The Imperial Harem Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire

by Peirce, Leslie P.

• ISBN13: 9780195086775
• ISBN10: 0195086775
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-09-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The unprecedented political power of the Ottoman imperial harem in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is widely viewed as illegitimate and corrupting. This book examines the sources of royal women's power and assesses the reactions of contemporaries, which ranged from loyal devotion to armed opposition. By examining political action in the context of household networks, Leslie Peirce demonstrates that female power was a logical, indeed an intended, consequence of political structures. Royal women were custodians of sovereign power, training their sons in its use and exercising it directly as regents when necessary. Furthermore, they played central roles in the public culture of sovereignty--royal ceremonial, monumental building, and patronage of artistic production. The Imperial Harem argues that the exercise of political power was tied to definitions of sexuality. Within the dynasty, the hierarchy of female power, like the hierarchy of male power, reflected the broader society's control for social control of the sexually active.

Author Biography

Leslie P. Peirce is Professor of History and Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

Preface	vii	(4)
Acknowledgments	xi	(2)
Glossary of Essential Terms	xiii	(2)
Notes on Transliteration and Translation	xv	(2)
List of Illustrations	xvii	(1)
Map of the Ottomans in Anatolia and Rumelia after Their Defeat by Timur (Tamerlane) in 1402	xviii	(1)
Map of the Ottoman Empire and Its Vassals during the Reign of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520-1566)	xix
Introduction: Myths and Realities of the Harem	3	(12)
Part I The Politics of Reproduction	15	(138)
1. The House of Osman	15	(13)
2. Wives and Concubines: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries	28	(29)
3. The Age of the Favorite: 1520-1566	57	(34)
4. The Age of the Queen Mother: 1566-1656	91	(22)
5. The Imperial Harem Institution	113	(40)
Part II Women and Sovereign Power	153	(114)
6. Shifting Images of Ottoman Sovereignty	153	(33)
7. The Display of Sovereign Prerogative	186	(33)
8. The Politics of Diplomacy	219	(10)
9. The Exercise of Political Power	229	(38)
Conclusion: Women, Sovereignty, and Society	267	(20)
Appendix: Genealogical Charts	287	(2)
Notes	289	(56)
Bibliography	345	(18)
Index	363