Music] there were older women who watched over the younger girls to make sure that they weren't getting into any kind of a mischief [Music] such as talking in the dark sharing their bed together girls boarding school or comfy prison it was not perhaps the happiest of estates for the daughter of a priest but if harem dreamed of improving her lot there was always the possibility of sex with the sultan though this too was hedged with its own barriers of ritual and restraint [Music] there's some report that you know sultans like to watch lots of pretty girls sort of jumping about in the altogether um there's the story that the sultan will throw a handkerchief towards the woman who caught his eye the surprised virgin snatches at this prize and good fortune with such eagerness that she is ravished with joy before she is deflowered by the sultan [Music] such reports have never been verified and for most harim women not yet numbered among the favorites a handkerchief was just another item of laundry very few of them ever got to see the sultan and let alone jump into his bed in order to get anywhere and not just be washing the sultan's underpants the rest of your life you had to maneuver yourself into position with the women who chose who went to bed with the sultan his mother in reality the sultan's mother would scout for suitable candidates among these now derelict pools and fountains in the bowels of topkapi [Music] and physical attraction was far from being her only criteria an eligible concubine would obviously need to be attractive [Music] she needed to be healthy because her principal job was reproduction because of the important role that mothers played in training their sons she also needed to be shrewd and the way they were introduced was that they were asked to go to a semi-covered pool underneath the crown princess apartments [Music] and that was an opportunity for the sultans to watch them and observe them and choose their favorites [Music] whatever it was that brought hurum to the attention of the sultan or indeed his mother the preparations for her first night with him would have followed a well-established ritual the day she is going to be with the sultan she goes to the bath house and has face and body treatments and her hands and hair are painted with henna the idea of any hair on the body was a thought of horror and so they would remove any kind of hair including their pubic hair what they used was really an awful smelling paste that contained arsenic and if you left it too long it could burn the skin very badly and they used muscle shells to scrape it off they would put henna four fingers above the pubic area it's a decorative beautiful design detail concubines were assumed to be virgins but i don't think we can assume the naivete and the innocence this kind of goes along with a whole notion of virgins i mean these women were prepared for their job i don't know the details we have stories written by european observers are they fanciful are they true it's hard to know all the older women and those who have had his good graces before go to the favorite of the day congratulating her for the great distinction which she has received and saluting her as befits the concubine of the emperor dressing her superbly and decking her out with countless jewels she would be given new clothes and shoes and and trained also in the erotic arts we don't really know exactly what that entailed i think we have to assume however that the sultan's mother his sisters experienced women high level women within the harem would probably provide the finishing touches would explain the particular person that the concubine would encounter my son is like this your lord is like this [Music] the court musician albert bobavi provided a colorful account of the courtship ritual [Music] while music is played the women sing before her and conduct her to the door of the chamber where there is a eunuch who tells the sultan of her arrival and has her enter when the sultan commands it as soon as she sees him she must go to him running and kneel at his feet [Music] and he receives her and holds what conversation seems good to him with the women's music continuing to play at the door while she is with him are also stories of her entering the bed from the foot of the bed so the sultan would be waiting for this beauty to crawl from the foot of the bed and reach him [Music] whatever happened that night suleiman wanted it to continue hurrem was invited back to his bed again and again she was soon firmly established as the sultan's favorite to the exclusion records tell us of all others [Music] the venetian sources tell us that he fell in love with her [Music] a deadly rivalry had reached into the harim [Music] it was not simply a question of who would occupy the sultan's bed it was a far more vital conflict over who would produce the next ruler of the ottoman empire the new favorite hurrem or the old favorite mahi devran mahi devran was the mother of the oldest son so that hurim coming in obviously being the sultan's new favorite was a threat to her according to venetian report mahi devran picked a fight with herrem and called her soiled meat [Music] a piece of meat off the slave market and this provoked a physical struggle between them [Music] rem's face was scratched her hair was pulled and the next time the sultan called for her m she replied she was unworthy of his attention since she was soiled meat and of course this intrigues suleiman peaks his curiosity and he calls her again and she tells the whole story of course with mahi devran appearing as the bad guy here's an early sign of haram's intelligence and ability to manipulate the whole palace system [Music] haram knew how to play her cards you have to think how the women we know about got to where they got we know about them because they fought their way tooth and claw up the ladder it was incredibly intensely sort of concentrated ball of intrigue battling jockeying for position hoping to produce an air [Music] gave birth to her first son prince mehmed in 1521. if suleiman had played the game by the rules he should now have moved on to a new woman but he didn't before hoorem's time if a concubine of the sultan produced a son then she was kicked out of bed huren produced one son but then she produced several more suleiman kept her in his bed there are a number of reasons why they follow this one mother one son principle mothers were important advisors to their sons so for us two sons to have to share a mother meant they only had half of an advisor had half of support if a woman is identified with only one son she is completely with him in this game of