Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History
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West were more fluid than those demarcated by orientalist discourse. Prévost’s
novel, although rooted in this discourse, did not champion its verities; it
transposed its contradictions from the realm of the East-West antithesis to the
West’s own domain, its self-representation. He embodied its antinomies in the
inner contradictions and equivocations of the French diplomat, who played the
two codes of female conduct against one another in his efforts to bend Théophé to
his will while simultaneously promising her free choice.
To make her worthy of redemption, he had to verify her “noble origins,” thus
substituting a more distant collective past for a more recent personal one. Her
biological father, Panjota Condoidi, traced his lineage to a Byzantine general who
had fought against Mehmed the Conqueror during the siege of Constantinople:
“He came from one of these ancient families that conserve less the luster of than
pride in their nobility.”49 Like Greece itself, Théophé’s family had fallen into
decline and abasement. The lost nobility, however, was not that of ancient Greece
but that of Byzantium. Condoidi’s name actually belonged to a seventeenth-
century Greek, a member of the Phanariot intellectual elite.50 In Prévost’s novel
there is not a single allusion to the classical past.
Théophé’s early years had been spent in the Peloponnessus, where she was
tutored in the arts of the harem and was then briefly initiated into the harem of the
Pasha of Patras. She was moved to Constantinople by the man who masqueraded
as her father, and there she entered the harem of Chériber, who presented her
to the Frenchman. In the course of the novel, the Morea (the Peloponnesus)
is depicted as a place of Turkish pashas and European adventurers. Thus, the
European movement of Hellenism that was already connecting modern Greece
with its ancient past had not yet embraced the Greek woman herself. This was
the Hellenism of western male travelers and classicists who Hellenized the Greek
space in order to give physical anchorage to their intellectual progenitors, the
ancient Greeks—males just like themselves.51
Théophé belonged to another lineage, that of the hybrid Christian-Muslim
world, and she was part of a long line of Christian women in Ottoman harems.
This world was the subject of seventeenth and eighteenth-century narratives that
provided an array of portraits of Greek women, placing them in an Ottoman
setting. A few treated ancient women, but in less than complimentary terms.
Prévost was well versed in this literature because he had a great interest in travel
accounts, particularly those describing the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire.
He himself directed a vast compilation of travel accounts in Histoire générale des
voyages (1743–63).
Théophé’s fictional character had a more immediate predecessor, however, one
who actually had transposed the Orient into the Occident. She was Mademoiselle
Aïssé, a Circassian beauty whom the comte de Ferriol had bought in a slave
22
Women in the ottoman Balkans
market at Constantinople in 1698 when she was four years old and had brought
to Paris. Though she was raised in the aristocratic home of Ferriol’s sister-in-law,
the sister of Mme de Tancin, and became an habituée of the Parisian beau monde,
she always retained the aura and mystery of her oriental origins, rendered all the
more captivating by “the charms of her mind”—the gift of her adopted country.
Her story became even more intriguing when rumors of her ambiguous relation
with her liberator began to circulate. Though their veracity remained in some
doubt, the idea of benefactor-father-lover had been implanted.
This triangular relation was also one of the key themes in Histoire d’une
Grecque moderne, a connection that was pointed out by contemporary and
subsequent critics.52 Although Prévost did not know Aïssé personally, he became
informed of her life and the rumors surrounding Ferriol’s unsavory reputation.
Soon after Aïssé’s death in 1733 and before the publication of her Lettres de
Mademoiselle Aïssé à Madame Calandrini in 1787, her story, mingling fact
with fiction, had been publicized in an anonymous biography, Histoire de Mlle
Aïssé (1758). A second one followed in 1806. In it, her legend grew and so did
Ferriol’s reputation for dissoluteness, a reputation that was partly attributed to his
long contact with Turkish manners during his ambassadorship in Constantinople
(1699–1711). “He was an old depraved man,” a biographer stated, “who, after
having spent his youth indulging his appetites, fortified his dissolute habits by a
long stay in Turkey where he immersed himself in the country’s manners.”53
Aïssé and Théophé shared another trait, their noble beauty. This perceived
similarity distanced them somewhat from their oriental background, making
them more amenable to western ways and therefore more beguiling. This may
explain why Aïssé was referred to as a Greek in Paris, even though her Circassian
origin was well known. “The name of Greece,” noted Sainte-Beuve, “was gladly
connected with that of Aïssé in the mind of her contemporaries.” A poem honored
her as a Greek woman:
Aïssé de la Grèce épuisa la beauté;
Elle a de la France emprunté
Les charmes de l’esprit, de l’air et du langage.
Pour le coeur, je n’y comprends rien;
Dans quel lieu s’est-elle adressée? 54
Aïssé took all of Greece’s beauty;
From France she borrowed
Her charms of mind, manners, and speech.
