Empress of the East
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The next prominent female to grace the hilltop location, halfway between the core Christian and Muslim holy places, was Lady Tunshuq al-Muzaffariya. Sometime in the late fourteenth century, she built herself a palatial residence with an enormous second-floor reception hall and ground-floor stables with adjacent paddocks. A slave of disputed origins who converted to Islam, this mysterious but wealthy woman lived in Jerusalem as a religious pilgrim.26 By this time Helena’s hostel was long gone, as Byzantine Jerusalem had given way to various Muslim dynasties that ruled the city from 638 onward, except for a Crusader interlude from 1099 to 1187. The roadway facing Tunshuq’s mansion became known as Street of the Lady, a name that endures today alongside Street of St. Helena and Street of the Soup Kitchen.27
Roxelana’s selection of the site was perhaps partly a matter of convenience, as Lady Tunshuq’s palace needed restoration. But the association with Helena was fundamental. Roxelana had likely learned of this first female patron among the Byzantines either in Ruthenia, as a child getting acquainted with the saints of the Orthodox Church, or in Istanbul, where she might be informed by royal agents scouting possible sites for her project. Learning more about Helena and the model she provided to future empresses through her philanthropia (love of mankind) would not be difficult in the old Byzantine capital.28
Association with this site, whose status and pious nature had been preserved over the centuries, advanced Roxelana’s personal and political goals. Like Helena, Roxelana was a convert to the religion she honored with her foundation in Jerusalem. Likewise, she was the first female of the Ottoman dynasty to establish a presence in the holy city, as Helena had been for the Byzantines. Roxelana could feel a personal affinity with this long-ago queen at the same time that she appreciated the site’s political utility in the larger philanthropic agenda she shared with Suleyman.
At work here was that old imperial practice of preserving continuity with the past while introducing new laws, styles, and customs. Especially in the Near East, where so many faiths and sects had flourished for millennia, monarchs were virtually compelled to tolerate—or at least not to obliterate—religions that differed from their own. Suleyman could never emulate his European counterpart the emperor Charles V, who agreed in 1555 to a new religious policy summed up in the formula cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion). By ruling that a king’s own religion would be that of his subjects, the agreement was aimed at ending armed conflict within the Holy Roman Empire between Catholic and Protestant leaders generated by the Reformation.
Suleyman, on the other hand, inherited the dogma that a Muslim monarch must acknowledge Judaism and Christianity as legitimate faiths, although his own religion claimed the superior distinction of being the final and most perfect of the three monotheistic dispensations. A special tax, as well as a range of social restrictions, could be imposed on non-Muslims, but their freedom of worship should not be curtailed. Especially in Jerusalem, a pilgrimage destination for all three religions, Ottoman authorities were charged with enforcing an etiquette of mutual toleration, lest sectarian violence break out (though some officials were less than assiduous29).
The subtext of Roxelana’s foundation was that it acknowledged the work of a pious Christian queen of the past but signaled that the privilege of religious patronage now belonged to a Muslim queen. Patronage, in other words, was a form of colonization, first by one empire, then by the next. The spirit of the hilltop was preserved, but now it purveyed a specifically Ottoman charity.
By 1555 or so, Suleyman’s family had contributed a remarkable number of good works to the Islamic world through donations to the Muslim holy cities and the major capitals. The collaboration of sultan and queen now enabled them to claim one of the highest accolades that the old world afforded to royal patrons—the mantle of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid and his wife Zubaida. Harun “the Just,” who died in 809, is remembered for the epoch of cultural and intellectual efflorescence that marked the height of an empire stretching from North Africa eastward beyond Iran. Zubaida, who like Harun made several pilgrimages to Mecca, is best known for the extensive system of waterworks she sponsored to serve pilgrims along the arid Arabian roads and to bring water to Mecca.