power [Music] and it was a game hurem had to win under islamic law all sons had an equal right of inheritance but in the ottoman court the losers lost more than the throne the sons of a sultan were in combat survival of the fittest the one who was strongest most able became the soldier [Music] the suns were going to vie amongst themselves to become the sultan and it was winner takes all they had to race to constantinople they had to raise the support and when they were acclaimed sultan they put all their brothers to death [Applause] all dennises have had problems in securing an uninterrupted and legitimate succession many wars have been started in england and france by discontented royal brothers or cousins or other relations the ottoman solution was to have a harem see there was no lack of male hours after the sultan's succession other male members of the dynasty were murdered if i had lived in those days since i was a younger brother i would probably have been strangled very young or even as a small child but then after being strangled i would have been buried with great ceremony which is not much of a consolation 1530 suleiman had five sons and four of them were by hurrem hudam troubled people they weren't used to a sultan keeping up a relationship with one woman and they worried that suleiman had had gone head over heels in love the foreign sources tell us that people even went so far as to call her a witch [Music] because of their fear that she had somehow seduced the sultan new concubines were brought into the hareem in the hope of tempting suleiman from the path of fidelity they included two russian women with the same highly prized looks as harem women given directly to the sultan would be highly cultivated attractive intelligent women naturally she might see a competition anyway the story goes she was so put out through a fetch that the sultan had to give them away so here we see another sign of who i am being able to manipulate the politics of the harem and and to use her own special position as a real favorite of the sultan other eligible concubines were married off as virgins to suleiman's courtiers and then in 1534 14 years after suleiman and huarem first made love the sultan made an even bigger break with tradition western observers were astounded this week there occurred a most extraordinary event unprecedented in the history of the sultans suleiman has taken to himself as his empress a slave woman from russia [Music] he married her which is the incredible thing sultans didn't marry their concubines they didn't they didn't need to [Music] the concubine by definition is a man's female slave according to the religious law you can't marry your own concubine so you have to free her in order to marry her there is great talk about the marriage and none can say what it means one thing it meant was power for the first time in their history the ottomans had a queen after she was married we start calling her sultan she builds up diplomatic relations and she also influences her husband politically in another move that impressed western observers herrem occupied new apartments next to her husband [Music] the chambers of the sultana are very splendid with chapels baths gardens not only for herself but her maids as well but for long periods the two lovers were apart suleiman was a fighting sultan who had already extended his empire westward he took belgrade he destroyed the whole of the hungarian ruling classes in 1526 the battle of mohash at a stroke and rode into buddha conqueror [Music] and by 1529 he was at the gates of vienna [Music] but even on campaign his thoughts were with harem he sent frequent love letters and poems where we can get nearer to his personality is through his poems which are remarkable for any ruler the green of my garden my sweet sugar my treasure my love who cares for nothing in this world my master of egypt my joseph my everything the queen of my heart's realm my land of the roman caesars my baghdad and khorasan lovely lovely poems exist that pass back and forth in correspondence between the two if the seas were to become ink and these trees pens when could they write an account of this parting there is no limit to the burning anguish of separation let my soul gain at least some comfort from a letter your son and daughter weep from missing you letters also reveal her fears for the safety of her sons [Music] the favored heir to the throne was prince mustafa the son of haram's old rival mahi devran mustafa had the support of the army and the grand vizier ibrahim pasha some visitors were captured slaves like ibrahim pasha he did become a companion and a favorite of the sultan they would generally dine together and he would his bed was in the same room as the sultans there are even stories of intense emotional relationship some europeans spoke of a sexual relationship maybe yes maybe no in any event that was a very close emotional and political relationship so as a very young man probably in his twenties he was suddenly the top man in the empire after the sultan himself suleiman had cemented this relationship by giving his own sister in marriage to ibrahim none of this pleased the ambitious haram [Music] ibrahim's prestige was something she could not tolerate we should not forget that we are talking about power politics here 16th century ottoman empire was at its height that meant tremendous power [Music] so of course she wants to undermine it in one of her letters harim refers to a disagreement with ibrahim pasha she writes to suleiman and now you inquire about why i'm not with ibrahimovic you'll hear about it when you will hear about it when i am granted my next meeting with you for the moment give the pasha our greetings we hope they will be acceptable to him ibrahim played into her hands within very short space of time he acquired lots of wealth solomon magnificent could figure out where that the wealth was coming from [Music] at least partially it was graft if graft and corruption were among ibrahim's faults another was an arrogant assumption of his own worth he is reported by one ambassador as saying though i am the sultan slave whatever i say is done i can at a stroke make a pasha out of a stable boy i can give kingdoms and provinces to whosoever i choose and my lord will say nothing against it [Music] ibrahim's confidence was misplaced and on the 15th of march 1536 ibrahim pasha accepted as usual the sultan's invitation to dine with him [Music] they eat at the same table until late at night according to ramadan traditions they talk and entertain themselves and then they go to bed [Music] we don't really know what happened that night but