Empire: World History - 30. Sultanas to Slaves: Voices from the Harem

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

What was life like for women in the Ottoman Empire? Was the Sultanate of Women the golden era? What was the role of the Harem? Listen as William and Anita are joined by Bettany Hughes to discuss the role of women in the Ottoman Empire. LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durember. Thank you very much for joining us, William. Listen, listen. Listen.

The laughter there is because we've got a very special guest. If you blow the surprise in the first five seconds, I'm going to reach into this screen. No, look, in the last few episodes, I think maybe I'm so hypercharged because the last few episodes we have had a lot of violence, mate. I mean, there's so many things that have gone boom, things that went bang, things that went flay. I like the flaying. Oh, I like a bit of flaying on a little bit too much, if you don't mind me saying. And a stuffing withdrawal.

God. Yes. This is, however, a very special episode where we're going to slightly... No flaying at all. For my sanity, more than anything, step out of the cut in and a flay and a slayin. And we're going to talk about women. Because you know what, William, particularly, I was fascinated with the Lepanto stuff that we did, which was pivotal, so important. We learnt so much about the common man, if you can put it that way.

We learnt about slavery. We learned about the galley slaves. We learned about the way in which some people would sign up their children to become Janusaries because you could rise through the ranks, even if you were a slave in the Ottoman Empire. Do you know what all of these people? they had in common, William? Well, it could be. Willie, what did they have in common, Willie?

There's a head. There we are, a little bit of a clue. Where are the women? Where were the women? Luckily, we've brought one in. We've sent one in. And no better woman. Can I just say, we have the queen.

Bettany Hughes, we heard the tinkle of your laughter earlier. But thank you very much for coming to join us. First of all, nobody, there's no one among you who won't know who Bethany Hughes is. author, broadcaster, Doyen of the classics, may I say. She's the author of... General Broadcasting Superstar. Ledge.

Helen of Troy, goddess, princess whore, the hemlock cup, Socrates, Athens and The Search for the Good Life, Venus and Aphrodite, and the one that made us jump out of our skins without a flaying inside. Istanbul, a tale of three cities. Welcome to you. Hiya. How are you?

Oh, very good. How lovely. And are we're going to get to talk about Istanbul and the Ottomans for an hour. Well, yes, we are. And I want to know, first of all, Why the fascination of Istanbul? Because you light up a little bit like a firework when the word is mentioned in a two-mile radius, I've noticed.

You even lit up when you were talking in Greece, which didn't necessarily go down very well with the Greek audience. I was very brave. I saw you talking about this. Exactly. Praising the Turks. Okay, first of all, what is that background? You can't mention a trip with the,

we were not as the listening public invited to, you wretches. That's so rude. It's so rude. So to start up with that, Willie and I were in Cardamilli, a beautiful place on the coast in Greece, near to the home of Padilla Leferma, the kind of incredible war hero. And we were just chatting.

We're at a literary festival and chatting as you do at literary festivals. And I started to tell a story about this one of my heroines, who's this amazing Ottoman woman called Safiei, and we just had a lovely time. But Istanbul, you kind of saying, why? You know, why do I light up? What Bettany is not saying at this point we have to say is that Bethany got a standing ovation from a Greek audience

talking about the Turks, which has never happened before. It is true. Well, it's really difficult for me because I am both a Hellenophile and a turkophile and I spend half my time in Turkey and half my time in Greece. I wrote this book called Istanbul A Tale of Three Cities. And of course, some of my Greek friends walked out because I didn't call it Constantinople. It is called Constantinople in the Greek translation. If you're going by it, if you're going by Greece. But no, you're right, Willie. I was being, you know, very pro that great city. But of course, because it is a city that has Greece running through

its veins as well as as the Ottoman Turks. So I think that's why I was accepted. Anita and I have this with India and Pakistan. We both have friends over the borders and have travelled both of us across that border many times over Wagga. And we feel a huge attachment to both sides. And it's difficult because it is a war situation. Greece and Turkey, India and Pakistan, it's not easy. I know. Well, it's interesting. I've just been in Azerbaijan and I'm also going to Armenia. And you have to tell, you know, in order to tell the story, history, you have to cross those borders, but it isn't a pleasant thing necessarily because, you know, I've already been trolled by people sending me really horrible stuff, you know,

and really heritious images. We should say that during the tech warm up here, Bethany showed us her iPhone, which had been run over by a tank and was still working. How many people can say, I'm sorry my phone's not working. I dropped it now. I'm sorry, it was run over by a tank. You're the first. You may not be the last. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen in life, but I've never heard that before. I'm sure I went. But I mean, what? It wasn't, it was sort of working. It's just I can't turn it onto silent, which is difficult for a podcast, so you'd have got everything. But anyway, yeah. So it is tricky, but you, I just, I think it's unbelievably important as a historian not to be a historical. And we would be denying history if we limit ourselves to the kind of current political boundaries that define things. Oh, so look, this isn't interesting. We do these dog legs, but you've just opened up such an interesting one, because it is true. We're not here. Historians are not here to please you. not what we're here to do. We're just here to tell you stuff that happened. That's all it is. And how has this suddenly become so toxic and controversial? I don't understand. No. That's what we do

is that we interrogate the past. So you have to interrogate the past. You should just never, you can never pretend it didn't happen. That is the most dangerous thing that anybody can do, let alone a historians. You have to be incredibly watertight with your facts, obviously. But my God, if we're not allowed to speak both our minds, and talk about our research across the world, then we're living in a world I don't want to live in, so I'm just going to keep doing it. Yeah, we're doomed.

But we're not doomed because we're here and people are tuning in to listen. They may have forgotten why we're here to talk about this today because, you know, we do the winter. Just for a change, we've got it a dog's leg, down a rabbit burrow. It's a shock to everybody listening that we've suddenly gone down a rabbit hole.

