Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Most Ottoman women were permitted to participate in the legal system, purchase and sell property, inherit and bequeath wealth, and participate in other financial activities, rights which were unusual in the rest of Europe until the 19th century. Women's social life was often one of relative seclusion.
This period was novel for the Ottoman Empire but not without precedent since the Seljuk rulers, the predecessors to the Ottomans, often let noble women play an active role in public policy and affairs, despite the resistance of other male officials. [2] [page needed] During the fourteenth century, the agency of women in government began to shrink.
A cariye or imperial concubine.. The Imperial Harem (Ottoman Turkish: حرم همايون, romanized: Harem-i Hümâyûn) of the Ottoman Empire was the Ottoman sultan's harem – composed of the concubines, wives, servants (both female slaves and eunuchs), female relatives and the sultan's concubines – occupying a secluded portion (seraglio) of the Ottoman imperial household. [1]
The Ottoman Imperial Harem was similar to a training institution for concubines, and served as a way to get closer to the Ottoman elite. [114] Women from lower-class families had especially good opportunities for social mobility in the imperial harem because they could be trained to be concubines for high-ranking military officials. [114]
She was the most powerful imperial princess in Ottoman history and one of the prominent figures during the Sultanate of Women. Her ability and power, and her running of the affairs of the harem in the same manner as the sultan's mother, resulted in Mihrimah being referred to as Valide Sultan for Selim II , although she was not called by this ...
Some women of an Ottoman harem, especially wives, mothers and sisters of sultans, played very important political roles in Ottoman history, and during the period of the Sultanate of Women, it was common for foreign visitors and ambassadors to claim that the Empire was, de facto ruled by the women in the Imperial Harem. [117]
What is clearly confirmed is that Esther Handali was the kira of Nurbanu Sultan from at least 1566 onward, when Nurbanu became the favoured consort of the reigning sultan. . As was common for a kira, she became her the trusted confidant of her client, and her tasks soon expanded from acting as intermediary for merchant goods to acting as intermediary for other money transactions, and from ...
Ottoman literary culture, particularly poetry, openly discussed gender and sexuality (including same-sex love and desire) until the 19th century. Various poets debated the most beautiful form of love, whether female or male. Some poets focused only on the love between men and women, some on the love between women, and some only on love between men.