Empress of the East

by Leslie Peirce

  ALTHOUGH CERTAINLY NOT a public figure before her marriage, Roxelana began now to practice an imperial seclusion parallel to that of the sultan. Bassano’s voyeuristic perspective enabled his readers to envision her invisibility: “No one enters the palace of the Sultana except the Grand Turk, the eunuchs, and another person, highly trusted by the Grand Turk,” he wrote. The sultana was not a prisoner of the New Palace, however. “She does not let herself be seen (so they say), and if she goes out, she goes at night in a closed carriage, as [do] all the wives of the great in Turkey.”6 (Bassano was not wholly correct as, at least in later years, Roxelana did make daytime excursions.)

  Numerous individuals helped Roxelana maintain her seclusion. Foremost among them were eunuchs, castrated males uniquely able to cross thresholds separating male and female. Many royal regimes, including the Byzantine and Chinese courts, made use of eunuchs, although in evolving their own practices, the Ottomans looked primarily to earlier Muslim-ruled states.7 The Venetian Giovanni Maria Angiolello, palace page from 1473 to 1481, described the eunuch corps of the Old Palace as it existed then. Guarding the women’s quarters were some twenty eunuchs who “remain there day and night, serving and watching the women, in order that they may not be seen, except by these eunuchs and the sultan.” Some were black, and some were white—a difference from the all-white eunuch guardians of the all-male interior courtyard of the New Palace. (Writing some sixty years after Angiolello, Bassano would put the number of the latter at thirty).8

  The chief eunuch of the Old Palace wielded considerable stature and authority. “[He] has the right to correct and to chastise all persons in the palace, and [he] receives a salary of one hundred silver aspers, besides living expenses and a retinue of slaves,” wrote Angiolello. This was “to say nothing of the many gifts from the Great Turk, a house outside the palace, and a large villa about six miles distant from Constantinople which has been presented to him.” He enjoyed free time during the day but was required to remain in the palace at night.

  “An eunuch, a sultana or noble woman, her wayting mayden.” From A Volume of Coloured Drawings of Costumes Worn in Turkey, Persia and Greece. Late Sixteenth Century.

  When Roxelana took up residence in the New Palace, she would have at least one eunuch in her own service. As for the trusted individual who could also enter her quarters, “[he] is called the procurator of the Sultana,” Bassano explained. Although the identity of this man is unknown, we can assume he served as Roxelana’s steward, her kethüda, an office familiar in wealthy Ottoman households of the time. He would act as her link to the world outside the palace, the agent for transactions she might authorize and major purchases she might request. He may also have run interference for her within the palace, although the eunuchs could act as intermediaries with other palace functionaries. Suleyman apparently made sure that Roxelana’s steward was recognized as a man of consequence: “[he] always comes and goes whenever he wishes, dressed most richly and accompanied by thirty slaves,” noted the Venetian.9

  Bassano provides us with both the earliest and the most intimate glimpse of Roxelana’s new life in Suleyman’s palace, and so we must ask how reliable his reporting was likely to be. Probably of Slavic origin, he hailed from Venetian-controlled Zara, a city on the Adriatic coast prey to Ottoman raids.10 Bassano’s languages presumably provided him with a range of interlocutors, and as a cultivated and informed man, he may have had contact, direct or indirect, with the envoys and dragoman translators of the Venetian embassy compound in Istanbul.11 Bassano certainly had more information than many highly placed Ottomans did. However, the palace hearsay he was apparently privy to was bound be erroneous in some particulars: one hundred maidens in Roxelana’s suite, for example, may be an exaggeration for this early moment in her occupation of her new quarters, as may the thirty slaves tracing the footsteps of her steward when there were only thirty eunuchs serving the inner quarters of the New Palace. On the other hand, Bassano’s remark about the discreet conduct of women when they went out suggests some familiarity with the habits of Istanbul high society.

