Does his heir inherit the same harem? Does he have to make his own harem?
Upon his accession to the throne, a new Ottoman sultan would certainly have to form his own harem - to inherit his father's would be dangerously incestuous, and strictly prohibited by Qur'anic practic: "Do not marry women whom your fathers married, except what has already occurred in the past. It was obscene, abhorrent, and an evil practice." (an-Nisa` 4:22) The sultan's harem consisted primarily of slaves - often given to him as gifts by his officials and relatives, sometimes coming from the slave market or having been captured in battle. For one of many examples, Gülnuş Sultan, mother of Mustafa II and Ahmed III, was a Venetian daughter of Crete taken prisoner when the Ottomans conquered it in 1645, and was dispatched as a gift to the sultan.
Women from Georgia and the Circassian region of the Caucasus were particularly valued as a "luxury item" for harems in the later Ottoman period, and were much sought after for their reputation for beauty - this was the phenomenon that gave rise to the British preoccupation with Ottoman "white slavery." Abyssinian or Ethiopian slave women followed as a close second in terms of popularity, but weren't quite so controversial. Better-born ladies sometimes aspired to enter into the harem, but it seems to have been discouraged, given the overwhelming number of concubines and consorts of slave origin:
According to Contarini, when roughly a decade earlier the daughter of the grand vezir Kuyucu Murad Pasha had wanted to enter the harem of Osman’s father, the harem stewardess had discouraged her by arguing that she would lose her mind among so many slaves and that her sons would probably be killed through the practice of fratricide. (Peirce, 1993, 107)
Regardless of their origin, contrary to the popular image of the harem, what such women found themselves in was no decadent, luxurious seraglio of lounging, seductive odalisques - newcomers soon found themselves subjected to an education and training program designed to instill in them valuable domestic skills, principally etiquette, sewing, embroidery, music, and dance. Only the most beautiful and skilled among these would be granted the honor of personally serving the valide sultan - the sultan's powerful and influential mother, who reigned over the harem and often her son, as well - and it was from among his mother's servants that the sultan would often select his newest concubines. The name of the game was haseki, the title for the sultan's most favored concubine, a status enthusiastically sought and fought over, for the winner may become the mother of an Ottoman prince, and if her child succeeded his father then she would become the new valide sultan, the most powerful woman in the empire.
Beginning with Mehmed the Conqueror, the sultans' harems resided in the Eski Saray - the Old Palace - in Constantinople-rebranded-Istanbul, while the sultans themselves occupied the Yeni Saray - the New Palace - today called the Topkapı Palace. During the reign of Suleiman (the Magnificent), he moved his beloved haseki (Hurrem Sultan) to reside with him in the New Palace, which continued after his reign to host the incumbent sultan's harem, as well as the sultans' powerful mothers, who would enjoy extravagant ceremonial processions (called the valide alayi) from the Old Palace to the New when their sons claimed the throne. In addition to her influence over her son, the valide sultan would often possess considerable material wealth, derived from incomes assigned to her from the Ottoman dominions, which she would put to use through philanthropic and charitable acts - the construction of mosques, donations to the poor, etc. Upon the death of a sultan, his concubines and unmarried daughters would move to the Old Palace, which functioned as a sort of retirement community for harem inmates.
Those who had not given birth to princes of the house of Osman (daughters and deceased male children were perfectly acceptable) would often be married off afterwards, to government officials or military officers of a suitable status, and freed in the process if they were slaves. Those still confined could earn for themselves a modest income derived from the embroidery and sewing skills they had been taught when they first entered the harem, engaging in a small-scale trade by means of intermediaries. There were occasional exceptions to this theoretically placid retirement, however: Mehmed III had seven (sometimes said to be twelve) of his father's pregnant concubines murdered to assure his uncontested succession to the throne (he had already had his nineteen brothers strangled). The Ottoman system of fratricide eventually gave way to a sort of male version of the harem, the kafe (or "gilded cage" as it's more popularly known), in which instead of being killed, the sultan's brothers were confined to a separate wing of the New Palace for life (unless the sultan should die - at which point one was usually hauled out into the daylight to take his place) and prevented from reproducing to avoid complicating the issue of succession - the only children of the ruling family were to be born to the reigning sultan.
Sources Consulted