Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (8 page)

Principal square in Grand Cairo,
with Murad Bey’s Palace, Egypt, c. 1801. A column of soldiers crossing a large
square surrounded by buildings with domes and minarets. Other people are in the
square in the distance. From
Views in Egypt, Palestine, and Other Parts of
the Ottoman Empire.
Thomas Milton (London, 1801–1804).

PALACE

As their territory expanded, new urban centers were added
to the emerging empire, allowing Ottoman sultans to build palaces, mosques,
bazaars,
bedestans
(covered markets for the sale of valuable goods),
schools, bathhouses,
hans
(inns), and fountains. Only after the conquest
of Constantinople in May 1453 did the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, known as the
Conqueror (
Fatih)
, introduce the idea of a permanent residence for the
sultan. The construction of Istanbul’s world-renowned Topkapi (Canon Gate)
Palace, built on “Seraglio Point between the Golden Horn and the Sea of
Marmara,” began in 1465 and ended 13 years later in 1478. Built on a hill
looking down at the Bosphorus, the location of the new palace offered both
defensibility and stunning views. A high wall with several towers and seven
gates surrounded the palace. At the height of Ottoman power, the palace housed
4,000 residents.

The palace was a complex of many buildings centered on four
main squares or sections: “an area for service and safety also known as the
Birun, or outer section”; an “administrative center where the Imperial Council
met”; an “area used for education, known as Enderun, or inner section”; and “a
private living area, dominated by the Harem or women’s section.” Three
monumental gates marked the passages of the palace. These began with the first
or Imperial Gate (Bab-i Hümayun); followed by the second or Middle Gate, known
also as the Gate of Salutation (Bab-üs Selam); and finally the third gate,
known as the Gate of Felicity (Bab-üs Saadet).

The first palace courtyard was the largest of the four, and
functioned as an outer park that contained fountains and buildings such as the
imperial mint. At the end of this courtyard, all those riding a horse had to
dismount and enter the second court, or the Divan Square, through the Gate of
Salutation, or the Middle Gate. With exception of the highest officials of the
state and foreign ambassadors and dignitaries, no one could enter the second
courtyard, which housed a hospital, a bakery, army quarters, stables, the
imperial council, and the kitchens. This courtyard served principally as the
site where the sultan held audience. At the end of this courtyard stood the
Gate of Felicity, which served as the entrance to the third courtyard, also
known as the inner court, or the
enderun.
It was in front of this gate
that the sultan sat on his throne during the main religious festivals and his
accession, while his ministers and court dignitaries paid him homage, standing
in front of their royal master. It was also here that, before every campaign,
the sultan handed the banner of the prophet Muhammad to the grand vizier before
he departed for a military campaign.

Beyond the Gate of Felicity lay the inner court and the
residential apartments of the palace. No one could enter this court without
special permission from the sultan. In this inner section of the palace, the
sultan spent his days outside the royal harem surrounded by a lush garden and
the privy chamber (
has oda)
, which contained the royal treasury and the
sacred relics of the prophet Muhammad, including a cloak, two swords, a bow,
one tooth, a hair from his beard, his battle sabers, a letter, and other
relics.

The audience chamber, or chamber of petitions (
arz odasi
),
was located a short distance behind the Gate of Felicity in the center of the
third courtyard. The chamber served as an inner audience hall where the
government ministers and court dignitaries presented their reports after they
had kissed the hem of the sultan’s sleeve. The mosque of the eunuchs and the
apartments of the palace pages, the young boys who attended to the sultan’s
everyday needs, were also located here. Another “important building found in
the third courtyard was the Palace School,” where Ottoman princes and the
promising boys of the child levy (
devşirme)
“studied law,
linguistics, religion, music, art, and fighting.” From its inception in the 15th
century, the palace school prepared numerous state dignitaries who played a
prominent role in Ottoman society. Only in the second half of the 19th century
did the ruling elite cease using the palace school. The fourth and the last
courtyard included the royal harem, which comprised nearly four hundred rooms
and served as the residence for the mother, the wives, and children of the
sultan and their servants and attendants.

