The Turkish term "Kadınlar Saltanatı" (Sultanate of women) indicates a period of the Ottoman Empire that lasted about 130 years, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which the women of the Imperial Harem of the Ottoman Empire exerted extraordinary political influence on matters of state, often having more power than the Ottoman emperor / sultan himself.
Many of the sultans who reigned during this period were minors and the actual political administration was handled by the ed was their mothers, Valide Sultans, or their wives, Haseki Sultan.
In the collective imagination the harem , a term derived from the word harim , a forbidden place, was a gilded cage where beautiful women were segregated at the complete mercy of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire; a mysterious place that in legends was described as a theater of lust. The reality was quite different, the Ottoman harem, which was located between the rooms of the sultan and that of the leader of the black eunuchs, was a real court whose center was the private apartments of the Validé Sultan, the mother of the reigning sultan, who in the West is identified as the queen mother; the harem had very specific rules that became more and more rigid over time.
The history of this place begins when Muhammad the Conqueror came to the throne marriages ceased to be celebrated and the imperial harem was created in which the sultan could choose among the slaves who came from all over the world; the young women who arrived at the palace were educated, some of them became maids (kalfa) that served the Validè and the sultan instead, for their beauty they were made available to the sovereign. Quranic law allowed the king to have four women (kadin or hatun) as well as a favorite and sometimes more than one. Those who gave a son to the sultan were called Haseki Sultan (Sultan was the title also carried by the princesses of the Ottoman imperial house such as Mihrimah Sultan, daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Hürrem Sultan) ; the law also regulated the nights that the sovereign had to spend with each of his spouses and it was strictly forbidden that there were two of them in the king's bed; The legend that the woman had to enter the man's bed by crawling from the bottom was also false; the news comes directly from the words written by the sultan Hafiza , widow of Mustafà II:
However, the harem remained a symbol of the segregation of women; it could perhaps have been better for those of those closest to the sultan. There was a precise period in the history of the Ottoman Empire when women were particularly influential in state affairs either because the sultan was a debauched or because he was still a minor, the fact is that for a century for better or for worse the Haseki and the Validè they controlled the Istanbul government. This time span inexplicably coincided with the reigns and regencies of Catherine and Maria de Medici in France, Maria Stuart, Maria I and Elizabeth II in England; it is called the Sultanate of women and is generally started since Alexandra Lisowska gone down in history as Hürrem Sultan better known as Roxelana she managed to get married to Suleiman the Magnificent.
Roxelana was not only a concubine of the sultan, but she was the woman who managed to break the tradition that the sovereign did not contract marriage; she became the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent and joined him in affairs of state and tried to preserve power in every possible way; she too came to have people who hindered her executed including her friend, the sovereign's brother-in-law the grand vizier Ibrahim (1536) and Mustafa the eldest son of Suleiman whom he had from Mahidevran Sultan , and which should have been the successor of the padishà.
Hürrem never had total control of her because unfortunately she died (1558) of her son Selim II who succeeded her father in 1566; for this reason she never had the title of Validè Sultan . The first Validè of her considered was the mother of Suleiman the Magnificent, Ayse Hafsa Sultan and after her the title passed to her niece Mihrimah Sultan, daughter of Hürrem and Suleiman . Between 1566 and 1578 it was Mihrimah who ruled as her brother, now her sultan, was completely estranged from state affairs, dedicating himself to the pleasures of her life; in 1574 Selim II died and until 1578 there was a coregency of two Validè for the new sultan Murad III. They were respectively the aunt and mother of the young ruler Mihrimah Sultan and Nur Banu Sultan. She was most likely a Jew and became the wife of Selim II when he was still a prince in 1545 and gave her husband at least ten children.
After the death of her husband Nur Banu hastily called her son Murad back to Istanbul for her succession; it was common practice in the Ottoman Empire that the succession took place by naming the oldest male member of the royal family sultan. The sultans, to prevent this from happening once they were seated on the throne, took care to eliminate possible rivals or pretenders to the throne; in the name of "reason of state" the sovereign eliminated all his brothers. And so did Murad III and immediately after his son Mehmed. To break the tradition, as we will see, will be Ahmed who will spare his young brother Mustafa.
As early as 1565 a rival had appeared for Nur Banu, the legal wife of her son, the young Safiyye Sultan most likely to be identified with the Venetian Cecilia Venier Baffo daughter of the prefect of Corfu, who was kidnapped by the Tartars and then reached the imperial harem.
