Empress of the East

by Leslie Peirce

  Cihangir rallied in support. Navagero noted that almost every day that Suleyman spent in Istanbul, he boarded one of the imperial boats, setting out for a variety of places but most particularly for the Asian shores of the Bosphorus, where he debarked for the exercise of hunting. It was on just such excursions that Cihangir accompanied his father. “He is Suleyman’s principal amusement,” reported the ambassador, “and this is a certainty, because [the sultan] always takes him along on the hunt and wherever he sails in his brigantine.”22

  Navagero also commented that one reason Suleyman enjoyed Adrianople was that he could step outside the door and find ready spaces for hunting and entertainment.23 Since the government was wherever the sultan was, many top Ottoman officials as well as foreign ambassadors would make the trek to the empire’s second capital in Suleyman’s wake. Roxelana perhaps made a particular effort in these years to accompany him, clearing her calendar by delegating tasks to members of her staff. Adrianople was close enough to the capital that couriers could move back and forth fairly rapidly.

  Sometimes Roxelana stayed behind. A short note she wrote to Suleyman, sent from Istanbul to Adrianople, apparently accompanied “papers” she was forwarding to him via some pilgrims returning from Mecca (presumably trusted individuals). In it she asks after Suleyman’s health and inquires if anything is amiss. Bayezid must have accompanied his father, for his mother sends him greetings and “kisses his eyes” (an expression of affection for a younger person). As usual, Roxelana devotes most of her words to missing Suleyman—she burns in the flames of longing, but God’s help and the protection of his mystic devotees bring her salvation. If “her fortune-favored one, her sultan” were to send news from time to time, the fire in her heart might subside.24 Alas, few notes like this brief communication survive to reveal the myriad ways in which Roxelana participated in the daily routines of governing.

  IN ALL THE years of Roxelana’s association with Suleyman, there were surely moments of tension, if only passing disagreement or misunderstanding. She did not hesitate to express her emotions, or so it would seem from the story relayed in 1526 to the Venetian Senate of the jealous tantrum she pitched when the sultan received a gift of two Russian slave women. But however compatible she and Suleyman might be, their private relationship could not be shielded from the politics that were the daily agenda for him and increasingly for her as well. The issue ripest for tension was doubtless the future of their sons.

  In 1546, when Bayezid joined Selim and Mustafa in Anatolia, all eligible successors to Suleyman were engaged in their public careers. Speculation about the succession was inevitable. The political stakes were heating up, if slowly, for no one could predict when the sultan would die. Three of the previous four Ottoman rulers had passed away before the age of fifty-five, all from natural causes. Suleyman was now fifty-three by the Islamic calendar, two years older than his father had been at his death.

  Roxelana’s sons were less experienced than Mustafa, who had the advantage of being the eldest prince and of having graduated to governor in 1533 at a younger age than either Selim or Bayezid. This gave him a considerable head start in building up a popular reputation. There were other imbalances. Roxelana’s sons had a more powerful mother, but Mustafa had at his side a mother whose sole mission in life was ensuring the success of her only son. Rival foreign powers carefully tracked the three princes and the two mothers, for both Christian Europe and the Islamic east had a major stake in the Ottoman succession.

  Tradition required that Suleyman maintain parity of opportunity for all his sons. A core principle of sovereignty among the Ottomans, from their very beginnings, held that all healthy males of the dynastic family were eligible to rule. At the same time, tradition required Roxelana to promote and protect her sons as assiduously as Mahidevran promoted and protected Mustafa. Herein lay Roxelana’s unique dilemma. The role thrust upon every concubine mother of a prince—pushing for her own son to become the next sultan—was in inevitable tension with his father’s prescribed role as neutral enabler of all eligible princes. Not that Roxelana was alone in running up against this tension. Mahidevran too was tasked with walking the delicate line between loyalty to the sultan and loyalty to her son. The additional risk for Roxelana—wife, queen, and palace coresident to the sultan—was that any overt exercise of her influence against Mustafa could disturb the special bond she enjoyed with Suleyman. The situation was even more anomalous: As queen, a role for which there was no precedent, was Roxelana expected to be neutral like Suleyman, remaining aloof from the contest for the succession? When her son-in-law, Rustem, was raised to the office of grand vizier in 1544, some perhaps began to wonder if the sultan himself was remaining impartial or if he was privileging the family he had created with Roxelana. In future years, some would come to regard the ties among Roxelana, Mihrumah, and Rustem as an unholy alliance.

