sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

MYTH‐SPINNING and TWO LATE 16 th CENTURY OTTOMAN ROYAL
WOMEN: NURBANU and SAFIYE SULTANS
Şefik PEKSEVGEN *
Nurbanu (d. 1583) and Safiye (d. 1603) 1 sultans are two of the most illustrious examples of queen
mothers who dominated the Ottoman court politics 2 more than hundred and fifty years in the 16 th
and 17 th centuries. Nurbanu was the legal wife of Selim II (r. 1566‐1574) and the queen mother,
valide, of Selim’s son, the next sultan Murad III (r. 1574‐1595). Safiye was the concubine of Murad III
and the queen mother of Mehmed III (r. 1595‐1603). Although famous historian of the period
Mustafa Ali claims that Safiye became the legal wife of Murad, especially foreign sources from the
period claim that she did not. 3 Beginning with Hürrem Sultan (d. 1558), the legal wife of Süleyman I
(r. 1520‐1566), royal women of the Ottoman Court became the most important power contenders of
the Ottoman politics. Besides Hürrem, Nurbanu and Safiye sultans, the queen mothers of the
seventeenth century such as Kösem and Turhan Sultans also concentrated immense power in their
hands through their own networks of favorites and protégés.
The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the growing interest in popular historical
productions on the lives of Ottoman royal women in the absence of genuine scholarly monographs.
Stated as such my purpose is not a factual corrective based on archival research but a
historiographical one which evaluates representations of these women in popular historical
productions which lead to a myth‐spinning with layers of mere fantasies. At this point it should be
stated that there can be nothing wrong about writing and reading historical novels. However, when
the only available materials on Ottoman royal women are popular historical productions and when
people talk about certain historical facts which one never encounters in primary sources or academic
studies, it might be thought that somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.
It is not difficult to understand how the lives of these women take the attention of a popular
audience. As they are presented in popular historical novels, films, TV‐series they command an
impressive political and economic power in one of the most powerful early modern empires. In the
view of the professional Ottoman historians the attention royal women receive is also wellgrounded.
The political role played by these women first took the attention of Ahmed Refik in the
early 20 th century who coined the term ‘Sultanate of Women’ 4 in his book with the same title.
Although Ahmed Refik did not provide detailed monographic studies on the lives of each of these
women, his pejorative reading of these women’s power became the historiographical trademark for
the decades to come. More importantly, the political influence they exert on the business of state,
domestic and foreign, made these women the major players of the long Ottoman decline.
Until 1993 when Leslie Peirce published her pioneering study, Imperial Harem, and tried to
correct many assumptions and misunderstandings about the Ottoman royal women this view was
not seriously challenged. 5 However, although more than twenty years passed after the publication of
Pierce’s work, most of these assumptions seem to be propagated both in academic and popular
levels. The term ‘Sultanate of Women’ is still in currency because the term seems to refer to a real
situation.
Although the power enjoyed by Ottoman royal women can be documented by both Ottoman and
foreign sources for a conventional Ottoman historiography it was difficult to find a place for these
women as legitimate political actors in the Ottoman imperial establishment. It was usually accepted
that shifting power balances and obscuring of classical boundaries of power during the post‐
Süleymanic era were a result of the illicit interference of royal women into the business of state. The
post‐Süleymanic era, especially the later half of the sixteenth century witnessed an overturn of the
established political system and hierarchical order. Social, economic and political changes that began
*
Yeditepe University, Department of History.