  Social standards were changing in mid-sixteenth-century Istanbul, and pressure to conform was intensifying. “The great” set the tone for those who aspired to improve their status in this increasingly cosmopolitan city. Under Ottoman rule, Istanbul was fast becoming one of the largest urban settlements in the world. In addition to its polyglot native population, the metropolis teemed with international traders, migrants, refugees, and renegades. Seclusion behind walls in elegant residences became the mark of the distinguished. Men of the elites avoided the streets, receiving business associates and petitioners in stately reception rooms in their homes. The imperial palace was the supreme model of this practice, permitting only select ambassadors and top statesmen contact with the sultan in the palace’s inner reaches. As for the New Palace women’s quarters, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier would comment in his 1675 book A New Account of the Interior of the Grand Seigneur’s Palace, “I include a chapter on the quarters of the women only to demonstrate to the reader the impossibility of knowing it well.… Entrance is forbidden to men with greater vigilance than in any Christian convent.”12

  Females seeking to gain social respectability emulated the wives of “the great” who, as Bassano informed his readers, went guardedly into public spaces. Women who hoped to elevate their social standing aspired to recognition as muhaddere, an appellation that signified chaste virtue. Apparently there was a certain social anxiety in Roxelana’s day over the boundaries of female respectability, for Ebu Suud, a respected jurist and later the chief mufti of the capital, received a flurry of questions on the matter. He confirmed that a woman of virtue was recognized by her seclusion. But how aloof from the public must she remain to achieve this standard of moral etiquette? The queries sought to determine just who qualified for the attribution of female purity.

  The mufti issued several fatwas in answer. He opined, for example, that a village woman who fetched water at the well could not be muhaddere, but a woman escorted by a retinue to the baths, a wedding, or another neighborhood could. Apparently impatient with the number of queries he was receiving, Ebu Suud eventually pointed out that female respectability was not a matter of Islamic piety. “It is not conformity to the prescriptions of the noble Sharia that is the essential element in being muhaddere,” he stated. “That is why Jewish and Christian [literally, infidel] women can also be muhaddere. A woman is muhaddere if she does not let herself be seen by males [outside the immediate family] and does not set about taking care of her affairs in person.”13 Diplomatic missives sent later in the century from the Ottoman court to the Tudor queen Elizabeth I demonstrated this nonsectarian understanding of female moral honor—they hailed her as “the pride of the muhaddere of the Christian faith.”14

  Ebu Suud’s dictum regarding muhaddere status made two points in addition to offering his judgment on the question of seclusion. First, moral virtue, as popularly understood and practiced in Istanbul, had less to do with precepts of Islamic conduct laid out in Sharia law than with wealth and social class. A woman of means with servants and attendants—regardless of her religious allegiance—could appear on the street and still maintain her distinguished status. An ordinary peasant could not.

  Second, Ebu Suud recognized that a woman of high standing was likely to have “affairs” to take care of. Wealthy Ottoman women indeed had business interests. For the Muslims among them, a woman’s right to independent control of her wealth meant that she might have real estate, investments, and money to manage. Seclusion, in other words, whether at home or within the portable harem provided by a retinue, was no bar to business—it just had to be handled through agents. Once again, the imperial palace was the model. Not long after her marriage and Suleyman’s return from the east, Roxelana would launch her own “affairs” in the form of her first philanthropic foundation, on which she would presumably be spending some of her dower. No doubt her steward and his retinue would play a key role.

>   With her elevation to unprecedented prominence, Roxelana’s comportment became an object of greater scrutiny. With the departure of Mahidevran and Mustafa to the provinces, the death of Hafsa, and Suleyman’s campaign in the east, Roxelana would become a main target of royal watchers. In the absence of her husband and master, the new queen’s conduct had to be conspicuously circumspect.

  WHEN ROXELANA TOOK up residence in the New Palace, it had been a resolutely male establishment ever since Mehmed the Conqueror separated imperial business into two domains. The government of the empire would reside with the sultan in the New Palace, while the management and education of the dynastic family remained in the Old Palace.