But, right, let's go back to Istanbul and why the women are so very important. Can we start right at the very, very top of the first. food chain because you have a delightful story. We kind of teased people saying we were going to get you on because you've got this great story, a relationship between the greatest queen of England, Elizabeth I I'll say, and somebody very, very high up in the Ottoman Empire. I'm not going to reveal anything else because this is your story. The floor is yours. Oh, bless you. Anita. So this is a story about Elizabeth I of England and this wonderful woman called Safie, who was the Validae. And the Validay is the

mother of the Sultan in the Ottoman Empire. And a particular moment around the 16th century, kind of beginning of the 16th into the 17th century, the Validae is probably the most powerful position any person of the female sex can hold in the world. So these are the most powerful women in the world. And they have extraordinary political influence. And Safier is a very charismatic character. There's a sort of slight question mark over her own morals, because she did possibly bump off the previous validei who's called Nubanu in a kind of, you know, a bit of a contest of rivalry. But anyway, let's kind of think that all's fair in love and harrims. Well, yes, exactly. Let's think that we love Safiae now. So Safiae started out in life, was born as a

Christian in the Albanian Alps, which I should just say, I've just come back from it. Everybody should go there. It's packed with history and interest. And forget what you hear about Albania on the news, go to Albania and explore its culture and heritage. We're hoping that the Home secretary is listening at this point. So Ella Braverman needs to... Exactly. We'll send her a little link. She'd be happy to send you to Albania, let me just say. It's true. So anyway, so Safia is taken as happens, because most of the women who end up in the Harim come as slaves. And her Safiae is taken into the imperial court. She kind of attracts the attention of the soon-to-be Sultan Murad, the third. She's given the name

Safiae, which means pleasing one. We're not sure what her original name was. And she becomes catnip to him. So she is an extraordinary creature in the Ottoman court. But everybody around her despise her influence. So there's this brilliant phrase that's used about these women who have kind of status and standing and heft and might in the Ottoman world. And they're called the media tricks. This is not Prince Harry's media tricks. This is a different sort of media. Well, it's definitely a word that I think that we're We should forget dominatrix. We need to kind of re-establish the name Mediatrix.

And there's a diplomat, an English diplomat called John Sanderson, who comes, for instance, he's working in Istanbul, Constantinople. And he's outraged by the influence that Safier has. So I'm just going to read you. I'm going to get to the story about it. I'm just going to read you what John Sanderson says about her, because I love it. He's obviously kind of furious because she's basically running the city while her son is away. And John Sanderson says, he espied a number of boats upon the river hurrying together. He heard that then it was the vizier bustling out to do justice upon certain shabbies,

that is whores. So she, Safier, taking displeasure, sent word and advised the eunuchbasser. So that is the vizier he was kind of in charge of the city. Although her son was absent on campaign, her son had left him to govern the city and not to devour its women. So she's basically protecting the sex workers. She's being a sister. She's being a sister while all the boys are out of towns.

Anyway, John Sanderson does not think this is great, but it goes on. So Safier then takes control of a lot of the diplomatic and political arrangements in Ottoman Istanbul. She arranges ransoms for sailors who've been captured by pirates. She helps negotiate trade deals. She decides, you know, who is the kind of top politicians of the day. And she establishes an incredibly strategic correspondence with Elizabeth I, with the Queen of England. And they basically start to engage in kind of competitive gift giving. So one gives some embroidered towels and then a tiara comes.

And so then a full carriage goes, you know, it's the most extraordinary example. And they also write to each other. And we have these letters. So we have the letters that Safiae. So just to kind of, you know, hold in your mind, this is a concubine. This is somebody who started as a sex slave in the Ottoman Imperial Court. So this is what Safier writes to Illesians. Beth I'm in 1593.

And what she's doing is that she's saying, look, don't worry, you know, the Sultan kind of can't run things. We'll sort out state affairs between this. And she says, I can repeatedly say that the sovereign who has Alexander's place, so she's talking about the Sultan. And it's really interesting for me that she talks about him as somebody who's an inheritor of Alexander the Great, because we should never forget that the Ottoman God.

Iskanda. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and they called themselves Caesars. So they are very clear that they've inherited from the ancient world. I can repeatedly, repeatedly mention His Highness's gentility and praise at the foot dust of His Majesty, the sovereign who has Alexander's place.

I shall endeavour for her aims. Your letter has arrived and reached us, God willing, action will be taken according to what you said. May we be firm in friendship, God willing, may our friendship never die. So what I'm missing out is the details or the kind of maritime trade deal that they've done. Anyway, so they've kind of sorted out politics.

And then there is, is the most brilliant PS. And dare I say, Anita, I hope that I'm not coming across as sexist in that. They've sorted out the business and then they start to exchange makeup tips. And what Safier writes at the bottom of this letter, it says, to Elizabeth, on account of your majesty's being a woman, I hear that there are to be found in your kingdom rare distilled waters of every kind for the face and odiferous oils for the hands. Your majesty would favour me by sending some of these to my hand only, because she's obviously realized, as she's dictating this letter, probably, that actually if she gets some lovely kind of lavender oil and rose face cream from England,

it's going to be pinched by all the other. Someone else is after the meal's yard. Exactly, exactly, exactly, by my hand only for this most serene queen, because, exactly, as you say, William, being articles for ladies, she, Safier does not wish them to pass through other hands. I think this is magnificent. And it's also an insight, I think, even just by accident, into the lack of trust that exists in the harem. So, Bethany, I know we're going to talk about harems a lot in this podcast, but what are they exactly? Because many people will have many different things, partly associated with films and Simbaat the Sailor. What is the harem? At the harem is a division between women and men.

So the haram area is the forbidden area. So it can be any... The Arabic word is harum, isn't it? Harem, exactly. So a simple harim can just be a cloth dividing a room. So I was in, not to name drop, but I was in a Bedouin tent this time last week in the Harim. And the Harim was just a teetal, basically, between us and the Bedouin men. It was brilliant.