As for her heart, I know not a thing;
Whereto did she address herself?
Théophé’s distant Greek predecessors in the harem antedated the coming of
the Ottomans. They had been present at the courts of the Abassid caliphs as wives
and mothers.55 In 1346 the Byzantine princess Theodora married Sultan Orhan
with the stipulation that she be allowed to practice her religion in the harem in
augustinos, eastern ConCuBines, Western mistresses
23
Bursa.56 When Constantinople fell, some of its most highly prized spoils were
its maidens, valued for their beauty and nobility, themes echoed in Prévost’s
novel. Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, noted the eighteenth-century writer Belin
de Monterzi, “had married princesses of the bloodline of the Palaiologos family
when he conquered the Peloponnessus.”57
Monterzi’s book, his claims to historical veracity notwithstanding, was fiction
disguised as history. It was an epistolary exchange between Byzantine princesses,
the Sultan, and his officers. Hardened warriors though they were, in Monterzi’s
portraits they had a tender heart for the noble Byzantine ladies, who did not
resist their gallantries. One of them was Irene, the only surviving member of
an illustrious Byzantine family that had perished during the city’s siege. She
was presented to the Sultan, who became so deeply enamored of her that he
temporarily neglected his martial feats for romantic gallantries. Soon, however,
his soldiers’ clamor revived his bellicose spirit “and he had the object that had
> taken such a hold on him removed.”58 She had refused to abjure her faith when
alive and was declared an Orthodox saint after her death. In her tragic story we
see the themes of beauty, desire, and violence placed in an early oriental setting.
We also see the intersection of Christianity and conquering Islam in the fate of
a Byzantine woman. Monterzi’s other romances were less violent, but they all
depicted a hybrid male world parallel to the female world of the harem. Their
stories involved Ottoman generals of diverse ethnic backgrounds, some of them
even Greek with such names as Priam and Ajax.
Greek concubines, or les belles Grecques as they were often called, figured in
other quasi-historical, quasi-fictional works produced in the eighteenth century.59
One such work written by Madeleine Poisson de Gomez—a prolific writer of
novels, plays, and histories—was presented as a “historical” narrative consisting
of a gallery of portraits of some of the most famous and powerful “sultanas,”
several among whom were Greek. Gomez presents them as either victims or
instigators of palace intrigues. More often than not these intrigues were rivalries
among haseki s or imperial favorites, who watched over the fate of their sons
because only one could become successor to the throne. Gomez gives ample
examples of these fighting mothers and of their successes as well as failures.
There was no greater victory for a haseki than to become Valide Sultan or Queen
Mother, “the greatest source of authority and status for dynastic women.”60
In her narrative, Gomez gave a prominent position to one such dynastic woman,
Kösem, who was of Greek origin. Orphaned very young, she found herself at the
age of fifteen in the harem of Sultan Ahmed I. Though of ordinary beauty, in
Gomez’s portrayal, she possessed a majestic demeanor and grace that masked a
burning ambition and thirst for power. She was able to exercise power for almost
fifty years (1603–51) first through her influence on Ahmed I, and, after his death
in 1617, as Valide Sultan. She was the force behind her two sons, Murad IV
(1623–40) and Ibrahim I (1640–48), both given to debauchery and the attendant
mental decay. Her reign came to an end in 1651 when her grandson Mehmed IV
ascended to the throne and a new Valide Sultan stepped forward. Kösem conspired
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Women in the ottoman Balkans
to have them both killed and met a horrible and humiliating death at the hands of
the palace eunuchs. Her skills for plotting and intrigue were of no help to her once
she had lost the title of Valide Sultan, which had elevated her to the highest rank
and had enabled her to exercise extraordinary power.61
Another Greek woman had preceded Kösem in Ahmed’s favors: she was
Basilia, renamed by him “Johahi.” Also of humble provenance, Gomez noted, she
never forgot her native Athens, nor her religion. When the Sultan wanted to offer
her a gift, she asked for the city of Athens, which was being ill-treated by the local
governor. The stipulation was that the supervision of the city pass into the hands
of the Keslar aga [ Kızlar Ağası], or Black Eunuch, after her death. Her wish was
granted and henceforth her birthplace enjoyed more order and tranquility. She
died shortly thereafter in childbirth, but her memory lived among the Athenians
who were grateful for her intercession.