The charter deed to Roxelana’s Jerusalem complex hailed her as “the quintessence of the queens among women, the Zubaida of her time and age… who is unique and to whom there is no second queen in prosperity and good fortune.”30 Both Zubaida and Harun’s mother Khayzuran, a former slave, acquired renown as notable patrons, their philanthropy focused on Mecca and the pilgrimage. Khayzuran purchased the house where Islam’s prophet was allegedly born and restored it as a mosque. Despite engineers’ objections to Zubaida’s Mecca project, she allegedly persevered to complete the construction of a difficult subterranean aqueduct. Mihrumah would keep up her family’s link with the Abbasid golden age by undertaking repairs to the waterworks and extending the Mecca water supply.31
There were other honorifics Roxelana could now call upon. The highest epithets for a Muslim female were association with the Prophet’s first wife Khadija, his daughter Fatima, and/or his third and favorite wife Aisha. If Suleyman’s Turkishness prevented him from claiming affinity with the first Muslim generation (Muhammad and the caliphs belonged to Meccan Arab lineages), the female members of his family could more easily do so. Describing the funeral of Suleyman’s mother Hafsa, Celalzade Mustafa’s history of Suleyman’s reign praised her extravagantly as “a woman of great asceticism and a lady of righteous thought, queen of the realm of chastity and the Khadija of the capital of purity, builder of charitable foundations and doer of pious deeds, the Fatima of the era and the Aisha of the age.”32
The charter deed lauded Roxelana’s maturity as a pious patron in the familiar formula: “the Aisha of the time, the Fatima of the age.”33 A decorous restraint, however, ascribed these accolades sparingly, to both Hafsa and Roxelana, in death or late in life. But some forty years after Roxelana’s death, Talikizade Mehmed, author of celebratory histories of Suleyman’s reign, extravagantly compared her countless good works with the philanthropy of Zubaida. About the Abbasid queen he wrote, “Books of history are filled with that great lady’s glory and generosity.”
Talikizade emphasized the humanitarian aspect of Roxelana’s benevolence with verve. “Wherever there was a pious shaykh deserving veneration… wherever there was a dilapidated mosque,” she made it right. For pilgrims, there were “medicines, saddled beasts, horses, and resting places.” There were funds for Janissaries who lost baggage during campaigns. Talented scribes wrote “books of excellence to be distributed to students throughout the empire.” From Egypt Roxelana brought “a thousand pairs of Yusufi turtledoves” to be used as mail pigeons by the Imperial Council. “The Lady of Time has not seen such an abundantly benevolent dame!”34
POLITICS, BOTH DOMESTIC and international, continued to absorb Roxelana’s attention during the years before her death in 1558. Suleyman granted her plea when in late September 1555, one month after his return from campaign, he reinstated Rustem as grand vizier. The sultan, however, had his own good reasons for wanting his longtime vizier back at the helm. Rustem had proven himself dependable, effective, and loyal, if not universally popular. That he was Mihrumah’s husband was no small consideration, as the princess continued to enjoy her parents’ special favor. She was, moreover, becoming a valuable political asset, in several ways her mother’s alter ego, but her stature came in part as half of a husband-wife team. Rustem’s exile was to a degree her exile.
Although it was Suleyman’s decision, Rustem’s reappointment to the grand vizierate came about through yet another political rupture for which some would blame Roxelana. The way was cleared for Rustem when Kara Ahmed, made grand vizier in the wake of Mustafa’s execution, was himself executed. An array of charges were mounted against him, from mismanagement of the Iranian campaign to corruption in administration.35 A core plank in Ottoman statecraft was the protection of taxpaying subjects from
mistreatment by the state’s officials. Failure to observe this principle scrupulously—or accusations thereof—had been the downfall of many a governor and vizier.
There was something of a trumped-up feel to the docket of Kara Ahmed’s wrongdoing, however, with the result that his execution has been attributed by some to Roxelana’s influence—unsurprisingly, since those so inclined could lay almost anything Suleyman did that directly benefitted the family he made with his favorite at her feet. Two seventeenth-century historians disagreed on the matter: Ibrahim Peçevi surmised that Suleyman was disappointed with Kara Ahmed’s management of the Iran campaign but noted that the rationale for the execution was unclear. Solakzade Mehmed, however, spared no words in castigating “the evil meddling of the virtuous monarch’s wife.”36 In the end, Roxelana’s lobbying may well have contributed to Rustem’s rehabilitation, and thus Ahmed’s fall, but Suleyman had apparently intended to reinstate Rustem, although not until he himself had returned from the war in the east. Kara Ahmed was disposable, having served his purpose by pacifying pro-Mustafa sentiment among the troops during the campaign.