  The architecture of Mehmed’s new palace broadcast the notion that the monarch was an exalted figure, access to whom must be carefully restricted. One moved inward toward power, the Ottomans believed, unlike contemporary metaphor in which movement is upward toward greater authority. The spatial organization of the palace was linear: three courtyards aligned in order of increasing difficulty of access. Large portals connected the courtyards, each with its own company of guards. A corps of white eunuchs enforced virtual impenetrability of the innermost courtyard, where the sultan resided.

  Unlike the massive multistoried palaces of European monarchs, the New Palace was composed of separate, mostly single-storied structures situated around large open courtyards adorned with flower beds and cypress trees. As one architectural historian has put it, this conglomerate of individual structures is likely to appear to contemporary visitors as “a haphazard aggregate of modest buildings.”15 But in the Ottoman view, it was not massive residences but rather the control of massive manpower that conveyed the monarch’s might.16 Monumentality was better suited for structures dedicated to God—and the mosques built by members of the dynastic family were indeed monumental. Only in the mid-nineteenth century, partly under the political and aesthetic influence of European states, did the sultans abandon the New Palace for the Dolmabahçe Palace, an ornate colossus in comparison.

  Suleyman’s decision to install his queen in the New Palace, the very heart of politics, was a dramatic break with the past. It had the potential to disturb traditionalists even more than Roxelana’s multiple sons or her transformation from slave concubine to royal wife. The blueprint of the sultan’s palace was something of a saving grace in this regard, for new structures necessary to accommodate the new imperial harem could be situated alongside the second and third courtyards without impinging on their hierarchy of majesty.

  The principal entrance to the New Palace compound was the Imperial Gate, the largest passageway in the high walls surrounding the entire palace complex. Royal guards stationed here permitted or refused access to the most public of the palace’s three courtyards. Petitioners with routine requests and others with official business could enter the first courtyard but go no further. It is highly doubtful that Roxelana made use of the Imperial Gate when she exited or entered the palace. Its very nature as a public entrance, however restricted, was unsuited to her dignity as a female. She may have chosen to use the less monumental Iron Gate, which had the advantage of being closer to her quarters.17

  The first courtyard was the least regimented of the three, at times noisy and hectic. The appeals and complaints of petitioners were received in the large kiosk of the supervisor of documents, who would, they hoped, deliver a positive response. Also located in this vast first courtyard was an array of service divisions that provided for the palace: the former church of St. Irene, turned into an armory; the royal mint; the workshops of court painters and jewelers; warehouses and waterworks; and an infirmary. Pages of the palace interior were said to feign illness and bribe servants escorting them to the infirmary to move slowly so that they could communicate with relatives and friends who had managed to gain entry.18

  Animals as well as humans populated this initial courtyard. Suleyman followed ancient tradition by keeping in it a menagerie with elephants and the occasional giraffe. Horses, the favored mode of personal transport, were permitted to accompany their masters into the courtyard, while cavalry troops stationed there added color and motion. (Until recently, the first courtyard was host to modern forms of transport—it functioned as a parking lot for buses ferrying tourists to the Topkapı Palace Museum.)

  Only the sultan could ride on horseback through the Middle Gate into the expansive second courtyard—all others could proceed only on foot. A new ruler was formally installed on the throne in this official “government” court of the empire. Here too, according to the protocols laid out by Mehmed II, the sultan appeared on the two principal Muslim religious holidays to greet and receive greetings from his ministers and his troops—all splendidly outfitted, carefully positioned, and strictly disciplined.

