The Ottoman sultans are famous for their decadence and power. Everyone whom the sultan encountered was a slave of one sort or another. As I would learn later at the symposium, the slave system was much more complex and open than other systems. Even so slavery is by its very nature a relationship distinguished by the utter domination of one person by another no matter how elite.
All of the women of the sultan's harem were slaves captured or traded with non-Muslim countries. No women were part of the palace or had any influence other than the harem. In other words every sultan's mother was in fact a slave who at one time was non-Muslim.
The harem consisted of many dozens of women. Serving them was a staff of dozens of eunuchs. As time progressed Ottoman sultans supposedly became more and more attached to the harem and didn't pay as much attention to statecraft. Eunuchs apparently played an important role during this time because of their special access to the sultan that no other men had. The queen mother also projected power, especially in the rare occasions when the sultan was a child.
I asked one of the history scholars about issues of race and ruling. Since the sultans would be more descended from Serbians and Russians than Turks, how did his racial background relate to his rule as the leader of the Turks. The Ottoman Empire was quite multiracial, and the Turks did have a sense of racial hierarchy in their rule. What the professor said was that the sultan and frankly everyone else serving at the palace were completely "Turkified." Turkish was the only language that they learned (other than Arabic for worship) for example. Much like the United States today the definition of who is American is cultural rather than racial. Modern Turkey is much the same, said the historian. Not infrequently a Turk today will have grandparents belonging to several different ethnic groups.
[The bathing area for the women of the harem. That is a water faucet at the bottom.]
At one place in the palace is a museum for the relics of the prophet Mohammad and other earlier prophets. I saw prophet Joseph's turban, prophet David's sword, prophet Moses's rod, and plenty of parts of Mohammad's beard. Also included were parts of the Ka'aba such as the locks, keys, and rain gutters. In the reliquary rooms were heard over the loudspeakers a continual reading from the Qur'an. In the last room I discovered that the voice was actually a live man reading into a microphone.
No pictures of the relics. If you want to see what David's sword looks like, I guess that you can search for images on your own.
[Plenty of school groups were visiting Topkapi went I was there. The soldier with the automatic weapon seemed out of place. He was the only armed soldier that I have seen so far on this trip.]
The sultan's close government officials were also often slaves brought up in the system that captured young boys from the Balkans (see one of the first posts for a reference to this process.) Even the Grand Vizier himself was essentially a slave.
The high government officials would meet in the Divan, a room with a row of couches all around (hence the name of the furniture piece, the divan). The sultan had a covered window from the harem from which he could look down on the proceedings. However, the officials had no idea whether or not the sultan was present at the window, so they always had to be on their best behavior.
My favorite area in the whole palace, however, was a special chamber in the harem that the famous architect Sinan designed. I had a much better view of his master vision in this room than in the Turkish bath that I mentioned in a previous post. What Sinan was great at doing was solving problems of scale and balance.
One of the walls of the chamber that Sinan designed. Above this picture would be the dome. With the calligraphy, the dome and the tiles this room looked like a small mosque.
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