The Harem: Enslavement and Luxury within the Sultan's Palace
Prior to the period of reform know as the Tanzimat (1839-1876), slavery was alive and well within the Ottoman Empire, and in fact, was necessary to ensure the inner machinations of the Ottoman government, administration, and military for nearly four centuries. The methods used in the acquisition of slaves by the Ottoman Empire varied between the different regions used to acquire them, but generally the Turkish government relied upon the capture of slaves in warfare, the buying of slaves in the market, and their acquisition through trade. Within the palace of Topkapi in Istanbul, the seat of power and usual preferred residence of sultans, a very regimented and traditional picture of slavery existed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slaves, though robbed of their freedom, possessed opportunities unknown to the majority of commoners within the Ottoman Empire. There existed there a hierarchy of slaves, with some at times wielding power comparable to the sultan himself. In this Hub, I will focus on certain aspects of slavery within the last two centuries of the Ottoman Empire, particularly life within the sultan’s harem, and briefly discuss its ultimate demise.
While the acquisition of slaves through warfare arguably garnered the largest numbers,by the early 19th century its practice was discontinued. This decision was largely influenced by England and France, who were at the time, allies against Russia in the Crimean War. Prior to this though, slavery through warfare was sanctioned by the state and was largely successful. The defeat of an Austrian army by the Ottomans in 1788, for instance, resulted in the staggering capture of 50,000 women and children. The slave trade, particularly with African countries, saw the importation of hundreds of thousands of slaves. It should be noted that due to the negative outlook on slave-breeding, the opportunities afforded slaves to eventually become free members of society, and the Islamic prohibition of enslaving Muslims, a constant influx of slaves was necessary for Ottoman slavery to continue to exist. Given this reality, the importation of slaves was enormous. Ehud Toledano, in his book, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East, estimates that “the average number of slaves imported into the empire every year during much of the first seventy years of the nineteenth century (the apex of traffic) ranged from 16,000 to 18,000.”
Female slaves of African origin who found themselves within the TopkapiPalace or elite households in Istanbul were predominantly employed domestically, and were the overwhelming majority within the slave class. A good portion of these were acquired from the country of Libya, with Tripoli and Benghazi being major centers of slave trading. In Darfur, the lucrative business of slave-breeding was being practiced, as related by a Tunisian traveler during the early nineteenth century:
Certain rich people living in the town have installed these blacks on their farms, to have them reproduce, and, as we sell sheep and cattle, so they, every year, sell those of their children that are ready for this. There are some of them who own five or six hundred male and female slaves, and merchants come to them at all times, to buy male and female slaves chosen to be sold.
While African-born females performing domestic duties comprised the majority of those enslaved within the Ottoman Empire, white women were equally sought after, though were not needed in such large numbers. These women, usually from the Caucasus region, were employed not just in menial labor, but often concubinage within the sultan’s Imperial Harem.
The harem, a word deriving from the Arabic haram which means “unlawful” or “forbidden,” was born out of the desire for segregation of the sexes, and was a common divider among men and women of more elite households, particularly those whose male patriarch had more than one wife (he was permitted up to four under Islamic law). The Imperial Harem, far from legendary western notions of an orgiastic lair of debauchery, was a hierarchical structure, forming the veritable nucleus of the sultan’s palace. In this inner court, intrigue and political posturing often took precedence over sex and indulgence, and those slave girls who played their cards right could, in time, wield power rivaling and at times surpassing that of the sultan himself. The majority of girls destined for the Imperial harem were bought from the slave market. Extremely young and non-Muslim, the girls most eagerly sought after were those with pale complexions, usually hailing from the Caucasus Region. Circassian women were of particular interest to the Sultans, possessing those qualities deemed most desirable: Blonde hair, blue eyes and white skin. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent expiration of its Imperial harem, a rare public appearance of the harem was described by Francis McCullagh in The Fall of Abd-ul-Hamid: “It is well known that most of the ladies in the harems of the Turkish Sultans were Circassians, the Circassian girls being very much esteemed on account of their beauty and being consequently very expensive.” Often, these young girls were sold willingly by their parents, in hopes of a better life under slavery rather than freedom.