One such Athenian, the monk Damaskinos, paid tribute to these women in his
tirade against European visitors whom he rebuked for commenting ceaselessly
on the Greeks’ decline under the Turks. His expostulations are related in Guillet’s
Athènes ancienne et nouvelle (1675). Damaskinos credited the Greek women in
Ottoman harems, particularly that of the sultan, for acting as mediators between
the conquered—the Greeks—and the conquerors—the Turks—even going so far
as to characterize their influence as the Hellenization of the East:
And what has the Sultan’s country been for several generations since the
Ottoman House has been established in Constantinople and Greek women
have most often given him Heirs to the throne? We shall go no further: the
Hankiar Azaki [ hünkâr haseki], or first Sultana of the Empire, who is now
the only love of Mahomet [Mehmed] IV and mother of the Little Prince
that we see today as the successor, is of Greek birth. She was taken from
Rethymnon in Candia [Crete] twenty-one years ago. Finally, we are no
longer but one blood and these two people do not form but one nation.62
Almost two hundred years after Damaskinos, the Romanian writer Dora d’Istria
also underscored the mediating role of harem women:
The Sultan’s palaces as well as the women’s quarters of the pashas and
beys are always full of the most beautiful women of eastern Europe taken
away from Georgia, Colchis, Greece, etc. The sultanas so active in all the
affairs of the country, come from nations far superior to the Finno-Mongols.
Mahpeikir [Kösem Mahpeyker] and Revia Gülnüs [Râbia Gülnûş] were
Greek.... The name ‘son of slave’ used often by eastern Christians for the
Sultan … explains how much the dynasty of … the Conqueror owed to the
brave blood of the noble races that provided the Sultan’s palaces with so
many beautiful and intelligent slaves.63
Damaskinos and Dora d’Istria saw harem women not as degraded concubines
but as active mediating agents between the conquerors and the conquered. Their
beauty did not consign them solely to pleasure-giving; rather, in conjunction with
augustinos, eastern ConCuBines, Western mistresses
25
their intelligence, it elevated them to positions of influence beneficial to their own
people as well as to the Ottomans. However, this view which reclaimed the harem
woman was far less prevalent than the one that confined her to the erotic realm.
Removing the Veil: The Western Promise
When Hellenic affinities began to sweep aside Greece’s eastern connections, the
stories of these women enveloped in oriental otherness faded. Before they were
eclipsed, however, they left a descendant in Théophé. She differed from them in
that she did not use her beauty and intelligence to advance her standing in the
harem, but abnegated her oriental past and embarked on the construction of a
new identity as a westernized woman of virtue. Her transformation can be seen
as a metaphor of Greece’s westernization. They both shared a rejection of their
immediate past “tainted” by the eastern connection. Both looked to the West for
new modes of thought and conduct and both experienced its praise alternating
with scorn. Still, there was one significant difference. The transformation of
Greece was a male proposition which modeled itself on the male ancient world.
Théophé, on the other hand, had only one past, that of the harem. She had no
glorious ancestors to emulate. After all, the best known ancient Greek women
were the hetaerai, hardly more dignified and virtuous than harem concubines.64
Her western voyage, therefore, was a lonely and perilous one, because she had to
face the West directly, always haunted by an oriental past unredeemed by ancient
connections.
Just li
ke her eastern character, her westernized persona also had literary
antecedents, albeit not all female. Their origins went back to medieval romances
in which Greek mythological and historical stories and names—Alexander the
Great preeminent among them—constituted the thematic core of the Cycle des
Romans d’Antiquité. The distant and unreachable locales of these stories were
the perfect fantasy landscape, at once nebulous and immobile, where the ideals of
chivalry and courtly love could be dramatized.65 The theme of Greece’s emulation
of the West found its first expression in Chrétien de Troyes’s romance Cligès
(1176). Its historical backdrop was an abstract and fictitious Byzantium and the
courtly world of King Arthur’s Britain. The Byzantine prince Alexander, along
with twelve noble Greek youths, went to King Arthur’s court to be schooled in
the arts and skills of chivalry. Alexander served the King so well that he stayed on
and married Sir Gawain’s sister Soredamors. Cligès was the fruit of their union.
Back in Greece, whereto he had returned with his son to claim his father’s throne,
Alexander advised Cligès to follow his example and seek knightly apprenticeship
in Britain.
You will never know, dear son, Cligès,
your worth in skill and stalwartness
unless first at King Arthur’s court
you demonstrate how you comport
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Women in the ottoman Balkans
yourself exchanging blow and stroke
with Britons and with England’s folk.
…
In Britain worthy men renowned
for honor and for skill abound.66
Father and son both distinguished themselves not only in valor, but also in
cunning, as true descendants of Odysseus. In battle they used craftiness as often
as bravery, something King Arthur’s “frank” knights would have never deigned to
do. The wiliness of Greek men was matched by the skill of Greek women in magic
and witchcraft. The governess Thessala was a worthy successor to Medea’s arts
of spells and sorcery. Thessala of course referred to Thessaly, a region associated
with wondrous events, the magic arts, and witchcraft practiced by women. The
reputation of ancient Thessalian women as sorceresses persisted down to the
nineteenth century.67 These reputed unedifying traits—the craftiness of men and