obviously the sultan had decided that the grand visit had become too powerful as a compliment to his boyhood friend suleiman apparently ordered the same method of execution reserved for his own kin garotting with a bow string so there would be no spilling of royal blood [Music] but ibrahim put up too much of a struggle [Music] suleiman in both ottoman sources and in european sources is frequently portrayed as a man of ire anything that threatened the state or that threatened his own integrity as ruler would motivate him to take violent moves the next morning ibrahim's body was found outside the palace this is a reminder of how ottoman government worked you could raise a peasant from the dust to be grand vizier but his life hung by a thread the next day ibrahim's wife solomon's sister comes to the palace and blames the sultan for her husband's death sullivan goes to the harim to find shelter in haram's arms it's hard to see that solomon himself would have done it without her making him on she wanted to be absolutely sure of her control and until ibrahim was out of the way there was always a danger that she might be packed off herself she was ruthless she had to be ruthless but the danger remained and death was not under harem's exclusive control [Music] in 1543 hurrem's ambitions received a fatal blow her young son prince mehmed was struck down by smallpox [Music] his death began a new race for the succession and the front-runner was mustafa now in his thirties the son of harem's old rival mahi devran this would mean death for harem's surviving sons solomon's favorite son was mustafa he was also a favorite of the army he was dull he was strong he was handsome uh he could you know he was going to be a great ruler and everyone thought very highly of him if mustafa were to ascend the throne the murder of her own children would be inevitable it was impossible for harem to accept this the story is usually looked at as one of intrigue and competition among the mothers around their sons i think there's a larger political context for this mustafa was very very popular with the soldiers he was a rival to his father without meaning to be just by virtue of his popularity and the sultan was persuaded that mustafa was conspiring against him the story is that khurram had an ally it was the husband of her daughter mehra [Music] harem women could establish important alliances with male political actors to the marriages of their daughters [Music] and this daughter's husband was the grand vizier the new grand vizier was an important ally for harem and ideally placed to whisper slanders in the sultan's ear [Music] word began to reach solomon while he was out on campaign that mustafa was plotting against him and mustafa himself was very upset when news of these allegations reached him and he went to see his father mustafa reached suleiman's base in iran and went straight to his tent a western diplomat reported what happened then as soon as he entered the tent several sturdy mutes made a determined attack upon him they hurled mustafa to the ground and throwing a bowstring around his neck strangled him [Music] it was said that suleiman urged the mutes to greater efforts but harem was widely blamed for her role in the murder i don't think shuliman would have listened to these stories if he hadn't himself felt that there was a legitimate threat and that despite the fact that he was going to alienate so many people by executing his son that this was probably the wiser move for the integrity of the empire if tradition paints harem as the villain of the peace it was at a time when powerful women were widely perceived as a threat to the established order joram's contemporaries were queen elizabeth of england catherine de medici of france and mary queen of scots whom the calvinist john knox dubbed the monstrous regimen harem aroused similar hostility among the ottoman elite though the extent of her power has been disputed was obviously a very powerful woman it's difficult for us to know how powerful because of course you know as today in the corridors of power things are decided in corridors and not written down she was his eyes and ears and of course when the sultan is away it means she could probably do a few things on her own account as well hurum was a very smart and shrewd person and she would write giving him news of what was going on both within the family but also political news [Music] there's one letter she wrote when suleiman was fighting the iranians she said so everybody here in istanbul is waiting to hear good news they're ready to set up a parade and we don't have any good news from you you need a victory now if a messenger arrives saying no progress here nothing there no one is going to be very happy my sultan harem was sensitive to public opinion and she embarked on an ambitious building plan one of the major expressions of power was building building large mosques that had in the prerogative of males in the dynasty and horem is in some ways the first woman who builds quite publicly but the public expression of harem's power was undermined by a fatal flaw she had removed the main rival for the throne but she had two sons and they couldn't both rule under ottoman law one would have to die before the problem could be resolved she became seriously ill suleiman old now and also in bad health kept vigil at her bedside but even as he watched her fight for life he must have known he would have to make a terrible choice over which of their sons would succeed him [Music] it was probably hurram's fortune that she did not live long enough to see the power struggle between her two sons the younger son took arms against his older brother and the sultan suleiman had his youngest son executed as a traitor but by then he had lost the love of his life harem died on april 18 1558 38 years after she had first entered the hareem sullivan takes to a sort of ascetic lifestyle he dines off earthenware platters and this is the man who was changing his clothes every day into sort of cloth of gold he becomes religious but morbid [Music] eight years after harem's death suleiman joined her in the cemetery of suleimani mosque four hundred years later horen's tomb has become a shrine for women who cherish the memory of a great ottoman queen quran really builds the foundation of this very public power that women have although she herself was unpopular at this time her power was as a concubine and that troubled people that she was a concubine uh a sexually active woman in power a problem harem had devoted 38 years of her life to ensuring that one of her own sons succeeded to the throne but ironically instead of