Empress of the East

by Leslie Peirce

  BUILDING A MOSQUE complex required considerable advance work. Planning for Roxelana’s project began well before the site was cleared for construction: potential locations had to be evaluated, funds had to be assembled to finance the building as well as the upkeep and staffing of the mosque, and architects had to draw up plans. Roxelana’s dower might cover the expense of the mosque, but funding a whole complex would require a sizeable infusion from the imperial treasury. Moreover, endowing a major public foundation was an overtly political decision as well as a considerable budgetary expense, one that Suleyman’s viziers might conceivably be called to weigh in on. A large endowment, especially in the capital, also touched on the empire’s religious policy, since the rules for establishing charitable foundations were spelled out in Islamic law.

  Roxelana’s complex had two architects. The first, designer of the mosque, was in all probability Alauddin Agha, popularly known as “Persian Ali,” chief royal architect until his death the year before construction of the mosque was completed.13 The second was his successor, Sinan, who became chief royal architect in 1539 and built the charitable complex anchored by the mosque.14 Consultation with the architects could be carried on through Roxelana’s own staff—her steward or perhaps a specially chosen project liaison designated by Suleyman. While such agents would initially scout possible sites for the mosque and its affiliated structures, Roxelana probably visited the Avrat Pazar district herself, traveling in her covered carriage with a suitably impressive retinue. She would want to assure herself that the neighborhood truly needed of the services her endowment would provide. The column of Arcadius doubtless piqued her interest, but perhaps the women’s market was the deciding factor.

  The Haseki complex did more than provide a set of services to the people of the Avrat Pazar district. The construction of the five component buildings over the course of more than a decade furnished jobs and income to a whole array of laborers, artisans, engineers, and suppliers of materiel. Once the foundation was operational, marketers of different commodities would service its buildings, purveying wood for heating and cooking, oil for lamps, foodstuffs for the soup kitchen, and more. Some 130 staff positions would furnish income to a range of employees, at least some of them drawn from local districts. New shops were likely to open as the neighborhood picked up, and the buzz of activity around the complex surely helped business at the weekly market held at the foot of Arcadius’s column.

  It is no wonder that foundations famously functioned as nuclei of urban development. Roxelana’s would inject vigor into an area of Istanbul that was still recovering from the severe population decline experienced during the last years of the Byzantine regime. Hafsa had demonstrated effective measures to stimulate population growth in Manisa, where she provided incentives to encourage settlement in the vicinity of her mosque—for example, she made lots available for rent or purchase and, with Suleyman’s support, offered tax exemptions to those who built houses on them. Roxelana had less urban space at her disposal, but she did furnish rental units near the complex. The success of the Avrat Pazar initiative would be demonstrated in 1612, when the mosque was expanded to accommodate its enlarged congregation, acquiring a second dome in the process of reconstruction. Composing his history a few decades later, Ibrahim Peçevi remarked that the “exalted mosque” and the various other “good works” of the Haseki Sultan were “known to all humankind.”15

  The Haseki foundation at Avrat Pazar. Directly opposite the mosque is the roofed primary school, followed (clockwise) by the soup kitchen, hospital, and madrasa.

  With the exception of the hospital, all the components of the complex—mosque, madrasa, primary school, soup kitchen—were complete by late 1540. It was now time for Roxelana to draw up the customary charter that established the blueprint for the foundation’s operations. Such deeds were long and, in the case of royalty, highly ornamented. Charters typically comprised three principal components: first, the requisite praise of Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, and the reigning sultan, followed by a tribute to the patron of the endowment for his or her beneficent qualities; next, the enumeration of all the sources of income that would fund the maintenance and daily activities of the foundation’s institutions; and finally a lengthy description of the foundation’s various staff positions, including their essential qualifications and daily wages.16

  Charter deeds were heavily formulaic in their composition, but Roxelana’s voice lent color and vitality to the prose of hers. The queen’s influence is especially direct in her repeated insistence on kindness, compassion, and good character as essential qualities of the Haseki’s principal personnel. For example, in addition to possessing firm knowledge of the Qur`an and the proper form of its recitation, the primary school’s teacher must treat his young pupils as if they were his own children and must not favor one over the other. His apprentice should behave similarly as he took the children through the recitation of their lessons (they were to study the Qur`an, language, and grammar).