  Rustem Pasha was arguably becoming as powerful a grand vizier as Ibrahim had been. The signal difference was that Suleyman denied Rustem the intimacy that his male favorite Ibrahim had enjoyed. According to Navagero, Roxelana and Mihrumah failed in their attempts to persuade Suleyman to make him a court familiar: “I have learned through a reliable channel that they have tried many times to bring it about that Rustan might enter the palace of the sultan on such a familial basis as Ibrahim used to; the sultan has responded that committing folly once is enough.”25

  On the other hand, Rustem certainly cultivated the same intimacy Ibrahim had with foreign ambassadors, to whom he apparently liked to tell stories of his life. This son of a Croatian pig farmer had long been a prized servant to the sultan. He originally caught Suleyman’s eye when he leapt from a window to retrieve an object that the sultan had dropped. Suleyman advanced him from inner-palace duties to master of the imperial stables, from which respected position the pasha went on to a series of governorships in Anatolia. Rustem was finally promoted to the rank of vizier in 1539 when he was chosen by Suleyman and Roxelana as husband for Mihrumah and acquired the title Damad (royal son-in-law). Five years later, when during an Imperial Council meeting the then grand vizier Suleyman and the fourth vizier quarreled in the sultan’s presence, the former was dismissed and Rustem appointed in his place. (The second party to the quarrel, who had drawn his sword during the fight, was said to have starved himself to death from remorse.)26

  In his later years as grand vizier, Ibrahim had obviously recognized Rustem as a potential rival, or so the story went that he removed him from circulation by posting him to the governorship of Diyarbakır, far to the east on the border with Iran.27 The ruse failed, and at that point Rustem became a candidate for Mihrumah’s hand. He also acquired the nickname “Lucky Louse.” Rumors spread by his enemies that he suffered from leprosy (hence dared not marry the princess) were proven false when the doctor sent to Diyarbakır to examine him discovered a louse in his clothing, despite the fact that the fastidious pasha changed his garments daily.28 (Lice were apparently known to avoid lepers.)

  It was as much the promise of Rustem’s future service to the state as his hoped-for compatibility with Mihrumah that had propelled his political ascent. Mihrumah was now emerging as her mother’s protégée in public affairs, and it did not take long for mother and daughter to view Rustem as their ally. Suleyman presumably took the likelihood of this triple alliance into account when he promoted Rustem to grand vizier late in 1544. He could always dismiss his damad vizier if he were to take a serious misstep. Like all servants of the sultan, royal sons-in-law were not immune to destruction. Suleyman’s execution of his sister Beyhan’s husband Ferhad early in his reign stood as a warning to all future husbands of princesses.

  To Suleyman, Rustem was valuable as a classically trained vizier who possessed familiarity with a wide range of government and military offices. Gone were the heady days when an inexperienced favorite could be rocketed to the most powerful office in the empire. Rustem was also shrewd—Busbecq considered him “a man of keen and far-seeing mind.”29 His consistent
display of loyalty to the sultan was a habit that Ibrahim had failed to sufficiently cultivate, at least in his later years as grand vizier. Fidelity was critical, for Suleyman’s style as sovereign was to delegate the execution if not the design of power to his grand viziers. Renier, reporting to the Venetian government four years after Rustem’s assumption of office, commented that he had seen the sultan only twice, for “it is Rustem Pasha who relays everything to us.”30

  The grand vizier would soon be recognized for his thrifty management of the imperial budget, another talent not cultivated by Ibrahim. Rustem reputedly ignored no plausible source of income, including sale of the flowers and vegetables grown on the palace grounds. The other side of the coin, unfortunately, was his reputation for stinginess as well as a greed that his opponents called graft. He was quite good at eliciting gifts from ambassadors, who sometimes had to apologize to their home governments for the expenses incurred in keeping communication channels open. Venetian ambassador Alvise Renier thought it a good idea to provide Rustem with one hundred gold ducats every year and not to wait until he asked, because then the amount might be larger.31

