Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [106]
Many of these women lived and died without so much as a smile from His Majesty; others were smiled at, and for this reason promoted to the rank of gözde, meaning “in the eye” (of the Sultan) but never got any further than that; others were invited to the royal couch one or more times, which made them ikbal, or royal favorites, and entitled them to an increase in jewels and silk dresses and a private bedroom; and at the top of the ladder were the kadins, the first four concubines who produced children. The Sultan by tradition did not marry, but a kadin had the rank of wife except that no dower was settled on her, as is required in the Moslem marriage contract. The chief reason for this arrangement was to save money for the state, since a suitable dower for a Sultan’s wife would have seriously embarrassed the treasury. Süleiman the Magnificent defied tradition and married his favorite, Roxelana; and it was she who moved the women’s quarters—formerly in another part of the city—into the Seraglio. When Süleiman died, Roxelana became the power behind the throne of her son Selim the Sot, and for a hundred and fifty years thereafter a succession of ruthless, conniving queen mothers were the real rulers of Turkey. They were abetted by a verse in the Koran which reads, “Paradise is under the feet of thy Mother.” Ottoman “momism” was particularly unattractive because these old ladies were not only dominating but as evil as could be. They had to be evil or they would have been trampled in the general rush of some fifteen hundred women for the most powerful position in the world.
In selecting a concubine, a Sultan held a regular weekly levee at which the virgins of the harem were brought in for his inspection; he dropped a handkerchief at the feet of the one who pleased him most, indicating that she was gözde and might hope for a summons to the royal bedchamber. When this came she was dressed in silk and jewels and perfumed with ambergris, with kohl on her eyes and henna on her fingernails, and conducted to the Sultan by the Chief Black Eunuch, all in strict secrecy so that the other women wouldn’t be waiting to scratch her eyes out the moment she got back. The Sultan’s bed had wrought-silver bedposts topped with crystal lions holding in their teeth a gold cloth canopy. He liked the idea of owning a bed, like European rulers, but he slept, as his ancestors did in their tents, on a mattress spread on the floor. Two old Moorish women stood at his head with burning torches so that he might have light to say his beads at the last and the first hours of prayer, as the Koran frowns on praying in the dark. “Thus he rests,” soliloquized Baudier, “which troubles all Europe, disquiets Asia and afflicts Africa.”
A concubine arriving to spend the night was required to enter the bed from the foot, inching her way up under the covers until she lay level with the Sultan. This performance was also expected of husbands of the Sultan’s daughters. These princesses, who wore a silver dagger at their belts to remind their consorts of who outranked whom, were in no demand at all as brides, for their husbands not only took orders from them, but could claim no special familiarity with their father-in-law. Children of such unions were not allowed at court at all, and the princesses’ dowries could not be inherited by husband or children but reverted to the sultanate, as, indeed, did all the wealth of even the greatest pashas in this slave state.
The strange life of the Grand Seraglio began to languish after the destruction of the janissaries and the partial Europeanization of the Sultans. A new, elaborate palace was built on the Bosporus, and after 1851 the old Seraglio was used only to house the harems of Sultans who had died. One of the last official events there took place in 1909, after Abdül-Hamid II had been deposed and forcibly retired to Adrianople together with fifteen concubines, a guard of eunuchs, and his favorite cat. A public