  The list of requisite qualities for the head of the soup kitchen—its shaykh—was especially long, no doubt because he came into regular daily contact with the Haseki’s largest number of patrons. The soup kitchen’s mandate encompassed more than the feeding of the hungry, for the Qur`an stipulated several categories of deserving recipients of Muslim giving, including not only “the poor and the indigent” but also members of the religious establishment and those whose employment had to do with the delivery of charitable services.17 The numerous beneficiaries of Roxelana’s soup kitchen included the students of the madrasa, the employees of the foundation, and patients at the hospital (whose meals were tailored to their medical conditions and prepared by a separate staff).

  In fact, only twenty-four indigent persons were eligible for regular meals. Each was awarded a patent of eligibility, and the shaykh was warned, when one of the twenty-four died, not to succumb to bribery or influence when reassigning the patent but to apply a kind of poverty standard. However, any leftover foods were to be distributed to the poor on the condition that they consume their portion on the premises.18

  The shaykh’s job requirements were tailored to meet the challenge of managing a large mixed clientele—teachers, doctors, and administrators; students selected for their spiritual and intellectual promise; the mosque’s large staff; and the needy. Obviously he needed to be an effective marshal of his guests, but the charter emphasized his moral characteristics, listing them one by one and making clear that the reputation for piety and ethical conduct required of all the complex’s employees was especially critical for the office of shaykh. Speaking through her deed, Roxelana urged the same compassion that the teacher must possess: the shaykh must greet his guests with humility, sweet words, and a friendly mien. He must never injure their self-esteem (literally, break their hearts), curse at them, or even act sternly. In other words, the shaykh had to be a man of great forbearance, for disputes over precedence, the amount and quality of the food, and its service undoubtedly broke out from time to time.

  The Haseki’s madrasa was an institution of a different order from the primary school and the soup kitchen. Madrasas were critical to the empire’s ability to generate a homegrown class of experts in religious learning, specialists in Islamic jurisprudence, and qualified judges for cities and towns across Ottoman domains. To lessen reliance on foreign-educated learned men, Mehmed the Conqueror had accelerated the production of local expertise with his endowment of the Semaniye, the famous complex of eight madrasas attached to his mammoth mosque complex.

  While Roxelana’s madrasa provided a valuable educational service, it had an additional purpose—to bring prestige to the foundation and its founder. Ottoman madrasas were ranked, with those endowed by royalty at the top. The index to a madrasa’s standing was the stature of its professor—specifically, the amount of his daily stipend. The Haseki professor would receive fifty silver aspers per day, a handsome sum equivalent to the stipend carried by the Semaniye. The pay was admittedly less than
the sixty-asper stipends of subsequent royal madrasas, but it made the professorship of Roxelana’s new madrasa a plum opportunity indeed.19

  The principal qualification of the professor was, unsurprisingly, not his kindliness but his reputation. The charter stipulated that he must be esteemed by the luminaries of his time and superior to his peers, among whom his accomplishments—“his learning and his faith”—should be well known. In turn, presumably to bolster the standing of his profession, he should strive to cast positive light on his superiors by praising their merits. The professor’s lofty salary was surpassed within the foundation only by the fifty-five-asper stipend of the royal architect Sinan. The soup kitchen’s shaykh earned ten aspers; the schoolteacher, six; the mosque’s preacher, ten; its prayer leader, eight; and each of the two callers to prayer, ten. When the hospital was established, the two doctors earned twenty-five and fifteen aspers, respectively.