providing the world with another suleiman the magnificent she had blazed the trail for future generations of harim women whose power would eclipse even her own [Music] istanbul the very heart of the ottoman empire in the mid 16th century it was at the height of its powers here deep inside the imperial palace is the harim the secret place the forbidden place where the sultan's women were kept under close guard if somebody says harem and you imagine this palace and then you imagine all these women there together and all of them are there for the pleasure of the sultan and then you imagine you're you imagine you're the sultan and this idea of sort of sexual paradise now this is one way of imagining it in reality it was closer to something else there was serious business to be conducted there the harem was the sultan's marriage place and its purpose indeed was to produce the next sultan and that that is indeed what it was all about [Music] ever since suleiman the magnificent fell for a slave girl called harem things had been changing in the harim european observers commented that it was like or they thought it was like a nunnery a monastery but this is also um a political crucible the women may have been enclosed but were no longer powerless in this world of threat and danger they were beginning to play an active role [Music] harem had broken the mould of the anonymous passive concubine by becoming suleiman's confidante and wife the women who followed would build on harem's power but their power would be more as mothers than as concubines [Music] the murderous struggle for the succession had continued after harem died in 1558 it was her son selim who made it to the throne eight years later his favorite nurbanu meaning princess of light would become the most powerful woman in the harem she is extremely well loved and honored by his majesty both for her great beauty and for being unusually intelligent she was the illegitimate daughter of two venetian noble families captured by an ottoman admiral born cecilia vanier baffo she was seized and brought to istanbul in 1537 at the age of just 12. nabanu was presented to saleem ii when he was very young and still only a prince and he fell madly in love with her when he went off to the provinces to learn to govern celine took nabanu with him as a prince he seems to have been faithful to her norbhanu is not just one more concubine norbano is the privileged concubine of salim's princely career when he becomes sultan she comes with him to istanbul like all the concubines nabanu was a slave but this was not slavery as in toiling in the plantations [Music] it was an honour and a wise career move to be a slave of the sultan for women it meant the chance of being in the imperial harim which was a a wonderful career for women because it was a finishing school as well as a harem you you learnt skills you were protected from the wear and tear of daily life and there was a possibility of becoming the sultan's consult [Music] nabanu's sultan selim was not the greatest catch he hadn't aged too well selling the second was a grave disappointment he came after suleiman the magnificent the greatest ottoman sultan ever uh and sell him was called sell him the sot [Music] salim was like his father in one respect he loved just one concubine and perhaps even married her but in all their years together they'd had only one son murad though they did have four daughters [Music] the first duty of an ottoman sultana i suppose any monarch at all is to produce healthy heirs so salem had to get on with it pretty sharpish and produce more suns which he did towards the end of his reign [Music] with all the princes battling to be sultan these new sons by other mothers would be a threat to nabanu's son when salim died which he soon did [Music] according to the stories he came to rather an ignominious end one can guess probably because he'd been hitting the bottle but the story goes that uh in the bath house he stubbed his toe and slipped over and of course turkish bars are all stone inside and he hit his head on the stone and died instantly the death of assault was often a crisis because there's that period between the death of the sultan and the arrival of the new sultan on the throne if the new sultan was not in istanbul that period could stretch into three four weeks so there's a possibility of rebellion of a prince trying to take over the throne of all kinds of things happening so often they would hide the fact that the sultan had died nabanu took control hid selim's body in the ice rooms in the palace cellars until her son murad returned from the provinces to take his place she only announced his death after her son arrived this action by nurbanu is a remarkable one but it's also part of the role of people at the heart of power and from the end of the 16th century on it was so often women who were there at the very heart so when murad arrives from the provinces he's obviously going to become sultan but then we have the problem of fratricide he's got five brothers living in the palace [Music] murad spent some time alone with his mother it is said she reminded him of his duty to kill his brothers we have the account of a jewish physician he said that murad spent a lot of time very unhappy thinking about it but in the end custom and perhaps indeed the pressure of his mother and certainly ottoman politics said he had no choice [Music] i think particularly for the mothers in the hurry there was a terrifying sense of paranoia the state of constant anxiety i sometimes try to imagine myself into the place of of one of those women i'm sure they raised these children knowing full well that their son might be executed the ottomans took care of letting one son be successful and making him without any contenders for the throne if one or two of his brothers survived then there is civil war one or two boys versus thousands of being killed in civil war is what we are talking about murad made up his mind it was a night of terror in the hareem the very first political act he takes is to have his brothers executed so that only one line would remain [Music] [Music] the first site that the population of the capital saw of murad's reign was the coffins of the little princes emerging from the doors of the palace although there was nothing new about sultan's killing their brothers this was the first time it had happened under the nose of the people of istanbul [Music] one of the mothers then killed herself she'd failed in her prime function as the mother of a prince to keep her son alive [Music] 1574 and nabanu was triumphant as mother of the new sultan she would now rule the roost in the