But if you go to Istanbul at the peak of the kind of extraordinary Ottoman world and, for instance, going to the imperial Harim in the top Kapi palace, then you're talking about an enormous area something which is kind of rich beyond our imaginings, a palace within a palace. So unlike, you know, we talked about the Janus areas in particular where the harvesting of young boys breaks my heart. But then Barnaby and William said it's like sending boys off to boarding school. I's like, oh God. But with the harvesting of girls, it's very, very different because there is no choice.

There's no chance that a girl will come up and say, please take me aged, whatever, 12, and make me a sex slave. So first of all, let's talk about that. What state do these girls come into the harrim? What is the attitude of those who take them to the women that they harvest? Well, it is the most brilliant question because actually there's a kind of almost a kind of bipolarity to it. It's really interesting. As you say, there are 4,000 women just in the Imperial Harim alone.

So there would have been 4,000 women in the Top Kappa Palace at one point. And for those at the bottom of the pile, this is probably pretty much the worst place on earth to be. But if you rise to the surface, then you have extraordinary possibilities in your life. And we know that actually this was something that many girls were ripped from their homes and their villages and from the arms of their mothers. But also, if you listen to the lullabies that were sung around the Black Sea at this time, so in what's now modern day Georgia, a lot of the lullabies say, sleep sweetly. Maybe if you're lucky, when you wake up, you'll be in the arms of a sultan. So it's actually aspirational.

Really? For a lot of families, because they know that if they can get their daughters to the capital, then there's a chance that they will mix with influential people, that they'll be fed and clothed and they have a chance for advancement. But there are huge numbers of these girls that come across, particularly across the Black Sea, and from, you know, as young as three, it's really desperate. And a lot are sold in the slave market. You can still go if you go down to the edge of the Grand Bazaar, yes,

William, you're raising your hand very politely. I've done a lot of work on the equivalent world in Delhi and Agra, the Mughal Haram. And there are some important similarities and there are some big differences which are interesting. Similarities is the power. Women, particularly women who've got sons who are in power are very, very powerful. Particularly matriarchs and grand matriarchs, grandmothers, they're used to make peace. They're used to, when, as happens with every generation of moguls, there's a big bust up with the sons. It's often the women and the grandmothers that bring sides together and stop carnage.

And as with the Ottomans, you've got Mughal women patronizing buildings. Three quarters of Chanichow is commissioned by women, like Jahanara Begum and Russianara Begum. You have, just like you said, you've got women taking charge of the city when the men are absent, When Akbar goes off on campaign, he leaves his mother, Hamidubanu, in charge of the capital. And earlier in her life, she'd refused to marry Humayan, although she eventually agreed to, with these words, isn't it to this. Oh, yes, I shall marry someone, but it should be a man whose collar my hand can touch, and not one whose skirt it does not reach.

In other words, I can have equality in my marriage. Oh, right. I thought it was a height thing. Sorry. Where it's different is I don't think in the Mughal Haram, I can't think of any cases of captives rising to the top. You get Hindus rising to the top. You get very powerful women like the legendary Jodabai,

who came from a Hindu Rajput family rising to influence and power. But I can't think of someone like Safiei who actually arrived, as you say a sex slave effectively, gathered in and brought in for pleasure who rises to the top. And I think that's an interesting difference. Yeah, it is. And it is the norm. You know, so there will always be a few women with great power in that imperial court.

But, you know, Anita, kind of to speak to your earlier point, it's an appalling place for most people. And really interestingly, there's been some new restoration work in the top, in the Haram of the Top Kapi Palace, which I've gone to see that nobody else is allowed to see. So I'm kind of very excited about it. But it's extraordinary thinking about the heat of sorrow and passion that there is there because you find that some of these girls, because you can't get out, you know, you're not allowed out. So when you say you can't get out, just discreet because you've seen it. So these are high walls guarded by eunuchs or men who are not going to be helping themselves to, you know, the women inside.

How restricted are they the women? Well, it's a palace within a palace, you know, so it is in some ways you could argue it's, very like the women's quarters of any European court. You know, so we shouldn't sort of think about them as prisons. The rooms are beautiful. There are kiosks, you know, they're covered in in in in in in inextiles. Some of it is exquisite. But of course, there's a massive pecking order and hierarchy there. And what you can end up doing is being the slave of a slave of a slave within the Harim. And this is where we're finding this, this heartrending writing. It's like kind of Margaret Atwood, that scene in Handmaid's Tale that inside closets you have girls just writing these

desperate pleas to be released and saying that they're suicidal. Oh, it's extraordinary. These are new discoveries? New discoveries. Yeah, yeah. It's just because it's because the plaster work's being restored. And actually even in the back of some of the furniture from the Harim, they're finding these little amulets, because you can just imagine in that kind of intense atmosphere, the girls were desperately trying to kind of use magic and sorcery to improve their lot. So you have these amazing little kind of charms with prayers written inside them. So I'm sure. that for a number of, you know, the massive, massive majority of the women and girls there, it was terrible. TB was rife. Again, if you think about it, it's a perfect endemic situation. Yeah.

And even the very last Sultan who left Istanbul in 1922, when there was an autopsy of his body in Europe, it was discovered that, you know, one of his lungs was actually ravaged by TB. So, so, interestingly, we think a lot of the Sultan's had TB as well. But it was just, you know, TB was just was part of life. So it was a very strange place. So as I said, you could be pretty much the most powerful woman in the world, exactly as you say, Willie, what happens here. And it's one of the reasons I'm amazed and kind of, you know, completely captivated by these women is that they're allowed to be really, really influential patrons of the arts and of urban construction. So if you look at the historical skyline of Istanbul today, the Ottoman skyline, 50% of what you will see will have

been paid for and commissioned by women. This is roughly the same with Delhi and Agra. It's lower, interestingly, in Persia. In Persia, it's about 10 or 15% in Isfahan that's built by women. It's interesting. I mean, you're talking about Persia, and that sort of brings my next point in, which is, you know, in the Quran, it is not, it is there in the Quran that, you know, women can have power.

