Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl
Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire
by Leslie Peirce
The sultan’s harem was an object of constant
fascination for the West. For European women it was probably a nightmare, a
symbol of horror and sexual degradation; for men it seemed a pleasure garden, a
perfect setting for erotic fantasies. For the sultan himself, however, it was
neither. While hardly a palace of pain, the harem had a serious purpose that
was not about indulging his lusts, for above all else it served a dynastic
function. It was a factory for male heirs. No real importance attached to the sultan’s
momentary feelings (never mind the concubine’s) provided the essential duty was
performed — one sultan put the empire in jeopardy because he was not attracted
to women — and once the woman became pregnant the erotic relationship ended.
She was banned from his bed and withdrew permanently into the women’s quarters
of the palace.
Unlike the royal houses of Europe, where
primogeniture was designed to ensure orderly succession after the death of a
king or queen, the Ottomans developed a very different system. The sultan would
create several potential heirs from among the concubines. After giving birth to
a son, the concubine, now a royal mother, would separate from the sultan and
devote her life to raising her son. All her efforts were directed toward inculcating
in him the character and the political and military skills required to
outmaneuver, when the sultan died, all the other sultan’s sons, so that he
could seize the throne, either through skill or violence. (Female children,
free from a future of this high-stakes competition, were prized and raised with
great affection.)
In the early years of the empire, before
concubines were turned into royal mothers, sultans had married princesses of
other nations, as European royalty did. This practice, however, did not last,
the Ottomans judging that the danger presented by foreign-born wives with
divided loyalties outweighed the benefit of creating political alliances. The
marriageable daughters of leading Ottoman families were also ruled out as
potential mates on the grounds that this, too, might encourage challenges
to the the ruling dynasty. Thus concubines and the dynastic harem came into
being. But where could a steady supply of concubines come from? Since they
would live as slaves, Islamic law presented a sticking point, since it forbade
a Muslim from enslaving another Muslim. The solution was for the Ottomans to
buy Christian slaves from Crimean Tatars, whose periodic raids virtually
emptied villages over wide areas in the nearby countries to the north, in what
are now the Balkan states, Ukraine and southern Russia.
One such slave was a clever girl of seventeen,
probably from southern Russia. Despite the horrific experience of enslavement,
she must have impressed her captors, for they named her Hürrem, Persian for
“joyful” or “laughing.” She probably began in the household of a high official
before being given as a gift to the sultan. “Young but not beautiful, although
graceful and petite” was how she was described in a report written by a
Venetian ambassador.
Suleyman the Magnificent, aged twenty-six, had
already sired a son with another concubine before he encountered the girl.
Then, as tradition dictated, the mother and the boy were shunted aside, and in
1520 Suleyman moved on to Roxelana, as she was then known, the next womb in the
assembly line. That’s when something unaccountable happened between the two,
something completely out of the norm, something that in time overturned many of
the empire’s precedents and traditions. Many people thought she exercised black
arts over the sultan and called her a witch. Today there would be people
pointing to the Stockholm Syndrome. But the most credible explanation is that
Suleyman and Roxelana simply fell deeply, passionately in love.
What alerted the rest of the world was that,
after giving birth, Roxelana continued as Suleyman’s mistress rather than being
banished to a remote nursery. Suleyman did not turn his attentions to another
concubine. In fact, it was later said that he was never unfaithful to her all his
life. Within a short space of time, the couple had five more children. Nothing
like that had ever happened in Ottoman history. More and more Roxelana appeared
with him in the main palace, normally off limits to women except for brief
conjugal visits. Finally she moved there permanently into her own apartments.
And after his mother died, Suleyman freed her from slavery, and the two
married, forming a monogamous, nuclear family in the sultan’s palace, mother,
father and children. Throughout the empire and throughout Europe people were
amazed.
If Roxelana had done nothing else, her
transformation from slave girl to sultan’s wife would have ensured her a place
in history. But after she settled into her new position, she proved to be much
more than a clever girl who merely knew how to take advantage of opportunities.
Her intelligence she placed in the service of the sultan and the empire,
keeping herself up to date on political affairs, advising him, even engaging in
diplomacy of her own by corresponding with and sending envoys to influential
figures in foreign countries. Other powerful women were of special interest to
her, such as Princess Bona of Milan, who married the King of Poland, and her
daughter, Isabella, Queen of Hungary (a letter to Isabella began, “We are both
born from one mother, Eve …”). She also made a name for herself through many
charitable works, starting with a large complex in a neighbourhood in
Istanbul known for its women’s market. The third largest complex in the
city — no one would mistake her power — it consisted of a mosque, two schools,
a fountain, and a hospital for women. In cities and towns across the empire and
beyond she founded soup kitchens, hostels, baths, and mosques, including in the
holiest cities of Islam, Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. After her death,
succeeding generations of royal Ottoman women looked to Roxelana as an example
and made themselves wielders of real political power, serving as advisors to
their sons and sometimes serving as regents.
Empress of the East is an excellent biography of Roxelana, covering most of what is
possible to know about this extraordinary woman. It is especially strong in
explaining Ottoman traditions and putting Roxelana into her political context.
It is not, however, a vivid portrait. Contemporary sources are scant. Some of
her letter to Suleyman have survived, but they consist largely of effusive
missives telling him how much she misses him. Some European diplomats sent
reports on what they observed about the Ottoman court. But mostly the author
tries to put Roxelana's life together through circumstantial evidence. It
produces truth and precision at the expense of drama. For drama one could turn
to the Turkish television series "Magnificent Century," available on
Netflix (sometimes), in which Roxelana plays a big part. It contains a
lot of historical fiction, of course, but it makes a welcome complement to this
more serious biography. Afterwards one might listen to the second movement of
Haydn’s Symphony No. 63, which was written about 1780 as incidental music for a
stage work which featured Roxelana.
