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Role of the eunuchs

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1b67wfz.25

Hathaway, Jane. "Out of Africa, into the Palace: The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch." In Living in the Ottoman Realm: Empire and Identity, 13th to 20th Centuries, edited by Isom-Verhaaren Christine and Schull Kent F., 225-38. Indiana University Press, 2016. Accessed November 6, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1b67wfz.25.

The imperial harem had been moved to Topkapi in the early 1530s. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the corps of harem eunuchs numbered between 800 and 1,200. This was the most amount of eunuchs that here had ever been in the harem, and it would remain the most amount ever employed at the harem. Almost all of the eunuchs were originally from East Africa, particularly Ethiopia.

Their physical appearance exhibited signs of early hormonal deprivation due to the castration of the eunuchs prior to puberty. This included abnormally high voices, scarcity of facial hair, unusual height, and severe obesity or thinness.

The office of the chief harem eunuch was created in 1574.

The Ottomans were able to obtain these slaves because of their conquest of Egypt in 1517, which gave the Ottomans direct access to slave caravans who used those routes. The conquest of northeastern Sudan in the 1550s continued to expand the Ottoman reach and access to slave caravans that used trade routes through Sudan.

Kösem Sultan, mother of Sultan Ibrahim (r. 1640-1648) and grandmother of Sultan Mehmed IV (r. 1648-1687), was killed at the instigation of the mother of Mehmed IV, Turhan Sultan, by harem eunuchs in 1651.

2	The Harem as a social and political institution

Iyigun, Murat. "Lessons from the Ottoman Harem on Culture, Religion, and Wars." Economic Development and Cultural Change 61, no. 4 (2013): 693-730. Accessed November 6, 2020. doi:10.1086/670376.

Multiple historians claim that the sultan was frequently lobbied by harem members of different ethnic or religious backgrounds to influence the geography of the Ottoman wars of conquest.

As the sultan became increasingly sedentary in the palace, his family members, previously dispersed between provincial capitals, were eventually relieved of their public duties and gathered in the imperial capital. At the end of the sixteenth century, except for the sultan himself, no member of the royal family, male or female, left the capital. Both children and mothers were permanent occupants of the inner world of the palace (Pierce)

3	Harem quarters

3.1	Role of the valide sultan

Iyigun, Murat. "Lessons from the Ottoman Harem on Culture, Religion, and Wars." Economic Development and Cultural Change 61, no. 4 (2013): 693-730. Accessed November 6, 2020. doi:10.1086/670376.

The Valide Sultan influenced the way that the Ottoman sultans waged wars of conquest. While the Ottoman conquests were mostly in the West until the mid-1500s, the ethnic background of the Valide Sultan was a major and independent determinant of whether these conquests would be for North Africa or the Middle East, or in Europe. Depending on the empirical specification, the rule of a sultan with a European maternal ethnic background was sufficient to counteract more than 70 per cent of the empire's western orientation in imperial conquests. In contrast, the sultans with European matrilineal descent had no noticeable influence on the empire's eastern conflicts whereas the Ottomans' military ventures in Europe were generally reinforced by a Muslim matrilineal genealogy. The sultans were more likely to be mindful of their matrilineal legacies. This is more in line with a channel between the Valide Sultans and their ruling sons for cultural transmission. However, regardless of how the Ottoman harem had developed over time as an organization, the main observation is that the mothers of the princes were solely responsible for their upbringing. And the royal mothers had the most direct and sustained interaction with the future sultans of the Ottoman Empire.

From the middle of the fifteenth century, and possibly earlier, when a prince left the capital for his provincial governorate, he was accompanied by his mother, whose role was to preside over the prince’s domestic household and perform her duty of “training and supervision” alongside the prince’s tutor.

3.2	Role of the court ladies

Pierce

Much of the networking was founded on family-based relationships between women of the Harem. The family was not limited to blood connections, but included the whole royal household, consisting of slaves for the vast majority. Within the harem, the mother of the sultan and his favorite concubine or concubines were more effectively able to create factional support for themselves or their sons, creating a bridge between the palace and the outside world,

3.3	Role of the eunuchs

4	Positions in the harem

The Royal Concubine of Non-Haseki Status

In the century following the deaths of Siilevman and Hurrem, concubines who were not favourites of the sultan would become forgotten women of the harem. We are only aware of them because they have been brought into the public eye by the question of succession. Their status was distinctly inferiorcompared to their preferred colleagues. They were also not identified among the family elite of the harem.

Pierce)