They can have influence. They can have money. They can have businesses. You've got the prophet Muhammad working his first wife. of Khadija is the success story. She's the one with the money and the power who has the land and the goods. So, you know, the principle is there, the attitude that the Ottomans took to women, was it that kind of old, you know, sort of Quranic model? Or was it the politicised Quranic model that we're now seeing in Iran where women have to hide in shadows and cover their faces in the

streets? What was the societal attitude to women? Well, it was, and just, you know, you're absolutely right about the Quran. And I think that we should, there's a very, really interesting study that's been done of 8,000 named women in early Islamic sources. And it's very clear that in early Islam, women are allowed to preach and teach in mosques. There is no segregation. In mosques, there's an extraordinary corpus of literature that was generated by women. And again, that's not been studied before. So you're absolutely right.

And it is there kind of baked in to this religion. Ignored. And assiduously deliberately, some may say, ignored. Yeah, that kind of truth perverted in the way that it. it's interpreted. And it kind of goes in waves, basically, in the Ottoman world. So you have women are very influential. And then there's a moment actually when they become so nomadic. It's kind of just the guys on horses. You know, we're going a bit back, I think, to the flaying and the kind of big banks that they don't have, they don't have time because what it,

what you have to be is constantly dynamic as an Ottoman leader at one point. But from about, you know, the early 1500s onwards, once basically Suleiman, the magnificent, and brings the Imperial Harim within the palace itself. So it's not physically a separate building. It's originally halfway up the city, isn't it? And then it's brought down to Topkapi. That's right. So it burns down.

Conveniently, somebody, there's a, there's now... Rock Salama with matches and paraffin. Well, absolutely. Well, it changes. You know, the fortunes of these women change from that moment on that. And you talked about this idea of the Sultanate women and the kind of reign of women. That definitely happens once they come within the palace itself. So, you know, again, it changes through time.

Women can only go out veiled, and you can see even these extraordinary photographs from the 19th century when you see the women of the Imperial Harim out and about in Istanbul, either on the beautiful boats that they are allowed to sail in on the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, or in carts drawn by buffalo. So they are out in the world, and they are veiled but quite loosely veiled. It's interesting. It's almost more like a kind of Muslim quite good. you know, almost like a sort of sun protector. The same is true, lower down the social scale too, isn't it?

There's lots of trips, women's days, hamanes and so on. Yes. And everyone gets out to go to the haman and have a bathe and all the grannies, eye up the pretty young women who's going to be marrying my grandson and all that sort of stuff goes off. Yeah, it's where many marriages, you know, the marriages are decided on in the hamanms, and you're absolutely right.

It's a big thing to go to the hamam. And we know this because we've got these kind of fantastic lists of all the picnics. I mean, I have to say, having been to many hamanms, I can't quite compute how they manage to deal with that amount of sweet, sugary stuff while they were naked and sweating. Well, naked and sweating, yes. I mean, for those who don't, maybe, I mean, there will be maybe a handful. I'm sure you do know, but I'll just say, just, yeah, hamanes are like our equivalent to the spa day, aren't they really? Yes. You know, go for a little bit of a massage and a rub and a scrub and exfoliate.

But there is a lot of sweating. So yes, how do the picnics work, Bethany Hughes? Yes, you know, I still don't know. Because there's always like an antechamber, isn't there? So maybe you just sort of did all your eating. But, I mean, we're not talking about a date. I don't think you do it in the hot chambers. And there's even court charts in some big hammams.

In some of them, there are. There are. But this was a real ritual for the women. But we're talking about feasting. We're not talking about snacks. No, no, no. We're not talking about snacks. I'll share at some point the kind of list.

There's one fantastic woman who goes for a picnic at the hamam. And the list of the food she takes is 170. five items long, which is, no, that is, no, don't tease us. What was on the list? I want to know now. We're near a lunchtime. What kind of thing? Oh, you know, borax of every kind and kind of rose sherberts and sweet meats and kind of little lavender cakes. I mean, it's absolutely delicious. There's some lovely stuff of this in Barnaby, in his, wearing his hat as a publisher of Ilan, published a book called Irfan Auger's book, Life in a Turkish family, I think it's called. And they have wonderful descriptions of, of multiple generation trips to the hamarm and all the girls going off and what they're eating. And there's a good menu in there of Ipanoga's granny's picnic taken in the hammam. Yes, yes, yeah, that's right.

So they could go out. And so they could be seen on the streets and they were allowed out in daylight. And again, we kind of forget in some cities, e.g. ancient Athens. Often women were only allowed out under the cover of darkness. So they are allowed out and they are present, but they have to be veiled if they're out on the streets. But it is possible to go out, but again, only if you have status. So I'm absolutely sure that basically those kind of chamber girls who were in the Harim, who are some of those who are writing these desperate, desperate messages on the walls would not have been allowed

out. You talked about the pivotal moment that things seem to change in the reign of Sulaman, and this is when the Harim burns down, that it's separate and it's not part of the palace, and then suddenly becomes very much not just part of the palace, but ousts the lover of Sulaman, who we've talked about in a previous episode. The beautiful Ibrahim is booted out and garrotted quietly. But then you've got now our favourite character, Roxalana, and I just think we need to talk about her some more. So please do come back after the break,

where we lift the veil on the life of Roxalana. Welcome back. Now we are with our favourite classicist, Doyen, Prince, I don't know, Sultana. Goddess. Goddess. The Helen of Troy of historians. I know, one foot in the Hellenic world, one foot in the Ottoman world, and right here, striding the Empire.

