The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire

The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire PDF Author: George H. Junne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857728938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The Chief Black Eunuch, appointed personally by the Sultan, had both the ear of the leader of a vast Islamic Empire and held power over a network of spies and informers, including eunuchs and slaves throughout Constantinople and beyond. The story of these remarkable individuals, who rose from difficult beginnings to become amongst the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire, is rarely told. George Junne places their stories in the context of the wider history of African slavery, and places them at the centre of Ottoman history. The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire marks a new direction in the study of courtly politics and power in Constantinople.

The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire

The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire PDF Author: George H. Junne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857728938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The Chief Black Eunuch, appointed personally by the Sultan, had both the ear of the leader of a vast Islamic Empire and held power over a network of spies and informers, including eunuchs and slaves throughout Constantinople and beyond. The story of these remarkable individuals, who rose from difficult beginnings to become amongst the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire, is rarely told. George Junne places their stories in the context of the wider history of African slavery, and places them at the centre of Ottoman history. The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire marks a new direction in the study of courtly politics and power in Constantinople.

The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem

The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem PDF Author: Jane Hathaway
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107108292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
A study of the chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the sultan's harem in Istanbul under the Ottoman Empire.

The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire

The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire PDF Author: George H. Junne
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781350988507
Category : Eunuchs
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
At the height of the Ottoman Empire, Black eunuchs - rare, castrated slaves imported from Africa - became a key part of court politics. Unlike White eunuchs, who were only permitted outside the palace, Black eunuchs had access to the Harem - the Sultan's inner court. The chief Black Eunuch, appointed personally by the Sultan, had both the ear of the leader of a vast Islamic Empire, and power over a network of spies and informers, including eunuchs and slaves throughout Constantinople and beyond. The story of these remarkable individuals, who rose from difficult beginnings to become amongst the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire, is rarely told. The author places their stories in the context of the wider history of African slavery, and sets them at the centre of Ottoman history. This work marks a new direction in the study of courtly politics and power in Constantinople--Back cover.

The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher

The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher PDF Author: Douglas Scott Brookes
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292783353
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
In the Western imagination, the Middle Eastern harem was a place of sex, debauchery, slavery, miscegenation, power, riches, and sheer abandon. But for the women and children who actually inhabited this realm of the imperial palace, the reality was vastly different. In this collection of translated memoirs, three women who lived in the Ottoman imperial harem in Istanbul between 1876 and 1924 offer a fascinating glimpse "behind the veil" into the lives of Muslim palace women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The memoirists are Filizten, concubine to Sultan Murad V; Princess Ayse, daughter of Sultan Abdulhamid II; and Safiye, a schoolteacher who instructed the grandchildren and harem ladies of Sultan Mehmed V. Their recollections of the Ottoman harem reveal the rigid protocol and hierarchy that governed the lives of the imperial family and concubines, as well as the hundreds of slave women and black eunuchs in service to them. The memoirists show that, far from being a place of debauchery, the harem was a family home in which polite and refined behavior prevailed. Douglas Brookes explains the social structure of the nineteenth-century Ottoman palace harem in his introduction. These three memoirs, written across a half century and by women of differing social classes, offer a fuller and richer portrait of the Ottoman imperial harem than has ever before been available in English.

The Janissary Tree

The Janissary Tree PDF Author: Jason Goodwin
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571267491
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Yashim is no ordinary detective. It's not that he's particularly brave. Or that he cooks so well, or reads French novels. Not even that his best friend is the Ambassador from Poland, whose country has vanished from the map. Yashim is a eunuch. As the Sultan plans a series of radical reforms to his empire, a concubine is strangled in the palace harem. And a young cadet is found butchered in the streets of Istanbul. Delving deep into the city's crooked alleyways, and deeper still into its tumultuous past, Yashim discovers that some people will go to any lengths to preserve the traditions of the Ottoman Empire. Brilliantly evoking Istanbul in the 1830s, The Ottoman Detective is a fast-paced literary thriller with a spectacular cast, from mystic orders and lissom archivists to soup-makers and a seductive ambassador's wife. Darker than any of these is the mysterious figure who controls the Sultan's harem.

Empress of the East

Empress of the East PDF Author: Leslie Peirce
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093094
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The "fascinating . . . lively" story of the Russian slave girl Roxelana, who rose from concubine to become the only queen of the Ottoman empire (New York Times). In Empress of the East, historian Leslie Peirce tells the remarkable story of a Christian slave girl, Roxelana, who was abducted by slave traders from her Ruthenian homeland and brought to the harem of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in Istanbul. Suleyman became besotted with her and foreswore all other concubines. Then, in an unprecedented step, he freed her and married her. The bold and canny Roxelana soon became a shrewd diplomat and philanthropist, who helped Suleyman keep pace with a changing world in which women, from Isabella of Hungary to Catherine de Medici, increasingly held the reins of power. Until now Roxelana has been seen as a seductress who brought ruin to the empire, but in Empress of the East, Peirce reveals the true history of an elusive figure who transformed the Ottoman harem into an institution of imperial rule.

The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt

The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt PDF Author: Jane Hathaway
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521892940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In a lucidly argued revisionist study of Ottoman Egypt, first published in 1996, Jane Hathaway challenges the traditional view that Egypt's military elite constituted a revival of the institutions of the Mamluk sultanate. The author contends that the framework within which this elite operated was the household, a conglomerate of patron-client ties that took various forms. In this respect, she argues, Egypt's elite represented a provincial variation on an empire-wide, household-based political culture. The study focuses on the Qazdagli household. Originally, a largely Anatolian contingent within Egypt's Janissary regiment, the Qazdaglis dominated Egypt by the late eighteenth century. Using Turkish and Arabic archival sources, Jane Hathaway sheds light on the manner in which the Qazdaglis exploited the Janissary rank hierarchy, while forming strategic alliances through marriage, commercial partnerships and the patronage of palace eunuchs.

Life after the Harem

Life after the Harem PDF Author: Betül İpşirli Argit
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108488366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The first study exploring the lives of female slaves of the Ottoman imperial court, drawing from hitherto unexplored primary sources

Afropean

Afropean PDF Author: Johny Pitts
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141984732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Winner of the Jhalak Prize 'A revelation' Owen Jones 'Afropean seizes the blur of contradictions that have obscured Europe's relationship with blackness and paints it into something new, confident and lyrical' Afua Hirsch A Guardian, New Statesman and BBC History Magazine Best Book of 2019 'Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.' Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.

The Ottomans

The Ottomans PDF Author: Marc David Baer
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673778
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West. The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire’s demise after the First World War. The Ottomans vividly reveals the dynasty’s full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world.