Although Murad III remained faithful for many years to Safiyye he was forced to lying with other women; it is said that at the end of his life the sultan had 32 children.
After her death in 1595 Safiyye kept the news hidden for a few days to allow her son to reach Istanbul from Manisa where he held the office of governor; Once in the palace Mehemed had his nineteen brothers murdered and then began the funeral of his father. Nur Banu was now dead (1583) and so it was Safiyye Sultan who became the new Validè; she with her son adopted the same policy that she used with her husband surrounding him with excesses so much that the young sovereign was not interested in her politics. The eight years of his reign were difficult to follow, there was a coming and going of appointments and dismissals of ministers according to the will of Validè who antagonized many people. As her son even her favorite Handan Sultan never had any power whatsoever; a change occurred with the death of Mehmed III, in 1603, leaving the throne to his fourteen-year-old son Ahmed I. The first thing the young sovereign did was to order the transfer of all the women of his father and of Safiyye herself to the old palace, where the elderly sultan died the following year; she was not mourned, hated by the people, by the army and also by the Genoese living in a district of Istanbul, oppressed by preferences for the Venetians.
Unlike her predecessors, the new sultan, Ahmed I, did not put to death his brother Mustafà, whom his father conceived with another woman, Halime Sultan, as the boy had serious psychological problems. The new Validè, Handan Sultan , she was an insignificant character, perhaps also because he died early, in 1605.
Ahmed I had only three spouses: Hadice Mah-firuz , from which he got Osman II, Fatma Haseki , cited in very few documents and Kösem Mahpeyker, whose progeny are part of the sultans Murad IV and Ibrahim I; he is remembered as a pious man who had numerous religious bodies erected. He died at 27 in 1617, and the throne passed to his eldest son Osman. After the death of Handan Sultan the role of Validè remained vacant until the new sultan took the throne; Mah-firuz Sultan did not fully enter the new role as he died in 1620 shortly after the accession to the throne of his son Osman II.
However, the situation changed quickly, the favorite of the late Ahmed I, Kösem Sultan, thanks to the he help of the ministers succeeded in dethroning the stepson and placing the young brother-in-law Mustafà I on the throne, thus bringing into force the law of the majorascato, the custom of electing the eldest male member of the royal family as sovereign.
The sultan, being still in his minor age, underwent the regency of his mother Halime Sultan, consort of Mehemed III and aunt of Hadice Mah-firuz; for the first time in the history of the empire there was a regency by a woman (naibe-i saltanat).
Unprepared mother and son to rule an empire were manipulated by government officials and three months later were deposed by his nephew Osman II who returned to rule the empire fully. Mustafa and his mother were locked up in the kafes of the harem; in the beginning the sultan tried to win over the Janissaries whom he later made to leave Istanbul; they prepared a coup at the Topkapı palace and reinstated Mustafà I as padishà. The mother Halime regained possession of the title of Validè and appointed grand vizier Kara Davud Pascià, who captured Osman II, locked up in a hunting lodge, and had him assassinated. He was the first Turkish sultan to be the victim of a conspiracy hatched by his subjects. Mustafa's reign also in his second term was short:one year and six months, after which Kösem Sultan , in 1623, he deposed the young sovereign and placed his son Murad IV on the throne; being his son still a minor, this allowed Kösem to exercise the regency for nine years, until in 1632 when Murad came of age he tried to escape the yoke of his mother. He had his brothers locked up in kafes, kidnapped an official's wife to be able to blackmail him and then when he felt he had achieved enough power he tried to face Validè; this later tried to reconcile with her son, but in the meantime she began to pour her hopes on her last born Bayezìd, son of Hadice Mah-firuz . The boy won his brother in a tournament and the king who already hated him sent him along with another brother, Süleyman to the Persian front, and here he had them eliminated. The same fate befell another brother Kasim, assassinated in 1635; Validè managed to save her last son, Ibrahim, who did not arouse any kind of attention in the sultan being the boy of a quiet and simple nature.
Murad IV he is remembered as a great sultan but at the same time a madman, the fact that all his children had died at a young age may have contributed to the progressive psychic deviance that manifested itself in the sovereign during the last years of his life. Like his father, he died at the age of 27 in 1640.