That's an awful metaphor. Let's just go. I mean, on top of the Empire podcast. With her iPhone crunching below, exactly. So before we were at the break, we were talking just about the general status of women and how a very pivotal moment happens when it comes to power, political power. And this is when the Harem burns down in the reign of Suleiman, the magnificent. And suddenly it becomes part of the imperial. machine. It's right in the, it's the central cog in the machine. I want to know a bit more about Roxalana. William wants to know about Roxalana. Because we were having this chat, like you said some women are catnip to sultans. She was catnip to sult. Why? Do we know what she was pretty?

She was clever. What were her charms? Well, all of the above. So she's born in, what is now Ukraine, actually in Leviv, which is a city that we're hearing about a lot. And she famously had red hair. So her father was an Orthodox priest, so she's definitely born as a Christian, and she comes into Constantinople. Literate? Literate, obviously super wily in the way that she tactically operates with the women and men around her, and just extremely charismatic. I mean, that's, you know, as we've just been saying, there are four thousand women in the harrim, so you really have to cut above the rest to catch the eye of the future Sultan. And the Her name is Roxalana, which actually sort of just, it's actually slightly rude.

It kind of simply means women that came from that region, even though it sounds like a rather romantic name to us. Ruthenio. It would have been called Ruthenia then, would it? Ruthenian, that's right. So, yes, so it's sort of Ukraine kind of Polish, Polish borders. But what's fantastic is that when she comes to the Harim, she's given the name Hurem, which means the joyful one. How old is she when she's brought in?

I mean, roughly was it? She's probably about 17. So she's, yeah, so she's born in 1505, so she's probably about 17, which is actually a bit later, because a lot of the girls end up in there at 11 or 12. Yeah, so, yeah, I know, I know. So, anyway, born in Ukraine, again, ends up married to the Sultan. And what is really interesting is that he married her. So she isn't just his favourite. He married her. And that's really, really atypical. So there is obviously something very special going on. And not only just he married her, but by marrying her, he frees her from slavery. So whereas most women in the

Harim. And just a kind of little aside, I was sitting with somebody whose aunts were some of the last women in the Harim when I was last in Istanbul, and they ended up being married off to Egyptian royalty. And she remembers this extraordinary psychological situation that they were in, that they were very aware that they were both princesses and slaves. And that's, that's something that which happens right the way through the story of the Harim. Just to bring men in for a second. Why, Willie, why? We don't need a Willie. No, now, girls.

No, no. The cage was for men, not for women. There was a separate institution also walled, also with a limited degree of freedom, which was the sons of the women. Yes. And they were kept in the cage. And if they were unlucky,

they would be strangled one day by deaf mutes. Yes, that's right. So it's a kind of, and it's quite a big cage so that people have got an image in their minds, you know, they're not sitting bent over. It's an area of the palace, but it is indeed called the cage. And you're right, because as a woman in the harem, you're only allowed to have one son.

And basically what happens after you've had one son is that the Sultan stops having sex with you. Or, as you say, if there are brothers, then fratricide is committed. Not quite as much as some people, indeed some historians like to say, it wasn't, you know, people weren't being garrotted with silken cords by these deaf mute gardeners every day of the week. Well, that's good. I know. Godd's question time has a completely different meaning in the Ottoman situation. It does.

So I can't even remember, but it's something like between, oh, I can't remember, but sort of 1635 and 1805, there's only one prints that we've got a record of of being strangled. But you're right that they are kept in these cages so that they can't make claim to power. Weirdly, this was good for the women because what used to happen to women is that their sons would be sent out to kind of govern the, minor provinces in the Ottoman Empire. And often the mothers didn't see them. All the mothers were exiled and traveled with them. But at least they can still see their sons and at least they're still living in the same space. So there's a kind of debate about, you know, what they felt like as a mother. But there's also the rock on your heart that, you know, you're looking to the cage and

your child is utterly vulnerable and you can do nothing for them. I mean, it's just, it's a horrifying torture upon torture upon torture, even for the most gilded cage, even for the most beautiful bird in the cage. You know, there's just too much darkness. And yet, within the darkness, particularly with Huram and Suleman. You know, I take a very dim view of men who do this to women. However, Huram and Suleiman, there does seem to be a real genuine love. I was looking at some of the letters that they wrote to each other. Do you mind if I just quote you? Just a couple of lines from each to the other. And you just tell me, is this real? Because it feels lovely when you read it. So she writes love letters to him regularly when he's off on his campaigns. And this is one

of them. After I put my head on the ground and kiss the soil that your blessed feet step upon, my nation's son and wealth my sultan, if you ask me your servant, who has caught fire from the zeal of missing you, I am like one whose liver has been broiled, whose chest has been ruined, whose eyes are filled with tears, who cannot distinguish anymore between night and day. And then he writes to her, and he has a pen name, like a sort of a Mr. Lover Lover name. When he writes, he calls himself Mahibi. And he writes to her. throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight, my most sincere friend, my confident, my very existence. No, I mean, this is, you wouldn't expect, I mean, it's Craig, it's Cracker's

love story. Is it real or is it her just trying to stop herself or her son getting, you know, well, I suspect there's quite a lot of that as well. You know, the one person to keep on side in your life is the Sultan, if you're Sultan, you're living in the hurry. But I actually think they did love each other. And the fact that he frees her, the fact that he marries her, the fact that he allows her to have multiple children, so I think five sons and three daughters, the fact that she's given, you know, a really long leash in terms of what she's allowed to do in the city of Istanbul itself is remarkable. And the political and state duties that she's allowed to undertake. So she writes, for instance, to, there's a new king on the Polish throne, Sigismund's second.