  In its capacity as a ceremonial stage, the second courtyard also served as an open-air reception hall for foreign embassies. An account of the audience given the French ambassador François de Noailles in 1573 provides a vivid sense of the ritual order imposed during such occasions: “We observed with great pleasure and the greatest admiration the frightening number of Janissaries and other soldiers lined up along the walls of this court, their hands joined in front of them in the manner of monks.… And they remained immobile in this way for more than seven hours, not a one of them uttering a sound or making the slightest movement.” Once the audience was over, however, the French party was horrified by the troops’ furious stampede out of the palace—“all those thousands… who had seemed like a palisade of statues in the court, now transformed, not into men but into starved animals or unchained dogs.”19

  Second courtyard of the New Palace. The Imperial Council is in session on the left, the sultan observes from the Tower of Justice. The entrance to the palace precincts, at bottom, is guarded by Janissaries, and the wall separating the second and third courtyards, at top, by white eunuchs. Seyyid Lokman, Hünernâme.

  The second courtyard was a working space as well as a ceremonial one. The heart of government was the great hall in which the Imperial Council—the Divan—assembled. Here the empire’s viziers, the head treasurer, the chancellor, and the two military judges of Anatolia and Rumelia met several times a week, with the grand vizier presiding. They deliberated, heard petitions from Ottoman subjects, and made policy decisions regarding domestic, military, and diplomatic affairs. Council members were attended by various scribes, money counters, couriers, and guards, making Divan days a bustling affair. The first courtyard too was congested during Divan meetings, as the dignitaries left their steeds and their servants there to await the end of the day’s business.

  Like those of other states during the sixteenth century, the government of the Ottoman empire was expanding, and with it the volume of revenue and paperwork. The Venetian Marco Minio, on his second embassy to Suleyman, this time to congratulate him on the brilliance of his 1526 victory in Hungary, noted that the sultan had had the old Divan Hall razed and a more beautiful one built in its place.20 In addition to the council meeting room, the new structure provided space for the chancery and for a state archive to hold the increasing bulk of records and correspondence generated by the proliferation of imperial affairs.

  The costs of the splendid new home for the Imperial Council were allegedly borne personally by the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha. As Minio observed, it was there that “il magnifico Embraim” gave audience. The vizier also directed its construction, as he did much of the remodeling of the 1520s. Next to the Divan Hall, an imposing eight-domed public treasury was erected. The empire’s reserves of gold and silver were then transported there from the Seven Towers, a massive fortress that Mehmed had built into the old Byzantine land walls soon after the Ottoman conquest.

  At some point in the late fifteenth century, a small grilled chamber had been built into the tower rising above the Divan Hall. Here the sultan could station himself invisibly so as to monitor the integrity of his officials’ work—“checking the truth of affairs,” as Suleyman’s private secreta
ry put it.21 A story about Mehmed the Conqueror attempted to explain the origins of this chamber: one day, a rude peasant from Anatolia approached Mehmed and his ministers in council with a petition and asked in the dialect of his region, “Which one of you is the sultan?”—an intolerable insult to the imperial dignity.22 Ordinary subjects, it seems, had no idea what their sultan looked like. True or not, the legend underlines the increasing withdrawal of sultans from the quotidian business of government once they had become masters of Constantinople, ancient seat of august emperors who excelled in the arts of imperial theater.

  The skyline of the second courtyard advertised the sovereign attributes of justice and munificence. The tower that crowned the Divan Hall loomed above the palace walls. Known as the Tower of Justice, this structure advertised that the core compact of government—the justice provided by the sultan in return for the loyalty of his subjects—was enacted in this very location. In later decades, Roxelana’s female successors were said to have observed events in the second courtyard from the tower; perhaps Mahidevran and Hafsa stationed themselves there to watch Mustafa’s investiture as governor.

  Also visible from afar was the procession of chimneys rising from the imperial kitchens and running the entire length of the second courtyard’s seaside outer wall. Food and its service were a metaphor for the giving of largesse, and the royal kitchens fed hundreds if not thousands each day. Together with the pencil-like minarets of the imperial mosques, these two palace features—tower and chimneys, justice and generosity—would be the first sights remarked by travelers as they sailed into the capital.

  “The kitchen of the Great Lord.” Seventeenth-century European drawing of the New Palace kitchen featuring great cauldrons, kitchen chimneys, and domes and towers.