Roxelana seemed to be paired with Rustem in many eyes, and not always for the worse. Upon the completion in 1558 of the Suleymaniye, the sultan’s great foundation, Shah Tahmasp made a gift of Persian carpets to cover the floor of the mosque.37 His sister Sultanim sent a congratulatory letter to Roxelana on the occasion, informing her that the carpets were coming and that the people of Iran all prayed for the sultan and the continuation of his reign. The happy message reflected the afterglow of the treaty ratified in Amasya in 1555.
Suleyman and the Suleymaniye mosque. Engraving by Melchior Lorck, ca. 1574. Altered in 1688 to represent Ibrahim (r. 1640–1648), an inferior sultan known to posterity as “the Mad.”
Sultanim made a point of commending the achievement of peace between the two empires. There was no doubt, she asserted, that Roxelana and the grand vizier Rustem were “the authors and the cause of this good deed” and “partners and associates” in bringing it about.38 The praise was a smart move on the Safavid princess’s part, for it must have seemed likely to the observant world that Roxelana would outlive the ailing Suleyman and become queen mother to whichever of her sons inherited the throne. In that event, Rustem might well retain his position as grand vizier.
Much of the rhetoric in Sultanim’s letter and Roxelana’s reply expressed intentions to keep the peace. After giving thanks for the gifts to the mosque, Roxelana assured Sultanim that the sultan was devoted to the agreement between the two monarchs. She emphasized that Suleyman had not undertaken his earlier campaigns in Safavid territory for the purpose of “destroying the lands of the Muslims” but rather with the aim of “repairing the houses of religion and adorning the lands of God’s law.” This was a patently disingenuous reference to the Ottoman conquest of Iraq in 1535, when Suleyman captured Baghdad, former seat of the sunni caliphate of the Abbasids, from the shi`i Safavids. There the sultan “discovered” the tomb of Abu Hanifa, founder of the school of sunni law followed by the Ottomans. The tomb had allegedly fallen into disrepair under the Safavids. Roxelana affirmed the friendship with her Iranian counterpart but did not miss the opportunity to reassert the legitimacy of her side’s claim to Iraq.39
Just as in 1548 when she wrote Sigismund Augustus to celebrate peaceful relations with Poland, here too Roxelana was serving as a goodwill ambassador for the empire. Her successors would follow the epistolary model of female diplomacy she established and taught to Mihrumah. When two Turkish women were captured at sea by the brother-in-law of Henry III of France and made members of the court of the regent queen Catherine de Medici, Mihrumah and her niece employed this model to intercede on their behalf.40
Two of Roxelana’s successors in particular—Nurbanu, favorite of her son Selim and queen mother to Murad III, and Safiye, Murad’s favorite and then queen mother—would correspond with a range of European leaders, including Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth I of England, and the Venetian Senate. Elizabeth apparently solicited Safiye’s support for an alliance between England and the sultanate, for Safiye wrote, “Be of good heart in this respect. I constantly admonish my son, the Padishah, to act according to the treaty.… God-willing may you not suffer grief in this regard.”41 This communication among female royalty was testimony to the remarkable number of politically powerful women who flourished in the sixteenth century. They maintained an important diplomatic channel for making and keeping peace.
MUSTAFA’S DEATH RELIEVED Roxelana of immediate fear for her children’s lives. Now, however, a new specter confronted her: only one of her two sons, Selim or Bayezid, could succeed. The fate of the other, and his sons, was almost certainly death. To become queen mother under such circumstances would constitute a Pyrrhic victory. Her response was the only one possible, to attempt to maintain parity between the brothers. For the most part, however, this meant protecting Bayezid, whose relations with his father were becoming strained. As it turned out, mercifully perhaps, Roxelana would not live to witness Selim’s triumph and Bayezid’s tragic death in 1562.