and she writes a letter congratulating him, you know, as heads of state do today. And it's Roxalana who's writing that to this new Polish gang. You know, and that's really remarkable position to be in. So I think they, I suspect they probably had hot sex as well. I've got to say, you get that feeling. You get that feeling from the poem. So, you know, it's, and again, Suleiman, the Magnificent is better known as Suleman. The lawgiver, you know, that's anybody in Turkey, Turkey, A, calls him Suleman,

lawgiver. He was a very astute and sensitive man, you know, so it's not a bad partner to have. In the mogul world at the same time, you've also got a couple of extraordinary marriages. You've got Jahangir who falls in love with Nurjahan. And again, you have this extraordinary breaking of all the rules and this focus on one woman and Nurjahan becomes empress. And there are coins minted, which have the two of them on it. And she is a crack shot. She has extraordinary freedoms. And then you have Mumtaz, a generation. later with Sajahana, endless children and ultimately the Taj Mahal. But what I'm interested in, and this is something that is common to both the Mughal and

the Ottoman world, and you just mentioned hot sex. When the early Mughals are talking about romance, it's often directed towards boys. Yes. And this idea, which is very strange to us, of beardless boys. It's a whole world which was accepted and widely practiced across a number of different empires for a long period of history, which in a sense is completely taboo to us. But you have Babur, the one time Babur really falls in love. It's not with a girl, it's with a boy in a bazaar in Herat. Before this, I had never felt desire for anyone, he writes.

In the throes of love, I wandered bareheaded and barefoot in the lanes and the streets. and through the gardens and orchards, paying no attention to acquaintances or strangers, oblivious to self and to others. And for Babu, that's what romance is. Sex with women and marriage with women is duty and dynastic and about the production of airs. In the Ottoman world, you have both as well, don't you? I mean, Ibrahim Pasha goes to precedes. Yeah.

Is it different to the Hellenic world? Or is it specific? Or is this a thing, the beardless boy? Well, I mean, also, crucially, what you have in the Ottoman world to an extraordinary degree are eunuchs. So you have the third sex within kind of all Ottoman power structures. So actually, that is where those are the beardless boys that are really in Ottoman life. And it's a black eunuch who's called the black eunuch who runs the harem itself. There are probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of eunuchs in Istanbul and in the

of Istanbul. And we know there must be that many because we have the accounts of the doctors, often Jewish doctors, who are given the task of castrating boys hundreds at a time. You know, a number die, obviously, because there's a lot of blood loss, but hundreds are being castrated at a time. And again, actually, Anita, really interestingly, you kind of just think these kids, and you want to go and hold them. But like the girls who are being sent off across the Black Sea to the Harim, lots of boys, they're given by families. become eunuchs so that they end up in the imperial court. I'd like to read something here from Evilechelleby.

Yes. Now, Emily Chelyby is interesting because he is a sort of, he's a travel writer, he travels the world, he's also a bit of a dirty uncle. And wherever he goes, he's talking about the pretty boys and the pretty girls he meets. Please tell me he's beyond the litigious stage. I don't think they did much litigation. Okay, no, he's long dead. It's what I'm saying.

When did he write, William? We need a date. This is the 16th century. Thank you. So he's not going to get in touch with my learned friends. On you go. So this is him when he goes to Persia. And he is amazed by what he says.

The insistent Khan stood up with all his darling boys and came over to me saying, come light of my eye, I beg you, Evlée Agar, take one of these slave boys of mine. Which one do you fancy? Yazdan Shir, Mirza Shah, Firuz, Parviz. I give them all to you. If you love Red Mustafa Ali and the 12 imams, come, my believer, quaff a cup of wine from the hand of one of these boys

that heads may grow warm. So he's saying, if you convert to Shiasm, all these boys will be yours. And then he says, all his slave boys, radiant as congealed light, embraced me and started kissing me, and I kissed them back. Still, I sought the assistance of the absolute.

And so what's shocking him is the fact that he is being, they're trying to convert him to Shiasim, and they're offering him wine, what's absolutely fine in his moral view is the fact that he's kissing slave boys in public? Yes, yes. Well, I say we definitely know that men had sex with Unix a lot. You know, there's, that's kind of one of the point of Unix, and it's an extraordinary way that you can, you know, release your sexual urge, and there was obviously no danger at all that you're generating anybody who's then going to challenge your dynasty. So they're omnipresent

in the Ottoman world. And actually, again, I kind of of advise you after you've listened to this to kind of just go and Google, there are these remarkable photos, again, from the disbandment of the Harim in the 1920s. And the eunuchs of the Harim, they're these photos of these men, very long-limbed, long arms, long fingers, in rather sort of dapper, looks like English tweed suits. And they formed a kind of self-help group, because what's the point of a eunuch, once you no longer have the Harim to kind of give you status as a Unic and it's really psychologically difficult for them. So that picture is printed in Eugene Rogan's book, The End of the Ottoman Empire.

Yes, yes. It is an extraordinary, extraordinary photo. And actually the expressions on those Unix faces are extraordinary as well because their future is going to be so different. Well, we're going to have Eugene Rogan on a future podcast. Staying with this idea, I mean, you just mentioned wine and boys. I mean, did the Ottomans completely outlaw alcohol? What was lifestyle like that?

That's question one. Question two is for two-parter. You know, the way in which sort of the women's status and these beardless boys status, I mean, how does it compare to the freedoms that women had in Europe, in what we now know to be Western Europe? I mean, can you do any kind of comparison? Or did they look to each other and compare their statuses? Yes.

I mean, well, again, we know they did compare because of these women, these high-status women writing to each other. So, you know, we can talk about Safier, corresponding with Elizabeth I first. Nubanu, who I also mentioned, corresponds with Catherine de Medici. And again, they sort of swap gifts and tips and hints about how to be a royal in the 16th century. Within Islam, as you say, there is the possibility for women to inherit and for women to give what we call these permanent deeds of charity. So actually, you do see women operating in the construction of the urban space, and it's not just royal women. It's not just

women from the Sultanate. So they are actively constructing the world around them. And, you know, just go and have a, I know I sort of bang on about this, but I just think that fact that you can inhabit a space that an Ottoman woman commissioned and constructed. So, you know, some of the very first works of Sinan, the incredible architect, Sinan, whose work is described as mountains of light and heart captivating and joy giving. It's the women of the Harim who commissioned him to build, some of his most beautiful works. So where should we go if we had a list of two things to go? Give me the top two.