  WHEN KING SIGISMUND the Old died in 1548, Roxelana resumed diplomatic correspondence with the Polish monarchy, writing personally to congratulate Sigismund Augustus, Bona Sforza’s son and his father’s heir to the double throne of Poland and Lithuania. This epistolary link with Poland would help establish a concrete foundation for the more expansive diplomatic role that would be adopted by her female successors. Roxelana’s cultivation of contacts abroad was not reserved for Europe, for a few years later she would develop a cordial correspondence with Safavid royal women.

  The Ottomans had made use of female diplomats before, but those emissaries had been the mothers or aunts of the sultans. As the seclusion of elite women became more fashionable over the decades, the practice of sending senior women to carry important messages or negotiate peace treaties died out. What Roxelana did was to establish a new mode of female diplomacy—the letter—to help Suleyman build alliances and keep peace among potential adversaries. By the end of the century, the mother of her grandson would be corresponding with the Venetian government as well as with Catherine de Medici, regent mother of the French king. The next queen mother would exchange both correspondence and gifts with Queen Elizabeth I of England. Gift giving was essential to consolidating the relationship—Elizabeth sent a carriage and received in return an Ottoman outfit such as her correspondent would wear.32

  Roxelana’s aim in her correspondence with Sigismund Augustus was to cement good relations by employing a more affective tone than Suleyman or Rustem, the grand vizier, could. In her first letter, she writes that she has learned that Sigismund Augustus has become king upon his father’s death, for which honor she feels joy and pleasure. Then, offering consolation, she notes that one can do nothing (about death) but accept God’s will. The short missive ends by stating that its deliverer, Roxelana’s agha Hasan, can be trusted and can also convey to her anything the king would like to propose or relate.33

  Roxelana wrote again to the new king in response to his reply. This letter carried more substance and more of her signature extravagance of expression. It is impossible, she says, to describe her delight in the king’s letter, in which he spoke of his keen desire for friendship with her and his loving affection for the sultan. When she transmitted this news to the sultan, she writes, he too was delighted, to a degree that words cannot express. He was even moved to say, “The old king and I were like two brothers, and if it pleases God the Merciful, this king and I will be like father and son.” Roxelana wants his majesty to know that she would be happy to pass along to Suleyman any matters that might occur to him.

  Finally, so that her letter won’t arrive empty-handed, she says she is sending gifts: two pairs of drawers, a shirt, and a waistband, six handkerchiefs, and a hand-and-face towel. In a show of modesty, Roxelana begs the king’s forgiveness for these items and the wrapping in which they are enclosed, for the things being sent are unworthy of him. She made this demurral no doubt on behalf of her own handiwork, since she most likely embroidered and perhaps even sewed all the gifts, wrapping included, herself. The intimacy of the items perhaps underscored the familial relationship that was being asserted between the two monarchies.

  Roxelana’s familiar epistolary tone owed much to the bond she was assumed to possess with the “old king.” Her very name announced her origins in the southeastern region of the Polish-ruled domains: Roxelana (the Ruthenian maiden). Sigismund had come to the throne in 1506 when Roxelana was a small child not yet carried off to Istanbul. That she remembered anything of the monarch of her childhood is doubtful, but the connection was useful for both sides to exploit. The Polish kings were traditionally among the Ottomans’ staunchest allies. The Venetian Trevisano noted that the monarchy was one of four powers with whom Suleyman was on good terms (the others were the French king, the duke of Moscow, and “our most excellent Republic”).34 Sigismund I had made peace treaties with Bayezid II and Selim, and he went on to sign more with Suleyman.

  Claims that Roxelana played a key role in facilitating this continuing goodwill between her natal and her adopted homes have rested, inaccurately, on the notion that Suleyman planned to attack Poland in the first years of his sultanate—the presumption being that the sultan’s new favorite persuaded him to keep the peace.35 More plausibly he or she or both began to appreciate the utility of promoting the captive from Polish domains as a symbolic link between the two powers. Frequent embassies from Cracow—more, allegedly, than any other state sent in the sixteenth century—no doubt consolidated Roxelana’s reputed tie to Poland.