Much ink has been spilled over the centuries on the subject of which prince Suleyman and Roxelana preferred as heir to the Ottoman throne and whether they differed. Some believed Mehmed, their firstborn, had been their shared favorite. Some thought even the handicapped Cihangir had been in the running. But most disagreement has surrounded the question of Selim and Bayezid, Roxelana’s only plausible heirs following Mehmed’s death in 1543. In theory, neither sultan nor queen would or should express a preference. The decision had to be in God’s hands or, depending on how one conceived destiny, in the configuration of the celestial universe. Otherwise, the Ottoman way was pernicious.
But these were not ordinary times. Suleyman’s own advancing age and the rupture over Mustafa’s death rendered him deeply wary of permitting any challenge to his sovereignty to fester. Roxelana’s position was less clear-cut. Her lifelong charge to protect her sons might clash with the equally powerful charge of loyalty to whatever political decision Suleyman made. And so the devoted couple could find themselves with disparate goals—he determined to suppress any threat to stability, she desperate not to see her own son die.
Following the eastern campaign, Selim returned to his station in Manisa, where he had lived since 1541. Bayezid was set to return from his lieutenancy in Adrianople to Konya, his post since 1546, but events intervened. The affair of the rebel Pseudo Mustafa dogged the prince. According to the Austrian ambassador Busbecq, writing in July 1556, a year after the affair, Bayezid had not only failed to act with dispatch in quelling the uprising but had in fact considered joining it and marching on Istanbul (his father had not yet returned from the east).42 If Busbecq’s report carried any truth, Bayezid may have acted out of fear for his own future in the aftermath of Mustafa’s sudden and shocking execution. His father had set a deadly precedent.
Busbecq had recently returned to Istanbul with new treaty terms Suleyman had demanded from Ferdinand, and his correspondent was eager for news of Bayezid. The ambassador opened his letter by announcing that great changes had taken place. The first item of news was that the prince “had freed himself from serious danger and was reconciled to his father.” Roxelana, he wrote, had rescued her son by placating Suleyman. Taking considerable license in ascribing to Roxelana words presumably spoken in private, Busbecq wrote, “His wife, with her usual cleverness, easily read his thoughts. Letting a few days elapse in order that his wrath might die down, she touched upon the subject in the Sultan’s presence.”
Having “quoted similar incidents from the past history of Turkey,” Roxelana pointed out that protecting oneself and one’s family was a natural instinct in all men, that every man wanted to avoid death, and that evil counselors could easily lead young men astray. (This was doubtless an allusion to the terrible exigencies of the succession system.) “It was only fair, she said, to pardon a first offence; and if his son amended his ways, his father would have gained much
by sparing his son’s life; if, on the other hand, he returned to his evil ways, there would be ample opportunity to punish him for both his offences. She entreated Suleyman, if he would not have mercy on his son, to take pity on a mother’s prayers on behalf of her own child.”43
Busbecq imagined Roxelana adding “tears and caresses” and Suleyman “softening,” but he perhaps wrote more realistically regarding Suleyman’s long lecture to Bayezid on his errors before pardoning him. Peace made, Bayezid’s governorship was transferred from Konya to Kütahya in northwest Anatolia, undoubtedly a victory for Roxelana. Now both princes were roughly equidistant from Istanbul. This parity of location was not trivial, for it was commonly believed that whichever prince first reached Istanbul following the death of his father was likely to hold the throne.
In his letter to his old school friend, Busbecq was adamant that Suleyman favored Selim while Roxelana favored Bayezid. Her support, opined Busbecq, came from her pity for the fate that awaited the younger prince, or from his dutiful conduct toward her, “or else because he has won her heart for some other reason.” Other foreign observers agreed that Bayezid was his mother and Rustem’s choice. Regarding Selim, popular opinion was divided, noted the Venetian envoys, with some believing he would prevail as the eldest, others that his poor character weighed against him. The German Hans Dernschwam implied that Roxelana preferred Bayezid because of Selim’s dissolute habits. These reports did not mention Suleyman’s preference.44