How much do we know about what the Ottoman Sultans got up to when they visited the harem? [NSFW]

by ColossusOfChoads

Was it straightforwardly boring and vanilla? Or are we talking at a level that an old Def Leppard roadie would refuse to believe? Nothing I've read that touches on the subject goes into any real detail.

orangewombat

I'm sorry (not sorry) to disappoint you, but this answer is not going to be sexy at all. You know what’s cooler than sex? Historical sexual politics.

In this answer, I rely heavily on Leslie P. Pierce’s The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire because she wrote an entire textbook on this subject and she is much smarter than me. I am using my e-textbook, which is why my citations are to “locations” rather than pages.

In this essay:

  • Demystifying the harem
    • What is a harem?
    • Just how little do we know about the Ottoman imperial harem?
  • Demystifying concubinage
    • Concubinage 101
    • The politics of Ottoman legal marriages versus concubinage
    • Unigeniture and fratricide
    • One mother, one son
  • Okay, but can we please talk about sex?

Demystifying the harem

What is a harem?

The “word harem is one of an important family of words in the vocabulary of Islam derived from the Arabic root h-r-n.” It has two related meanings: first, to be forbidden or unlawful. Second, to be sacred, inviolable, or taboo. “By implication, it is a space to which general access is forbidden or controlled”. Imperial Harem, loc. 151.

“The most sacred or exalted places in the sixteenth-century Ottoman world were harems. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina and their environs were, and remain, the two most revered harems in Islam… The central Muslim religious compound in Jerusalem, Islam's third most holy city, was also known as the ‘noble sanctuary’ (harem-i serif). In Ottoman usage, the inner courtyard of a mosque—its sanctuary—was also its harem.” Imperial Harem, loc. 158.

At its most fundamental level, when we’re not talking about mosques or holy sites, a harem is a household, not a sex dungeon. “That the private quarters in a domestic residence and by extension its female residents are also referred to as a ‘harem’ comes from the Islamic practice of restricting access to these quarters”. Imperial Harem, loc. 151.

Who lived in these restricted quarters? “An Ottoman Muslim household of means included women related to the male head of the household and to each other in a complex set of relationships, many of which did not include a sexual role. The harem of a prosperous household would include the wife or wives of the male head of the household, and perhaps one or more slave concubines (a Muslim male might have four wives and an unlimited number of concubines)... Children too, both male and female, and perhaps the widowed mother and unmarried, divorced, or widowed sisters of the husband lived in the harem. The harem would also include female slave servants, who might be the personal property of either the women or the men of the family.” Imperial Harem, loc. 171.

Just how little do we know about the Ottoman harem?

To be frank, if anyone tells you that they do know what the inner Ottoman imperial harem looked like, they are probably misrepresenting their knowledge.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, woman of letters and wife of the English ambassador to the Ottoman court in 1717-1718, said “the Ottoman harem is in no way worthy of a legendary 1980s hair metal band.” Just kidding. “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, woman of letters and wife of the English ambassador to the Ottoman court in 1717-1718, was eloquently cynical: ‘Tis certain we have but very imperfect relations of the manners and Religion of these people, this part of the World being seldom visited but by merchants who mind little but their own Affairs, or Travellers who make too short a stay to be Able to report any thing exactly of their own knowledge. The Turks are too proud to converse familiarly with merchants etc., who can only pick up some confus'd informations which are generally false. ... Tis a particular pleasure to me here to read the voyages to the Levant, which are generally so far remov'd from Truth and so full of Absurditys I am very well diverted with them. They never fail giving you an Account of the Women, which 'tis certain they never saw, and talking very wisely of the Genius of the Men, into whose Company they are never admitted, and very often describe Mosques, which they dare not peep into.” Imperial Harem, loc. 2004.

In a 1675 travelogue, writer Jean-Baptiste Tavernier wrote: “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… The nature of the sultan's love life is kept secret, I will not discuss it and I was unable to learn anything about it. It is easy to compose a fantasy on this subject but exceedingly difficult to speak accurately.” Imperial Harem, loc. 2028.

Demystifying concubinage

Concubinage 101

According to Pierce, the Ottomans believed that “a Muslim male might have four wives and an unlimited number of concubines”. Imperial Harem, loc. 171. Concubines were almost always enslaved women. These enslaved women had fewer legal rights than free Muslim women.

“The Ottomans were by no means the first or the only Muslim dynasty to practice concubinage. The second dynasty in Islam, that of the Abbasid caliphs (750-1258), had given concubinage respectability as a means of royal reproduction, which it practiced alongside legal marriage.” Imperial Harem, loc. 550.

It's very important to note that while these concubines were enslaved, a concubine had a high status and drew a stipend from the imperial treasury that allowed her to live a very comfortable life. “The Muslim concubine, once she had borne a child, enjoyed a legally and socially enhanced position. Known as ‘mother of a child’ (ümm-i veled), she could not be sold or otherwise alienated from her master’s household, and she became free upon his death... An ümm-i veled’s children were free and enjoyed equal legal and social status with the children of their father's free wife.” Imperial Harem, loc. 554. This extended even to princes born to the sultan and a concubine: “the son of a Muslim ruler by a concubine was no less eligible for the throne than his son born of a free Muslim woman.” Imperial Harem, loc. 552.

The politics of Ottoman legal marriages versus concubinage

One of the most interesting things about Ottoman sexual politics in the early modern era, however, is that the practice of legal marriage almost entirely disappeared in favor of concubinage. “Until the mid-fifteenth century the sultans took both legal wives and slave concubines.” Imperial Harem, loc. 519. But “[m]ost Ottoman marriages were arranged… at the conclusion of combat, to symbolize the defeated party’s submission and acceptance of vassal status.” Imperial Harem, loc. 523.

As the Ottomans became more and more dominant in Anatolia and then in the Balkans, however, “the sultan began to claim a preeminence that dictated a disdain for alliances with lesser powers. [N]o power was seen as worthy of such an intimate bond with the mighty and august sultanate. It was doubtless this posture of superiority, in conjuction with a growing preference for concubinage, that kept the Ottomans from contracting marriages with other Sunni Muslim dynasties such as the Mamluks, the Akkoyunlu, the Mughals, and the Uzbeks.” Imperial Harem, loc. 543.

Thus, “it may be that only the first two Ottoman rulers, Osman and Orhan, were the children of formal marriages,” (loc. 715), but “after the generations of Osman and Orhan, virtually all offspring of the sultans appear to have been born of concubine mothers.” Imperial Harem, loc. 543.