hareem the role of queen mother was in a sense an invention of norbanus for nurvano [Music] she's the first woman who acquired the title of vale de sultan queen mother empress dowager [Music] the sultan bases his policies principally on the advice of his mother yet appearing to him that he could have no other advice as loving and loyal as hers [Music] she corresponded as the mother of the sultan with catherine de medici queen mother of france and the venetian ambassador wrote all good and all ill come through the queen mother she was absolute top dog in the hurry but she was still watching out for her son's career because she rose and fell with him there was one threat to her position her son had a favorite sophia it's a problem between the bride and the mother-in-law murad iii loves his favorite sophia sultan very much jealousy and cruelty towards safir is something recorded in our history like so many of the sultans murad was going against ottoman tradition by singling out one woman when he became sultan his job was then to produce a lot of suns kind of as insurance in case safiya's own son should should become ill and die and he didn't he's stuck with sofia and this really troubled people [Music] tried everything to make her son meet other women and go to bed with them she found many beautiful concubines who dance well and organized nights with dancing [Music] [Music] the gift of two concubines by his sisters is the trick that uh that turns the situation around [Music] and off he goes so reluctant in the beginning he had no problem [Music] after this murad almost pushed safir aside and began going with other women against all tradition murad even started to sleep among the women inside the harim nibanu had him where she wanted him in bed making more princes this symbolizes that the sultans are more restricted to the palace and in particular the harim the tradition of the campaigning sultan campaigning every summer is dying away was the one who encouraged murad iii to take up his residence in the harem which meant that she had more power over him than previously been the case for any woman in ottoman history and you can see her as a pivotal figure in increasing the role of the harem and of its head the validity sultan in the running of the state it's about power returning from the periphery of the empire as it grows returning towards the center and now you go down to the center it's the palace and you go to the center of the palace it's the harem and who's in the hiring it's the women in murad's reign the empire reached its peak stretching from iran in the east to budapest in the west murad and his mother had the harem extended and more and more women were brought in from all over the empire numbers rose from about 130 on celine ii's death to 600 on murad iii historians then and since muttered darkly about decadence and decline during murad iii's reign the size of the hari increased greatly but i can't see any reason why having a larger harem should cause an empire to decline some ottoman observers disapproved of the development of what would be called the sultanate of women [Music] the harem was close to power indeed there was a window looking onto the council chamber in the imperial palace where the sultan would overhear the proceedings in the council and it's from within the hari and some inmates of the harim would have been very well informed and of course proximity to power leads to discussions about power and wanting to influence decisions which out to outsiders would seem like intrigue [Music] only men can become sultans but women are political actors so in a sense i mean the top woman in the female hierarchy in the palace is not only a political role but it's a top political role the palace is the seat of political life faction jockeying information worries policies and the harem was a part of that so at the same time that we've got these these rules um and this strong hierarchy we've also got a lot of conflict worry looking for allies teaming up [Music] was like a department of state within the sultan's palace the harem was run very much like a large corporation all the department heads would have novices to train and the departments were things like the mistress of sherbets and mistress of dress making mistress of jewels misters of the coffee misters of the laundry and the general housekeeping [Music] in the time that nurbanu is queen mother we really can talk about a kind of a firming up of the hierarchy of women in the harem at the very bottom we've got your basic servants people who boil the water for the laundry put the coal in the furnace this kind of service then i think we need to think of it as bifurcating into a reproductive a kind of a concubine tract and an administrative tract there's a management team in this harem chief officer of the harem is a woman called the harem stewardess and she's got her own staff she carries the keys she's in charge of all the various service divisions within the harem the other important harim officials were the black eunuchs guardians of the sacred space theoretically akin to angels who unlike men could pass between heaven and earth they were the only people who had access to both parts of the palace they could go both into the harem and into the male section of the palace and that meant that for example a black eunuch could talk to the queen mother about affairs of state the queen mother herself couldn't then come out into the male quarters and discuss the thing but the black eunuch could one english observer in fact commented that it's the black eunuchs who run the empire well i don't think that that is strictly true but clearly they were very important people and because they were also the controllers of the sultan's charitable trust they could become extremely wealthy the palace midwives could become wealthy too they didn't run the empire but were central to the harim midwives of the palace were very popular and they came to be very rich and they owned big houses they were given very precious presents after they had delivered babies they also advised on health and contraception for unlike christians at the time muslims were allowed to use contraception the major method they talked about was what is referred to politely in the literature as coitus interruptus which people would know as withdrawal there was always the argument that if you practice contraception and this was the argument used by jewish and christian thinkers you're doing something against god or against nature because you're not allowing the sexual act to reach its conclusion the muslim attitude was if god really wanted a child to be born then that child