  Naturally, the Haseki professor should also be a good teacher, able to “instruct and enlighten” his charges—highly select scholarship students slated to become judges, jurisprudents, scholars who composed studies of religion and law, and perhaps professors like himself. Here, his ability to “explain challenging intellectual problems and to probe the most intricate of matters” was critical. If madrasa students should choose not to follow such career paths—there were well-known graduates who took government office and might compose histories or political treatises on the side—they would be at the very least well-educated members of the Ottoman intellectual elite.

  As for the sixteen students at the madrasa, they had little to complain about, it seems. Each had the luxury of his own room, outfitted with a fireplace and opening onto the madrasa’s spacious courtyard. In addition to two free daily meals, they received a daily stipend of two aspers (the same pay the soup kitchen’s assistant pantry man received). Some Haseki students may have noted the elegance of the madrasa’s architectural adornment. On the other hand, not all may have been happy with their monitor, a student chosen from among them who received a five-asper stipend.

  DAILY LIFE AT the Haseki, as Roxelana envisioned it, comes to life in the charter’s details. On Fridays and religious holidays, people may have attuned their ears to the summons to prayer, recited on these special days not by the regular callers but by one of three staff persons appointed for “the beauty of their voices.” These gifted individuals were also on stand-by to perform the call to funeral prayers. A more material attraction was provided by the soup kitchen’s refectory. Its relatively rich menu featured the luxury of meat twice weekly as a supplement to the daily wheat-and rice-based fare. Roxelana’s charter also provided a detailed list of special ingredients for more festive dishes, including butter, saffron, chickpeas, honey, plums, apricots, figs, almonds, currants, and mint. It is easy to see why passes were required to distinguish the local deserving poor from petitioners who might flock to the Haseki from other neighborhoods.

  Employees of the Haseki Foundation Soup Kitchen

  Daily wage per person in aspers (standard silver coin) follows office

  Overseer (the shaykh): 10

  Two assistants: 2

  Purchasing manager: 6

  Pantry head: 4

  Assistant: 2

  Scribe (in charge of paperwork): 4

  Scribe (secretary of soup kitchen expenses): 2

  Head cook: 5

  Cook: 4

  Two assistants: 4

  Two bakers: 8

  Two apprentice bakers: 2

  Dish washer: 2

  Three hullers and sorters of rice, wheat: 2

  Porter of meat from butcher: 2

  Four custodians of plate ware, cutlery, storage jars, etc.: 2, 1

  Two sweepers: 2

  Two custodians of wood supply, storeroom: 1

  Maintenance man: 4

  Six miscellaneous employees: 10.5

  Total employees: 36: Total daily wages: 106.5 aspers

  Source: Taşkıran, Hasekinin kitabı, 48.

  While the foundation’s users doubtless took care to conduct themselves with circumspection, the Haseki complex was rarely silent. In warm weather, the voices of children reciting their lessons might waft beyond the foundation’s walls from the open porch that served as the schoolhouse’s summer classroom. From the mosque echoed a variety of sounds—some, like the call to prayer, were meant to be heard from a distance; others were more subdued. In the intervals between the five daily prayer times, a buzz of voices echoed on a nearly around-the-clock schedule, except for the hours between the last prayer of the day and the dawn prayer of the next. Roxelana’s charter provided support for a roster of forty-seven individuals to recite portions of the Qur`an or repeat the Shahada, the succinct Muslim declaration of faith. The most elaborate recitations occurred after the noon prayer, when thirty men in unison each recited a different juz`, a thirtieth part of the Qur`an.

  All such mosque staff would naturally be trained in recitation techniques. Their small stipends suggest that perhaps they had other occupations or were retired. Roxelana was not unusual in her devotion to prayerfulness, for even Muslims of modest means habitually endowed such recitations, in part to secure the well-being of their souls after death. The Qur`an and Shahada reciters supported by Roxelana’s largesse would dedicate their effort to her posthumous spiritual welfare. Those who lingered between prayers might recognize the purpose of the steady hum and offer their own prayer to the mosque’s benefactress.