The life of a harem slave began with the title odalisque, which implied a general servant status. Beginning her apprenticeship under a woman known as an oda, the odalisque, depending on certain skills, abilities, or exceptional beauty, would be trained appropriately. (An attractive girl, for instance, may be trained to dance. One with dexterous fingers on the other hand, may be trained to play a musical instrument). In time, an odalisque could potentially rise to the rank of oda, and with it a title such as “Mistress of the Robes,” “Reader of the Koran,” and so on. If at any time an odalisque caught the eye of the Sultan, she would most likely receive an invitation into his bed chamber, and upon this event receive the title of concubine under a pompous ceremony. If the outcome of this sexual union was a male child, the concubine received the coveted title of kadin, and had the potential of someday running the harem as Vilade Sultana.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
THE HAREM - THE ARAB and BERBER MANS FAVORITE TOY STORE.
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Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
^^^^ these may be Arabs and Berbers but not Turks
Ottoman Empire In the Ottoman Empire after battles, winners often castrated their captives as a display of power. Castrated men — eunuchs — were often admitted to special social classes and were used to guard harems. Ottoman tradition relied on slave concubines for the "royalty" along with legal marriage for reproduction. Slave concubines were used for sexual reproduction to emphasize the patriarchal nature of power (power being "hereditary" through sons only). Slave concubines, unlike wives, had no recognized lineage.
Slaves in the Ottoman empire in general were brought from Eastern Europe and parts of Southern Russia. In the Islamic world slavery had religious rather than racial connotations, with most of the slaves in Ottoman history being Christians. The Ottomans had many European and Central Asian "Mameluk" slaves and the elite Janissary troops of the Ottoman army were all Christian-born slaves taken mostly from the Balkans.
Towards the latter part of the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century with the decline of its European territories the Ottomans began to import slaves from the sub Sahara via Egypt. Black slaves became a common sight amongst the Ottoman elite where they worked mostly in the households of rich Ottomans as servants or maids. When slavery was abolished in Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk some of these black former slaves moved from Istanbul to the city of İzmir and the surrounding villages.
Turkey has had no history of segregation on racial grounds and many of those both black and white who were the descendants of slaves have intermarried with the Turkish population.
Posted by Mike111 (Member # 9361) on :
Lioness - I don't know where you got that paragraph, but all you are doing is demonstrating how completely you Albinos have created an ALTERNATE and Bogus history.
Let us not forget that the Turks started their existence in the west as the Slaves of Arabs (Mamlukes).
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
for people listening to Mike's nonsense::
Rise of the Turks/ Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517
The first historical references to the Turks appear in Chinese records of about 200 B.C. These records refer to tribes called the Hsiung-nu, an early form of the Western term Hun, who lived in an area bounded by the Altai Mountains, Lake Baikal, and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert and are believed to have been the ancestors of the Turks. Specific references in Chinese sources in the sixth century A.D. identify the tribal kingdom called Tu-Küe located on the Orkhon River south of Lake Baikal. The khans (chiefs) of this tribe accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Tang dynasty. The earliest known example of writing in a Turkic language was found in that area and can be dated from about A.D. 730.
The Turkish migrations after the sixth century were part of a general movement of peoples out of central Asia during the first millennium A.D. that was influenced by a number of interrelated factors--climatic changes, the strain of growing populations on a fragile pastoral economy, and pressure from stronger neighbors also on the move. Among those caught up in this spirit of restlessness on the steppes were the Oguz Turks, who had embraced Islam in the tenth century and established themselves around Bukhara in Transoxania under their khan, Seljuk. Split by dissension among the tribes, one branch of the Oguz had gone to India, while another, led by descendants of Seljuk, struck out to the west and entered service with the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, who were the spiritual leaders of Islam as well as temporal rulers of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia.