After the death of his son Kösem he immediately went to the kafes where Ibrahim was held to designate him as the new Sultan of the Ottoman Empire; in the first years of his reign the young man proved to be a good ruler, but little by little he began to show signs of imbalance and strong depressions. This was probably also due to the period of imprisonment in the kafes, the continuous fear of attacks and his precarious life led in the shadow of his brother's whims, undermined his mental health.
Validè surrounded herself with people who got rich thanks to extortion, she was concerned about accumulating huge wealth, but despite this she was never judged a stingy person:every year she visited the prisons, paid the insolvencies of debtors, gave wedding kits to the girls poor people who were reported to her and granted annuities to destitute orphans and widows. Ibrahim I, who was later called the "Madman", took no interest in politics to devote himself to pleasures and follies; in the harem he had several spouses:Hatice Turhàn Sultan, mother of Mehemd IV, Sàliha Dilàşùb, mother of Süleyman, Hatice Mu'azzez II, mother of Ahmed, Hümaşah Sultan, called Telli Haseki, of whom the sultan was so in love that he married her legally; however this did not limit her embraces, at her whim he made him look for the fattest woman in Europe, Şivekar Sultan.
All that her favorites asked the sultan, he satisfied them, but this was not enough, her wives, believing that it was all due to them, came to be served by the princesses and to reject the obedience to Validè; Kösem Sultan tried to stem the negligence of her son and for this she was confined in the Iskandar Çelebi building in Florya. The situation was gradually worsening, the grand vizier Damad Pasha knew how to keep the sultan under his yoke by hiding the truth about the real state of the country and coming to bind himself to the sovereign through the marriage of one of his daughters with his favorite Baki Bey . Then the vizier had Ibrahim I sign the deed to imprison the commander of the Janissaries; these in an assembly dismissed the sultan who had locked himself up in the royal palace threatening to kill his children.
Validè was recalled from exile, ratified the dismissal of her son, but she refused to give her consent to her execution; the sultan after being locked up in a pavilion was strangled by the janissaries. After the death of Ibrahim I, his direct successor was the little Mehmed IV son of Hatice Turhàn Sultan ; in fact the regency was ruled by Kösem Sultan even if in fact Validè was now the mother of the new sultan. However, the situation does not improve, with the passage of time inside the Palace two factions are formed, headed by the elderly Validè Kösem Mahpeyker and on the other the Validè Turhan Sultan widow of Ibrahim I; the situation degenerates when the elderly regent decides to dismiss her young nephew in favor of another Süleyman son of Sàliha Dilàşùb, another of Ibrahim I's consorts. they rush inside to assassinate Mehmet IV, but Validè Turhàn, warned of the coup, managed to arm the white eunuchs placed in front of the sultan's chamber.
After the bloodbath, the men of the young Validè have the upper hand and rush to take Kösem who was locked up in a closet, but betrayed by a flap of her dress is found, pulled out and finally after many pleas at the age aged sixty-two is strangled. It was September 2, 1651; her apartment was ransacked and then set on fire, her body dragged to the Old Palace remains exposed for three days before being buried next to her husband the Sultan Ahmed I.
After thirty years of Kösem Sultan's power, the regency officially passed to Turhan Sultan; she was of Ukrainian origin, probably born with the name of Nadia, she was kidnapped from her homeland by the Tartars and given to Validè Kösem who had her educated by her daughter Atike Sultan; she was described tall, with blue eyes and golden hair. She immediately she attracted the attention of Ibrahim I she from whom she immediately had a son to be sent with him to the Edirne palace.
The regency period of the new Validè was not always easy, she had to face numerous difficulties caused by the bad governance of the last years of the Validè Kösem's regency; little by little Turhan began to devote himself only to charitable and cultural works. She died in 1683 after 32 years in the office of Validè, the longest period of all queen mothers; she worked hard to settle the problems in the Ottoman Empire. Her son, the sultan Mehmet IV he survived his mother for ten years, was dismissed in 1687 and retired to Edirne where he died in 1693. From 1687 to 1695, two other sons of Ibrahim I Süleyman III took over the Ottoman throne whose Validè was the mother Sàliha Dilàşùb and Ahmed II whose mother Hadice Mu’azzez II she was not Validè because she died in 1687 before her son came to the throne.
With the death of Turhàn Sultan the period called “ The Sultanate of Women” ends , in which the women of the imperial family ruled the fate of the empire; there will still be the Validè but they will no longer have a say in the political life of the state.
Bibliography:
- Gabriele Mandel, History of the harem, Rusconi Libri, 1992