will be born made it possible to argue that this is not against god's wishes which was a very nice twist on this question of whether you're going against god or not midwives in the harim would have prepared tampons and other barriers these would have been coated with oils herbs and honey most of the known methods were for women but there were some for men too woodtar was seen as an extremely effective contraceptive when inserted into the vagina and then it was also seen as an effective contraceptive if it is smeared on the penis wood tar obviously wasn't something murad was using to he had a lot of children he probably wanted to have children from all the concubines he liked it is said in historical records that more than 100 cradles were being rocked in the harem at the same time 112 children when he died he had 27 daughters and 20 sons alive all the babies would be born within the harim the tradition was to let the pregnant woman sit on a chair and give birth to her child in a sitting position [Music] and a midwife would take it from under the chair you knew that even as you were giving birth your son if it was a son might become the next sultan but there was a death there too there was likely to be death though someone was going to come and kill that child you had to watch out you had to watch out all through his life murad was overdoing it one son was not enough but this was too many it would cause a crisis when he died people think that with a harem an ottoman sultan would have large number of children in fact they most of them had a very limited number of children and they took great care not to have too many sofia mother of murad's first son concentrated on building up her own political position she also competed with his mother in choosing new slaves for him nabanu must have been furious this was her job [Music] for it is only she who has the interest of the loves of her son at her heart and she can more easily assure herself from the girl's loyalty to both herself and the sultan there was a sort of engine revving to supply him with suitable concubines and the female hierarchy of the harem was very keen on keeping control of who the sultan slept with because that's how they kept control of the reproduction process and that was their source of power because they were very powerful within the palace nabanu's power was expressed in her living quarters [Music] the queen mother had her own large apartments of almost 20 rooms because she was a strong woman with high status the large number of rooms reflected that status the queen mothers were generally very rich too because the sultans respected them very much and gave them very valuable presence and lands much of nabanu's money went towards mosques and other vast charitable works including military installations this was a statement of power on an international scale that had up until really the time of foreign been the prerogative of males in the dynasty the women who succeed who as political actors are noted for their buildings anybody who saw the mosque that nurbanu and her successors built would know of the importance of the queen mothers this was expressed in stone [Music] nabanu was still at the height of her powers when she died in 1583 at the age of 58. [Music] she was the first woman to be buried in the same tomb as her sultan she had a state funeral against all tradition her son god's shadow on earth participated we have a wonderful miniature of the emergence of her casket from the palace and murad is walking in front of it this was very unusual a demonstration of his attachment and the importance given to her [Music] when her son died 12 years later his successor immediately executed his 19 brothers the population of the capital saw 19 coffins coming out of the palace gate and according to a contemporary chronicler the angels in heaven wept when they saw it the public outcry seems to have been what put an end to the practice of sultans slaughtering their brothers but in some ways the solution would be worse for the princes and better for the women [Music] from the beginning of the 17th century things changed for the sons of sultans this would make it easier for strong women to step forward to fill the power vacuum being created in the past princess had been sent off to the provinces to learn to govern and then all but one had been killed when their father died now they were usually kept alive but they were confined within the harem in what was known as the kafes or cage [Music] cafes in turkish means the cage in which birds and chickens are kept it's also the place where lions and tigers are locked arslan kaplan mothers of ottoman princes call their sons aslan lions so when a place in the harim was built for them to be locked up they called it because princess like lions were locked in these were gilded beautiful apartments in the horror where they could live for years just waiting never knowing from one day to the next what was going to happen to them never knowing whether their brother might be deposed and they might be pulled out and made sultan themselves never knowing whether the mutes might come in with a bow string and finish them off uh difficulty with the cage of course is that it meant that the princes were withdrawn from the day-to-day running of the empire so on their succession of sultan they really knew very little about politics which may be one reason of course why their mothers were so important because their mothers would know something [Music] the woman who used her political experience when the men most liked it was kasem in our language means the ram that leads the sheep in the ottoman palace her reign lasted about 30 years she was like a female sultan khan the daughter of a greek priest was the favorite of sultan ahmed the first she was unusual in having several sons once again a sultan is adopting one woman one concubine in this very special way of allowing her to continue to reproduce beyond just her first son [Music] kassem's route to power was paved with weak sultans she came to the fore when they were mad or underage her son murad iv was only 12 when he took the throne all power and authority is with the mother in the prime of life and of lofty mind and spirit chris emma's queen mother really is what we would call a regent she wrote the most marvelous candid letters to the grand viziers she says i must be driving you nuts with all my questions but on the other hand you drive me nuts too she says you really give me a headache but i give you an awful headache too how many times have i asked myself i wonder if he's getting sick of me but what else can we do you've got a real sense