Go on. So if you go to the baths just outside the bottom of the Grand Bazaar, those were built by Sinan and they were also commissioned by a woman. And then if you go to the Yeni Jami, which is the new mosque in Eni Nu, then that's also a bit by a woman. But just check somewhere. I'll post a list so people can go and do a little walking tour, a walking tour of this. Oh, lovely.

I'd love to just read one last bit. of Evlié Chelye Cheleby. We're actually going to have a whole pod on, Evilly with Caroline Finkels coming on to talk about Emily. But this is when he goes into the Christian world. He's sent off to Hungary and he's horrified by the power of women there. So it's interesting, an Ottoman view of Christian women. He says, the climate is delightful and Hungary. The lovely boys and girls of the city are renowned. Indeed, the men and women do not flee from one another, he says, rather amazed. The women sit together with us Ottomans, drinking and chatting. And their husbands do not say a word, but rather step outside. and this is not considered shameful. This is the key sentence, though, for you do.

The reason is that throughout Christendom, women are in charge and they behaved in this disreputable fashion ever since the time of the Virgin Mary. Is that right? I love it. That's a very good quote. But it's, I mean, you know, what you can't get away from is the fact that there are Harim's everywhere.

You know, obviously Haram doesn't, doesn't, just mean an imperial harming. It means a space that's forbidden. And women are in harrims in every single home in every single, you know, in the tiniest Ottoman village. So I think, I don't think actually that we can compare what's going on in Europe. I think there is more freedom for as a whole, in Europe for women, but you have more power if you get to the top of the path. And of course, you know, the other thing that happens is that there's this extraordinary, exactly as you're saying really this sort of notion of the beauty, the kind of Caucasian or Circassian beauty from the Ottoman world. And this becomes completely parodid. So these Circassian beauties

end up very popular turns in the 19th century in Barnum and Bailey's circus. When you say Circassian, what does that mean exactly? What do you mean by that? Well, so Circassian, actually Circassian is a kind of part of the, a tribe from the northwestern Caucasus. But the West, Western sources, start to call everybody from the Caucasus, all Caucasians, circassians. Boris is supposed to be Circassian, isn't he? Isn't there something that that's why where he and Stanley get that blonde hair, because they're supposed to be descended from the Circassians. That's put us right off all the Circassians straight away now. It's a, it's a Northwest tribe. But they were considered in contrast beauties, weren't they?

I mean, they're absolute beauty. I mean, that's a whole, listen, let's also, let's us do a podcast on why people call themselves white Caucasians, because that's a whole other extraordinary story. But these so-called Circassian beauties who end up in Barnum and Bailey's circus have nothing to do with Turkey. Of course, they're usually Irish girls with their hair kind of held up by egg white and beer

and these kind of extraordinary sort of wild woman kind of buffons. So the perception of Ottoman women is often very, very different to the reality. And just, I mean, we've talked about sort of the two ends of the spectrum in Ottoman life. Let's talk about the middle class women just for a moment, because I came across this one thing, and again, I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right,

because I'm fascinated by language. You know, you said the grandmothers are called the Vlides or the matriots are called Vili. It sounds so much to me, or when I read it on a page, I say VALIDA, which is the URDU word for the same thing. Now, how do I say this word, K-A-M-A-K, I'm time to say that KMAC shops. So, I mean, I was reading that these are places where there is a proper egalitarianism,

these shops where men and women, no matter what the marital status, can meet together and mingle together without stricture. What were they about? Do you know what they were about? I don't know what they were about. Okay, forget it. Let's never talk about them again. They were just meant to be these sort of shops.

They're shops where you could go and sort of buy things and there's no kind of policing of those spaces. So there were these middle spaces with the middle class. where you could go in and out. Well, they go, I've taught a thing to Benny. You've taught, listen, I've absolutely taught me things. I'm going to go in shame, hang my head and sort of lie on a book. Bethany, education.

How much are these girls in the Imperial Harymore, anywhere else in Istanbul, being taught to read and write? A lot of them are literate. And if, again, interestingly, if they're not literate, they often have a kind of the equivalent of a lady in waiting who was often Jewish. So there are a lot of Jewish women who are in the harem who are working. So that letter, for instance, that was written from Safiai to Elizabeth I, was probably written by her Jewish handmaid.

But women can read and write and write. And that's something, you know, I just think when we think of these places, and me particularly when we think of Istanbul, we have to think much more of the continuity. You know, we do this terrible thing of talking about history and putting, you know, marker pens around it in terms of time and space. but actually in Istanbul when it was Constantinople and when it was Byzantium, there was an incredible tradition of literacy for women, really unusual. Most women in Constantinople could read and write,

unlike all other European cities. And you have these very influential poetesses who are still read by the Ottoman. So there's a wonderful Byzantine nun called Cassia Cassia, who gets the chance, she's offered up to the emperor to be a beautiful bride, and she sort of spurns him, and she wants to immerse herself in her letters and poetry. instead. And Ottoman women were very aware of this because the Ottoman court really loved a lot of the heritage, the Greek heritage of the Byzantine world. So we know that they read and write. We know that they paint. We know that they commission artists. So quite often,

it's a kind of brilliant thing. You get artists travelling into the, into the Harim in order to kind of paint these lovely, you know, odilisk beauties lying around on carpets and actually find that the odourish beauties are these kind of hard-nosed business women and go, screw you. I'm not taking, I'm not taking my clothes off, but I will commission you to do a lovely, you know,

portrait of the boss for a sunset. So, you know, it's a really, you know, fantastic, you know, it's a fantastic image.