  Diplomacy with the new king was a veritable family love affair. The courier Hasan also carried official correspondence from Suleyman and Rustem as well as letters from Mihrumah. Like her mother, the princess first sent a condolence-cum-congratulatory message and then a longer response to the king’s own reply. Her style is formal in the first, effusive in the second. She writes that her father and her husband Rustem are indescribably overwhelmed by the king’s expressions of love and friendship in his missives as well as in the verbal conveyance of his sentiments by the Polish envoy and by Hasan Agha. Sigismund should favor Mihrumah and her husband by letting them represent his wishes to the sultan. In short, everyone, according to the princess’s letter, is simply thrilled about the liaison.

  Mihrumah’s second letter echoes Navagero’s comment about the princess’s close ties to her parents. Indeed, the households appear to be blended, as if her life with Rustem was a continuum that stretched from the New Palace to the couple’s domicile. Hasan Agha appears at first as her husband the pasha’s gentleman-in-waiting but then as “my mother the Haseki Sultan’s servant.” Mihrumah notes that she has dispatched a set of gifts, hers apparently intended for Sigismund’s wife. Like the letters, the gifts sent by Mihrumah and Roxelana seem to have been a collaborative effort.

  The apparent ease with which Mihrumah took part in the creation of a diplomatic entente makes one wonder if she was not already familiar to the Polish-Lithuanian royal family. It seems possible that she corresponded in 1541 with Isabella, Sigismund the Old’s daughter, to send thanks for the gifts the Polish princess had sent her via Rustem. As regent queen of Transylvania, Isabella spent much of her adult life shielding the fragile sovereignty of her son by maintaining a delicate balance between the Hapsburg and Ottoman behemoths. Cultivating the sultan’s beloved daughter, and perhaps his powerful wife, would be good policy. Conversely, the cultivation of the Polish siblings Sigismund Augustus and Isabella was necessary Ottoman policy, one of its aims to counteract overtures from Archduke Ferdinand.

  ROXELANA’S GIFTS TO the Polish court were nothing compared to her lavish donations to the Persian prince Alqas Mirza, younger brother of Shah Tahmasp of Iran. When Tahmasp dispatched troops to punish Alqas for his alleged insubordination, the prince fled his post as governor of Shirvan, a province on the western Caspian shores, and
took refuge at Suleyman’s court. An inordinate degree of pomp and largesse was bestowed on this Safavid renegade upon his arrival in Istanbul in 1547. Alqas was a rare prize for the Ottomans. Just as European powers had used Cem Sultan, renegade son of Mehmed the Conqueror, to torment his elder brother Bayezid II with threats of a crusade, so Suleyman and Alqas might collaborate in an offensive against Tahmasp.

  When Alqas Mirza arrived in the Ottoman capital, Suleyman was in Adrianople. Instead of summoning the Safavid prince, he left for Istanbul immediately, preferring to impress this scion of his only rival Muslim power with its splendors. He charged others with Alqas’s care and entertainment in the meanwhile. If Roxelana was in Istanbul, she was no doubt called upon to receive the women in the prince’s retinue, for he had fled with a substantial household. Suleyman’s eventual entry into Istanbul apparently had more than the desired effect, for as he viewed the parade, Alqas kept asking, “Is that the sultan?” and rising to his feet as various top officials marched by. He was reportedly so overwhelmed by the grand vizier Rustem’s appearance that he failed to register the sultan’s arrival and remained seated.36

  Following a formal welcome in the Imperial Council hall, the prince enjoyed the first of many banquets and receptions given in his honor. A veritable orgy of gift giving ensued. It included purses filled with gold and silver, robes of honor, sable and lynx furs, white and black slaves, swords and six-edged battle axes, carriages, horses, tents, pack animals, and more.37 In other words, Suleyman’s court was furnishing Alqas with an honorary princely household. The historian Ibrahim Peçevi commented, “All the leading figures showed extraordinary effort in giving gifts and favors.”38 He did not point out that the extravaganza doubtless took place at the sultan’s behest.