of a political natural the person who's engaged as a person and as a ruler the grand vizier turned to kasem when there were problems finding food for the army you say attention must be paid to provisions for the campaign if it were up to me it would have been taken care of long ago there is no shortcoming on either my part or my son's kasem really came into her own when her son murad iv a strong sultan died in 1640 he left no air and had killed all his brothers bar one her other son ibrahim qasem had persuaded murad not to kill ibrahim on the grounds that he was mad murad dies and people come to the door and they say murad's dead you're sultan and he doesn't believe them he thinks there's another trick of murads he fears that he's going to be executed just like his other brothers who were executed by murat so he has to be persuaded that in fact this is not the case and kasem his mother was clearly instrumental in that [Music] [Music] you have to bring the body of murad and fling it down where he can see it before he agrees to come out and be made into sultan [Music] me and when he comes out he proves to be a nut case nobody expected that ibrahim would become the sultan he was an emotionally disturbed uh really handicapped individual but he was the last ottoman male alive any dynasty which lasts for as long as the ottoman empire is sooner or late later going to get a nutter on the throne the ottomans over there the whole history did very well there were very few but the ones which happened happened in the mid 17th century and they came together it was the job of a queen mother to do anything she could to smooth over these political ruptures one of the main job requirements says that when there is a dynastic crisis you fix it you smooth it over and kasem did a pretty good job kasem represented at least continuity she'd been in power really for longer than anyone else and she was very careful to keep it that way people came in and out of office no one was really building up the sort of contacts and the expertise that she was there was nobody strong at the center of the empire and it seems that that is why the queen mothers became powerful because there had to be somebody to keep the show on the road given the crisis that the empire was going through during her lifetime i think we can say it was probably thanks to kyocem that the empire actually survived the ottomans had lost some of murad iii's conquests in iran and the caucasus were facing rebellion in anatolia and istanbul and losing battles at sea the last thing they needed was trouble at the top but ibrahim was not just mad he was impotent he could not be cured for a while and they were of course terrified that he was going to die childless that would have meant the whole country in going to the civil war we have ambassadors writing home saying get ready i mean this empire might simply dissolve what's going to happen if the ottoman empire goes down the tubes it's a real moment of crisis luckily the ottomans had ways of dealing with the problem there are special books written on sexual matters and these are called meaning book of love or book of lust some of these prescriptions were kept a secret and some of them were specially prescribed for the sultan or the sultan's family here is a very interesting prescription which was said to give such a potency that the man who used it could satisfy ten women without himself losing anything from his lust you have to hunt for 100 large red ants and pour sesame oil on it leave it exposed in the sun rays for 20 days at the end of the 20th day pound them in immortal till they become a uniform mass it will be applied on the fingers toes and armpits the potency during the sexual intercourse is enhanced to an incredible degree it will give much more pleasure it seems to have worked for ibrahim eventually kasem taking a lead in this ibrahim was induced to take a concubine and with the birth of his first son a huge collective sigh of relief he then goes on to become excessively uh how shall we say excessively interested in sex he had apparently you know all his women were he rode around on them they were naked uh he ran around them like a stallions or naying okay kind of kinky guy they say he was especially interested in fat women and once he insisted bring me the fattest woman in istanbul and they found her and brought her up he spent time with her for days and all the time she told him fairy tales once she told him the sable story and the sultan wanted to hear it every day it was about a sultan who really loved sable furs soft soft and he caressed it and decorated everywhere with fur the chairs were fur the curtains were fur in order to make the story real he wanted everything to be covered with fur we read about a fur tax that he imposed on the empire because he wanted to line uh rooms in the palace with fur and mirrors and we read about real abuse at ibrahim's hands in which he makes his sisters come and wait on one of his concubines i mean this is a complete perversion of the hierarchy of dignity and service and seniority those must have been very difficult years for kusam but obviously it did not isolate her from being a political player because she still has the connections to help engineer his removal from the throne by the end of his reign in 1648 uh the empire was clearly weakening the venetian navy was at the entrance of to the dardanelles there was starvation in the capital and the viziers decided that he had to be deposed and finally his mother cursed him agreed to this kasem wrote to the grand vizier in the end he will leave neither you nor me alive we will lose control of the government the whole society is in ruins have him removed from the throne immediately for the sake of the empire and her own political career she was prepared to sacrifice her own son she had a grandson on hand to take his place she produced his son mehmed to the council with the words here he is see what you can do with him clearly she didn't overestimate the vizier's abilities with his seven-year-old son on the throne ibrahim is in prison again the person who rules the palace is kasem sultan so she must agree to her son being imprisoned and her grandson being on the throne but qasem could not let this continue ibrahim's supporters might have tried to reinstate him officials went to the cage with an executioner and had ibrahim strangled with ibrahim out of the way kasem had a new problem the boy sultan's mother wanted her share of the action once again an older woman had a young rival jostling her for power [Music] during the reigns of her two sons kasem had been queen mother now with her grandson on