Valide Sultans (the official mothers of the Ottoman Sultan), are ideally suited for transnational analysis. The Ottomans relied heavily on a slave system for filling high ranking positions, including in the Sultan’s harem, because they believed that slaves would not have split allegiances, or amass too much personal power, this led me to question if this assumption could possibly be correct. Transnational history[1] with input from imperial and transcultural history is perhaps the best way to examine these women’s remarkable journeys from foreign slaves to the heart of imperial power. They lived in a world of seemingly alien power dynamics, but this gives us the opportunity to gain new insights on trans-nationality gender and power in an under examined context.
Questions:
1. What kind of power did these women wield as transnational actors and how?
2. How did their transnational origins impact the way they used their power?
-Were they biased in favour of their homelands and/or religions?
Iyigun has done a statistical analysis of the impact of the origins of Sultan’s mothers on the Sultan’s later political actions, mostly regarding where the Sultans waged war (2013). While his research has admirable statistical rigour, it almost entirely lacks biographical detail about the Sultan’s mothers themselves. The historical messiness of these women’s lives is ignored as is their personal agency, essentially in his work they are transnational, but not really actors. The lives of many Valide Sultans have been studied in greater depth in works by historians such as Pierce (1993). However, these works do not usually focus on them in transnational context. The most notable exception is Pedani’s article “Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy” (2000).
It becomes clear that the best way to investigate Valide Sultans as transnational actors is to investigate some of these women in depth. This is a similar approach to that taken in Early Modern Dynastic Marriages and Cultural Transfer, which while about a different geographic area presents a useful model for examining elite early modern women as transnational/transcultural actors (Casalilla, 2016).
For this essay three Valide Sultans who were significant transnational actors will be examined. The first of these is Nurbanu (1525-1583) who was probably taken from Corfu while it was under venetian rule, but chose to play up a likely fictional identity as the illegitimate daughter of venetian nobles (Peirce, 1993). Venetians still appealed to her to improve relations, which she did fairly successfully (Peirce, 1993). The second woman is Nurbanu’s daughter in law Sayife (1550-1619) who like her mother in-law was significant to relations with Venice, but was herself Albanian (Pedani, 2000). The third woman is Gülnuş (1642-1715) who was born on Crete while it was under Venetian rule but later in life was key to appointing its governor under Ottoman rule (Argit, 2017). Like the other Valide Sultans mentioned here she attempted to improve relations with Venice, but what is perhaps more interesting is her central role in Ottoman Swedish relations during their war with Russia (Argit, 2017). Many Valide Sultans likely had less of an impact than these women, but this essay will focus on some of the most impactful women, because their stories of rising from slavery to power in a fierce male dominated world are the most remarkable, and also because hopefully the patterns found in their lives may also be found in the lives of some of their less well known counterparts.
These specific Valide Sultans have also been chosen out of practical concern regarding sources. There are significant secondary sources on all of them, although most are not written from a transnational perspective. In addition they all appear in a significant number of sources from their own period including correspondence both by and about them, both informal and diplomatic. In addition the activities of these women was recorded by Ottoman and European observers who had a vested personal or national interest in goings on at court. Many of these sources were translated into english by historians or in some cases for circulation nearly contemporary to their original writing.
Based on initial research I can hypothesise that Valide Sultans did at least at times wield tremendous power, formally as regent and/or informally via personal relationships. They did this by positioning themselves at the centre of a network of transnational and imperial actors, many of whom were also women. An especially interesting pattern is the seeming importance of Kiras (non-muslim women who served as intermediaries between the harem and the wider world). Geographic and religious origin likely had some influence on Valide Sultans, but these origins do not seem predictive of their actions.
[1] Some historians question how early the term transnational can be applied (Saunier, 2013), a concern that will be addressed in greater depth in the final essay.
Sources:
Argit, Betul Ipsrili, ‘A Queen Mother and the Ottoman Imperial Harem’ in Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain (ed.), Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History (Oxford, 2017), pp. 207-222.
Casalilla, Bartolome Yun, ‘Aristocratic Women across Borders, Cultural Transfers, and Something More. Why Should We Care?’ in Joan-Luis Palos and Magdalena S. Sanchez (ed.), Early Modern Dynastic Marriages and Cultural Transfer (Abingdon, 2016) pp. 237-257.
Dursteler, Eric R., Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean.
Freely, John, Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul (London, 1999).
Iyigun, Murat, ‘Lessons from the Ottoman Harem on Culture, Religion, and Wars’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 61, No. 4 (2013), pp. 693-730.
Kravets, Maryna, ‘Blacks beyond the Black Sea: Eunuchs in the Crimean Khanate’, in Benhaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana and Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.) Slavery Islam and Diaspora (2009), pp. 22-36.
Kunt, Metin Ibrahim. ‘Ethnic-Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Establishment’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, (1974), pp. 233–239.
Lamdan, Ruth, ‘Jewish Women as Providers in the Generations Following the Expulsion from Spain’ Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 13 (2007), pp. 49-67.
Pedani, Maria Pia, ‘Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy’, Turcica, 32 (2000), pp. 9-32.
Pierce, Linda P., Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1993).
Saunier, Pierre-Yves. Transnational History (London, 2013).
Toledano, Ehud R., ‘Bringing the Slaves Back In’, in Benhaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana and Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.) Slavery Islam and Diaspora (2009) pp. 7-20.