  Who made sure that Roxelana’s detailed vision for the Haseki was realized, so far at least as human and material resources allowed? The queen’s appointees to the two top managerial posts were the principal enactors of her will: the executive supervisor of the foundation, responsible for its financial well-being, and the trustee, responsible for on-the-ground operations. Although Roxelana assigned the office of supervisor to herself for her lifetime, she also named as “honorary” supervisor the chief eunuch of the New Palace.

  This honorary supervisor no doubt handled most of the work of overseeing the complex, including scrutiny of the trustee’s performance. But Roxelana could communicate with the chief eunuch easily, even face to face. Later in the century, when black eunuchs rose to prominence along with the expansion of the New Palace’s harem section, their chief would act as the overseer of all royal foundations. His office controlled a vast budget and by the eighteenth century ranked third in importance after those of the grand vizier and the chief mufti.

  As her first trustee, Roxelana appointed one Mehmed son of Abdurrahman. Though not a eunuch, he had ties to the palace (his titles suggest he was a fairly high-ranking member of Suleyman’s household).20 The salary of fifty aspers per day, equal to that of the madrasa professor, was worthy of such a remarkable individual. In the graveyard of the Haseki mosque, one of the most beautiful tombstones belongs to a Mehmed Beg (Sir Mehmed), who died in 1562. He may well have been the foundation’s first trustee.21 Over the centuries, numerous other officials serving the complex would join him in the graveyard, as would both female and male members of their families.22

  With her characteristic repetitive insistence, the queen required that her trustee be a man of “good and honest morals,” forceful enough to carry out his duties as prescribed without breaking a single one of the numerous conditions of his hire. He must, moreover, be recognized as trustworthy.23 The charter provided the trustee with three staff associates: a scribe, who apparently functioned as an executive secretary; an agent, who oversaw collection of rents on properties dedicated to the foundation; and the lady scribe. The component institutions also had supervisory staff: the soup kitchen and the hospital each had a scribe, the latter an accountant, and the mosque an overseer.

  Roxelana’s foundation was not without controversy. A story that circulated in Istanbul linked her mosque to the puzzle of her marriage to Suleyman. In his diary, Hans Dernschwam, member of an embassy sent in 1553 by the Hapsburg Archduke Ferdinand, suggested that the favorite may have used her desire for
a monument to persuade Suleyman to marry her. “Before his Russian wife was freed by the sultan, she wanted to build and endow a small mosque for which she petitioned the clerics,” wrote Dernschwam. “This was not approved by the mufti, who is the Turkish Pope, until she was freed by the sultan.”24 A more scathing account was penned several decades later by George Sandys, an English traveler and poet who journeyed in parts of the Ottoman empire in 1610. Crediting to Roxelana the knowledge that a sultan could not free a concubine without marrying her (otherwise any continued sexual relationship would constitute adultery), Sandys continued, “It being well knowne to the wicked witty Roxolana: who pretending devotion, and desirous for the health, forsooth, of her soule to erect a Temple, with an Hospitall, imparting her mind to the Mufti, was told by him that it would not be acceptable to God, if built by a Bond-woman. Whereupon she put on a habite of a counterfeit sorrow, which possessest the doting Solyman with such a compassion, that he forth-with gave her freedome, that she might pursue her intention.”25

  Sandys’s account colored the story of Roxelana’s hope for a mosque to conform with the scheming-wife motif present in storytelling traditions around the world. (“The wiles of women” tales were popular among the Ottomans,26 while Londoners were pondering Lady Macbeth, who first appeared on the stage four years before Sandys’s travels were published in 1615.) Still, his version probably contained germs of truth—that Roxelana received sanction from the empire’s religiolegal authorities, possibly seeking it on her own initiative, and that her desire to create an endowment was not initially embraced by all. It was, frankly, an audacious idea to build a foundation in Istanbul, for no royal mother had done so before her.