Known as gazis (warriors of the Islamic faith), the Turkish horsemen were organized in tribal bands to defend the frontiers of the caliphate, often against their own kinsmen. In 1055, however, a Seljuk khan, Tugrul Bey (reigned 1055-63), occupied Baghdad at the head of an army composed of gazis and Mamluks (slave-soldiers, usually Circassians and Kurds). Tugrul forced the caliph to recognize him as sultan (temporal leader) in Persia and Mesopotamia. His regime eliminated Arabs from government and relied entirely on a corps of Persian ministers to administer what came to be known as the Great Seljuk sultanate. The Ottoman Empire also historically referred to as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state founded by Turkish tribes under Osman Bey in north-western Anatolia in 1299. With the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed II in 1453, the Ottoman state became an empire.
Abbasids ruled for 200 years before they lost their central control when Wilayas began to fracture, afterwards in the 1190s there was a revival for their power which was put to end by the Mongols who conquered Baghdad and killed the Caliph, members of the Abbasid royal family escaped the massacre and resorted to Cairo, which fractured from the Abbasid rule two years earlier, the Mamluk generals were taking the political side of the kingdom while Abbasid Caliphs Ottoman expansion under Mehmed II's successor, Bayezid II (reigned 1481-1512), was chiefly maritime in its thrust. The sultan's new navy, reinforced by corsairs, displaced the naval power of Venice and Genoa in the eastern and central Mediterranean. Selim I, known as Selim the Grim, extended Ottoman sovereignty southward, conquering Syria and Palestine. In 1517 he drove the last of the Mamluk sultans from his throne in Cairo and made Egypt a satellite of the Ottoman Empire. Selim I was also recognized as guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It was from this time that the Ottoman sultans adopted the title of caliph.
The empire reached its peak at 1590, covering parts of Asia, Europe and Africa. The reign of the long-lived Ottoman dynasty lasted for 623 years, from 27 July 1299 to 1 November 1922, when the monarchy in Turkey was abolished.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful states in the world – a multinational, multilingual empire that stretched from the southern borders of the Holy Roman Empire to the outskirts of Vienna, Royal Hungary (modern Slovakia) and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the north to Yemen and Eritrea in the south; from Algeria in the west to Azerbaijan in the east; controlling much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa.At the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states, some of which were later absorbed into the empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
With Constantinople as its capital and vast control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for over six centuries. Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, following the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–1517) and the loss of Syria to the Ottomans in 1516. Egypt was administrated as an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire.
Arabs were ruled by Ottoman sultans from 1513 to 1918. Ottomans defeated the Mamluk Sultanate in Cairo, and ended the Abbasid Caliphate when they choose to bear the title of Caliph. Arabs did not feel the change of administration because Ottomans modeled their rule after the previous Arab administration systems. The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was a conflict between the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of Syria, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula as provinces of the Ottoman Empire.The war transformed the Ottoman Empire from a realm at the margin of Islamic lands, mainly located in Anatolia and the Balkans, to a huge Empire encompassing the traditional lands of Islam, including the historical cities of Mecca, Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo. It continued to be ruled however from Constantinople. Although the Ottomans had employed Mamluk slave armies in earlier periods the relationship between the Ottomans and the Mamluks had long since become adversarial: both states vied for control of the spice trade, and the Ottomans aspired to eventually taking control of the Holy Cities of Islam. In 1250, they overthrew their masters in Egypt; ten years later, in the aftermath of their victory over the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in northern Palestine, they gained control of all of Syria up to the Euphrates River, and embarked on a 60-year war against the Mongols, whom they successfully kept at bay. An earlier conflict, the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1485–1491) had led to a stalemate.
The Ottoman Sultan Selim I had just vanquished the Persians at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. He then redeployed against the Mamluks, who ruled in Syria and Egypt, in order to complete the Ottoman conquest of the Middle East.The conquest of the Mamluk Empire would also open up the territories of Africa to the Ottomans. During the 16th century, Ottoman power would expand further west of Cairo, along the coasts of Northern Africa. The corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa established a base in Algeria, and later accomplished the Conquest of Tunis in 1534.
Cairo would remain in Ottoman hands until the 1798 French conquest of Egypt, when Napoleon I claimed to eliminate the Mamluks
Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
Slav female slave, Central Asian Turkish slave in North African Harem and West Asian Arab harem lighten the skin of the black Moors, Berbers and Arabs.