But actually the paintings, there are women who are allowed into the Harim to paint. And do you get, like, in the mogul word where you get Gulbadan Begham, who writes a biography of Humayan,

for example, or Arang Zeb's daughter, who is a great poetess. Do you get anything like that in the Ottoman world? Do you get very famous women writers? They don't know. So that's what that is interesting. So it's very functional.

So when there is writing, it's more like housekeeping, you know, and letter writing. And that's something that we've kind of asked us a lot of why that doesn't happen. So why do you, why do you think? I mean, why, I mean, is it because they may be writing, but there's no way of conserving it because nobody finds it. I can't believe that these brilliant minds who are so cultured who will say, I want a picture of a boss for us, not my bottom, who don't have the sensibility to say, actually, I could write this.

Is it just maybe conservation or just really there were too many other things to worry about? Yeah, I think it is party conservation. And there is still, I mean, this is something why it's a brilliant area to be in this, because we still know that in the backs of storerooms, particularly in sort of Balkan town halls, there are still cardboard boxes, which are just marked old Ottoman documents because, you know, this was part of the Ottoman Empire

until incredibly recently. And a lot of that material hasn't been studied. And it could be that we'll find something in there. But as I said, it's more the kind of letter writing is the art form. So what you find are these correspondences and letters. So far, we haven't found an incredible cache of, you know, novels written by the Women of the Haram. Those would be novels to read.

Oh, my God, if they came to light. We have just a short amount of time left with you. I desperately want to know that when we talk about the sartanate of women, this golden age for the Ottoman women, what kind of period are we talking about? And when does it tail off and why does it tail off? Why does it? So it's sort of loosely come from kind of 15, 20, 15, 25 to kind of 1670, 1680. I mean, and it does, you know, it is pretty rigorous. As I said, you know, it's really interesting how outsiders describe these women. They keep on talking about them as media trickses, this kind of maddening idea. that you have to go through the medium of a woman in order to get to the Sultan. There's a woman towards the end of that period called the Turhan Sultan, who's a sultana, who spends a lot of time on the reconstruction of military strongholds, for instance. But actually, then, it just feels as though they are too useful as decorative characters.

So if you think about it, so I'm talking about 16, 17, 16, 80, it's really then in the 1700s that we start to get a lot of those representations, of the Harim that we think is the truth of the Harim, where you do have Odalisks lying around and being wafted by black eunuchs slaves. But there's actually, it becomes, as I said, it becomes a more decorative space rather than a functional space from that point. So although this is Orientalism in its most extreme degree, it is also representing a world where it's almost as if the, it's as if the kind of bite has been taken out of the Haram. But it's partly that as well because from this point on, you know, the Ottoman sultans themselves are losing their grip on power

and actually their world is beginning to fracture. And so it's just a place of stasis rather than stability. Yes, I'm just thinking that at the very end, one of the last things that the last Ottoman sultan has left are his two daughters. And when he leaves Top Kappa and is sent off, I think, to Nice originally, those are his last two assets. and they're both great beauties, and they're both very intelligent and extremely well-educated. And they get effectively sent off or even sold to the Nizam of Hyderabad, bringing it back to India again. Yes. And one stays in Hyderabad. One has a terrible experience, catches some ghastly venereal disease from her husband,

and uses that as an excuse to go to Paris to get cured and never comes back. And so this last Ottoman woman, the last of all these Ottoman people, princesses of this long line through from Roxalana and Safia and so on, ends up her life in Paris married to an American. She remarries an American. And I had it, she was a great friend of one of my grandmother's best friends. And I had an opportunity to meet her. It always comes back to your family. And I had an opportunity to meet this woman. And she set up for me to go to Paris. And then something happened and I never went and she died soon afterwards. And I missed this chance to. Aren't there beautiful photos of them by Cecil Beaton or something?

Yeah, they're, yes, those princesses. Famous beauties, both of them. Can I just tell you how very much I could have a real, you know, complex about this? He's always like, oh, my great aunt did this. I go back to my mother and go, do something, do something I can talk about. Look, we are running to the end of our time together. I'm just aching, actually. I've got a stomach ache just at the thought of these boxes in town halls,

which are just marked Ottoman. I really hope you're the one to find them, Bettany, because I think there's a real, there's like an emotional connection, which is quite lovely that you care very much. So more power to your buccaneering elbow. Find those boxes, Bettany Hughes. I promise. I found the picture of Nilufa, she was called,

the last princess in Paris. And she's this daughter's tribute. You're right, photographed by Cecil Beaton. Well, let's tweet it. Let's tweet that picture along with this. And Bettany, if you can bear to give us a walking tour of Istanbul, to find all these beautiful places. We'll try and stick that on as well

with the details of this podcast. But listen, so many thanks for coming on. It's been an absolute delight to have you. As ever, as ever, exactly. And we have talked about hot sex. The next week we're going to be talking about hot coffee. I think hot coffee and hot sex next week actually. I think we've got both.

Who have we got? We've got a very special guest star. Who's coming on? We've got the wonderful Jamal Kafferah coming on. And he gave not a. one of the best lectures we ever had at the Jaipo Literature Festival. It also had one of the best titles. I'll read it in full. And this is a quote from an Ottoman novel, which he turned into the title of his essay on coffee houses. It's called How Dark is the History of the Night. How Black

the story of Coffee. How bitter the tale of love. So we're getting coffee and sex next to. All major food groups covered. I'll have to come back. It's irresistible. But anyway, yes, The coffee, it's not just about one of my favourite things, which is coffee. I was going to say hot tags, no, coffee. But it is also about the politics around coffee and the coffee houses, which are such a part of British history as well. Listen, thank you very much again. We'll be back next week, another pod.

Do join us. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Drupul.