In 1856, a new palace called Dolmabahçe replaced Topkapi as
the principal residence of the sultan and his harem. Dolmabahçe “embraced a
European architectural style” and “was designed with two stories and three
sections, with the basement and attic serving as service floors.” The “three
sections of the palace were the official part . . ., the ceremonial hall . . .,
and the residential area (HAREM).” The “official section was used for affairs
of state and formal receptions,” while the second section “was used for formal
ceremonies.” The harem or the “private residential area of the palace” occupied
“the largest area of the palace” and included “the sultan’s personal rooms: a
study, a relaxing room, a bedroom, and a reception room.” The mother of the
sultan also had her own rooms “for receiving, relaxing, and sleeping.” Each of “the
princes, princesses, and wives of the sultan (
kadinefendiler)
also had
his or her own three-or-four room apartments in the palace, living separately
with their own servants.”

In 1880, the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II moved the royal
residence to the Yildiz (Star) Palace, where an Italian architect Riamondo
D’Aronco was commissioned to build new additions to the old palace complex. The
new structures, built of white marble, were European in style and contained the
sultan’s residence, a theater and opera house, an imperial carpentry workshop,
an imperial porcelain factory to meet the demands of upper-class Ottomans for
European-style ceramics, and numerous governmental offices for state officials
who served their royal master. The only section of the Yildiz Palace accessible
to foreign visitors was the
selamlik,
or the large square reception
hall, where the sultan received foreign ambassadors. In the royal harem, which
was hidden within a lush and richly wooded park and was known for its rare
marbles and superb Italian furniture, Abdülhamid II received his wives and
children. At times he spent the evening there with a favorite wife and children
and played piano for them. Within the park, there also lay an artificial lake,
on which the sultan and his intimates cruised in a small but elegant boat.

Reception at the court of Sultan
Selim III at the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul. Anonymous, 18th century.

HAREM

In Europe, the “oriental harem” conjured up images of
exotic orgies and violent assassinations, in which a turban-clad monarch acted
as a bloodthirsty tyrant, forced by his “oriental” instincts to murder his real
and imagined enemies while sleeping with as many concubines as he fancied every
night. According to this wild and romantic image, the sultan’s power over all
his subjects was unfettered and his control over the women of the harem
unlimited. Thus, in the European imagination, the harem not only symbolized
free sex but also a masculine despotism that allowed men, especially the
sultan, to imprison and use women as sexual slaves. The meaning of women’s
lives was defined by their relationship to the male master they served. They
dedicated their entire lives to fulfilling the fancies of a tyrant who viewed
them as his chattel.

In this imaginary world, constructed by numerous European
stories, travelogues, poems, and paintings, Muslim men appeared as tyrannical
despots in public and sexual despots in private. In sharp contrast, Muslim
women appeared as helpless slaves without any power or rights, who were
subjected to the whimsical tyranny of men. Not surprisingly, therefore, the
Europeans who travelled to the Ottoman domain were shocked when they realized
how different the reality was. First, they quickly recognized that the notion
of each Muslim man being married to four wives and enjoying a private harem of
his own was absurd and laughable. If Islam allowed Muslim men to marry four
wives, it did not follow that the majority of the male population in the
Ottoman Empire practiced polygamy. As late as 1830s, the number of men in Cairo
who had more than one wife did not exceed five percent of the male population
in the city. By 1926, when the newly established Turkish Republic abolished
polygamy, the practice had already ceased to exist.

Far from being devoted to wild sexual orgies, the Ottoman
palace was the center of power and served as the residence of the sultan. As
already mentioned, the palace comprised two principal sections, the
enderun,
or the inner section, and the
birun,
or the outer section. The two
sections were built around several large courtyards, which were joined by the
Gate of Felicity, where the sultan sat on his throne, received his guests, and
attended ceremonies. The harem was the residence of the sultan, his women, and
family. A palace in its own right, the harem consisted of several hundred
apartments and included baths, kitchens, and even a hospital.

Three separate but interconnected sections formed the
harem. The first section housed the eunuchs, while the second section belonged
exclusively to the women of the palace. The third and final section was the
personal residence of the sultan. The apartments of the imperial harem were
reserved for the female members of the royal family, such as the sultan’s
mother (
valide sultan)
, his wives, and his concubines. Many concubines
in the royal harem came from the Caucasus. The “sultans were partial to the
fair, doe-eyed beauties” from Georgia, Abkhazia, and Circassia. There were also
Christian slave girls and female prisoners of war who were sent as gifts to the
sultan by his governors. These girls underwent a long process of schooling and
training, which prepared them for a new life in the imperial palace. The most
powerful woman of the harem was the mother of the sultan, who lived in her own
apartment surrounded by servants and attendants. Her apartment included a
reception hall, a bedroom, a prayer room, a resting room, a bathroom, and a
bath. It was second in size only to the apartment of the sultan.