the throne she wanted to continue in power as queen grandmother but her grandson had a mother a young woman called tuahan with a faction around her wanted to have the position of queen mother herself we have a whole new rivalry of two queen mothers first time in the ottoman empire that you've got two women at the heart of power two women who in a sense are acting as regions the two queens were exasperated highly against each other one to maintain the authority of her son and the other her own the traditional thing although we have to remember that tradition is new it's a bit ad hoc but it would have been for kasem to step aside step aside meant leaving with your retinue the topkapa palace to move to another imperial palace into retirement [Music] the palace of tears it was called where the former sultan's women would be sent to while away the rest of their days when the new sultan took over [Music] one reason krisen may have been reluctant to remove herself from the center of politics is that the new sultan's mother was really quite young she may simply have felt that it wasn't the wise thing to do but we have to remember also that she probably simply did not want to give up this intensely exciting political life that she had enjoyed for so many years so kasem stuck around and a deadly tug of love began with both women trying to influence the young sultan these regent queen mothers kersem and then torhan as political actors needed to communicate and the whole question is how could they do it because they were in the harem the chronicles tell us that they spoke behind screens do we envision a kind of a lattice screen they were obviously they're quite close simply not visible sometimes they spoke directly sometimes we hear that they whispered answers through the screen we even hear about an incident in which young mehmet turns to the screen and says what answer do i give and the answer is then conveyed to him kasem defended her influence on her grandson you said this to the sultan my dear who taught you to say these things such patronizing behavior towards sultans is impermissible and what if the sultan is instructed the official she was berating drowned it is said in the sea of mortification but turhan was not so easily defeated on the night of september the 2nd 1651 things came to a head sultan wants to take her grandson from the throne and put another prince there whose mother is more malleable that prince is also six or eight years old the young mother thought that in order to save her son she should really eliminate kirsan so that night she told her own people to find her and strangle her but that was the only way you could get rid of ksm she wasn't going to retire voluntarily [Music] this is reminiscent of a couple of centuries earlier when the tension and the rivalry is among princes and brothers now this kind of rivalry has displaced itself into the palace itself and is among powerful women it is said that when a eunuch spoke up for kasem they split his head with an axe his blood and brains were dashed on the rich carpets right in front of the boy sultan he then signed his grandmother's death warrant saying she should be strangled but neither cut with sword nor bruised with blows some of the slaves hunted for curse em she hid in a cupboard and it said that her presence was betrayed by the hem of her dress sticking out from behind the door [Music] seeing two great jewels at her ears they immediately tore them thence they were two diamonds of the bigness of chestnuts and beneath each diamond was a ruby those earrings are given her by sultan ahmed and esteemed by the most skillful jewelers worth a year's revenue of grand cairo [Music] she's a controversial person she was a great manipulator and she meddled in politics she was a dragon she did everything in her power for political power and she acquired great wealth she was never satisfied chrism has a mixed press as with her predecessors norvano safie chrisem was highly praised by many people simply for her role as an important uh figure in the dynasty i think by the time of chris and we can say that that she was revered as queen mother [Music] kassem's young rival tuahan continued as regent for five years but then her son and his advisors took command [Music] as the centuries have passed the women have continued to be criticized for meddling in politics and bringing down the empire recently their role has been reconsidered traditionally historians have liked to say that this was the beginning of the decline of the ottoman empire we do have to remember that the ottoman empire lasted until well 1918 and the last vestige disappeared in in 1923 so we must be careful about talking about decline and i don't think women had anything to do with it the women of the harim had to step in to protect their sultan and to guide him in the running of the empire now they were doing that at a period when there were lots of problems and what's happened is that those women who were doing the best for the empire as they saw it are getting blamed for the problems which are the things they were actually having to face up to and to solve while it's okay for men to be ruthless that's not seen as a very good thing for a woman when people look back on this period this period really of a hundred years from hurrah through torhan they look with a kind of a mixed attitude it was a real change in the way the dynasty was managed at the end of the sultanate of women we don't see women with that degree of public political power had it continued i think it would have become a very natural phenomenon it's hard to say whether the sales native women was a good thing or a bad thing they did what they could they struggled to survive they did what they had to and some amazing women emerged but many many many didn't and were submerged and history doesn't talk about them [Music] the imperial harem was to continue for another two and a half centuries hundreds of women would disappear into it but none was to come forward to play such a commanding role as harem nobano or kasem

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 1,823,681

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, harem, ottoman empire harem documentary, harem topkapi palace documentary, chinese imperial harem documentary, harem documental, islamic history, islam, islam palace, islam religion history, islam turkey, sulieman, islam documentary, islam women history, islam women documentary, harem movie, ottoman, palace documentary, sex islam history, islam marriage history, chronicle

Id: tbvzIUicZv0

Length: 96min 51sec (5811 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022