Ottoman women

A series of archival documents recently discovered in Topkapı Palace Museum Archives and Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives in Istanbul shed light on many aspects of several Ottoman structures, which were long forgotten or little known. These documents date from a ten-year period from late seventeenth to early eighteenth century, and they are mostly building registers and letters that give invaluable information about the architectural features of structures, some of which have long disappeared. Moreover, these documents supply the details about construction techniques, materials and unit prices of the period, which are crucial for the structural analysis and preservation of those buildings. In addition, invaluable information is obtained from these documents about the construction site organization, use of spolia, kinds and prices of decorative elements used inside buildings, budgets and decision making processes in Ottoman architectural practice. These documents were composed for constructions or repairs related with a mosque, bridges, fountains and their waterways, all of which were commissioned by Gülnuş Sultan (d. 1715), who occupied the seat of Queen Mother between 1695 and 1715 in the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, this paper takes three specific structures and uses the power of archival documents to reveal an important dimension of Ottoman architectural history. By exploiting these documents to comprehend the construction materials and kinds of labor of a certain period, this paper aims at forming a basis to choose appropriate conservation techniques and materials to preserve those specific examples of heritage architecture as well as their contemporaries.

Makalede, Osmanlı’daki cinsiyet rejimi, fiziksel mekânın izleri sürülerek İstanbul örneğinde konulmaya çalışılmıştır. İstanbul, imparatorluk başkenti olması açısından diğer şehirlere örnek olması beklenen bir kent olmasının yanı sıra,  Osmanlı’daki değişimin hızını ve yönünü gösteren önemli bir laboratuvar da. İstanbul’da asayişi sağlamak üzere çıkarılan fermanlar “hukuksal mekân”ın niteliğini gösteren önemli metinlerdir. Bu nedenle, bu konu çeşitli dönemlerde kadınlara yönelik olarak çıkarılmış fermanlar üzerinden ele alınmış, Osmanlı’daki modernleşme sürecine paralel olarak dışarıya daha fazla çıkmaya başlayan kadınların, tanımlanmış mekânsal konumlarına yönelttikleri itirazlar da  ihmal edilmemiştir.

This is the first study to explore the lives of female slaves of the Ottoman imperial court, including the period following their manumission and transfer from the imperial palace. Through an analysis of a wide range of hitherto unexplored primary sources, Betül İpşirli Argıt demonstrates that the manumission of female palace slaves and their departure from the palace did not mean the severing of their ties with the imperial court; rather, it signaled the beginning of a new kind of relationship that would continue until their death. Demonstrating the diversity of experiences in non-dynastic femaleagency in the early-modern Ottoman world, Life after the Harem shows how these evolving relationships had widespread implications for multiple parties, from the manumitted female palace slaves, to the imperial court, and broader urban society. In so doing, İpşirli Argıt offers not just a new way of understanding the internal politics and dynamics of the Ottoman imperial court, but also a new way of understanding the lives of the actors within it.

My dear husband, Dr. Mehmet Ali Doğan, has been a true friend, and has offered his support in countless ways. During the summers of 2015 and 2016, which were the most intense periods of my writing, he helped me obtain much-needed books from the Harvard and Duke University libraries, in addition to taking care of our beloved son, Galip. His presence has always comforted me. I cannot begin to express my gratitude and love to my parents, my parents-in-law, and my sisters and brother, for their unconditional support and encouragement. I would also like to dedicate this work in loving memory to my dear father-in-law, Kazım Naci Doğan, a keen writer and journalist, and an idealistic, honest person, whom we lost two days before my dissertation defense. We miss him immensely.

Ants in Her Pants: Building the Narrative of Three Menstruations in Forty-two Days of Fatma from Bursa (17th Century)

Summary
A simple reading of an Ottoman era document mostly means transliteration for Ottoman historians. Few hermeneutical reading attempts are often met with sarcasm, since they do not usually overlap with historical facts. The documents, however, must be read by historians in terms of both the stories they tell and the truths they point to. That's what I'm trying to do in this short paper. (in Turkish)





Osmanlı tarihçileri için belgeleri okumak çoğunlukla transkripsiyonla eş anlamlıdır. Az sayıda anlam okuma girişimi ise genellikle metnin ta- rihsel gerçekleri ile örtüşmediğinden istihza ile karşılanır. Oysa belgeler hem anlattıkları hem de işaret ettikleri hakikatler açısından tarihçiler tarafından okunabilmelidir. Bu kısa metinde yapmaya çalıştığım budur.

Öz
Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nu şekillendiren belirleyici unsurlardan biri, millet sistemidir. Sistem içinde yer alan her cemaat kendine has dini ve kültürel özelliklerini koruma serbestliğine sahipti ve böylelikle her bir cemaat, Osmanlı kültürel zenginliğine katkı sağladı. Bu cemaatlerden biri de Yahudi cemaatiydi. Cemaatin erkekleri kadar kadınları da Osmanlı toplumsal yaşamında aktif rol oynadı. Özellikle Osmanlı kadınları arasında gelişimini ileri bir düzeye taşıma fırsatını yakalayan da Yahudi kadınları oldu. Bu ilerlemeyi, 16. ve 19. yüzyıl sürecinin öne çıkan isimleri ya da olayları gözler önüne sermektedir. Dolasıyla bu makale genel hatlarıyla evde eş ve anne; haremde kira; pazarda tüccar; şıklığıyla Kamondo ya da fabrikada çeyizi için çalışmak zorunda kalan tütüncü kız yani işçi olan Yahudi kadınlarının Osmanlı sosyoekonomik yaşamındaki yeri ve gelişimini ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Yahudi Kadını, Osmanlı Kadını, Osmanlı Yahudileri, Sefarad Kadını.
Abstract
One of the defining characteristics that shaped Ottoman Empire was its millet system. Any community that was in this system had the freedom to maintain its religious and cultural characteristics and therefore; each community made a contribution to the richness of Ottoman culture. One of these communities was Jewish community. The women, as well as men, of this community played an active role in Ottoman social life. Among all Ottoman women, it was Jewish women who had the most opportunity to improve their status. This development is clearly visible by the prominent figures and events of 16th and 19th century. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the status and development of Jewish women, who in general were wives and mothers in their home, kiera (kira) in harem, saleswoman in markets, who could match Kamondo with their beauty and had to work in factories in order to earn their dowries, in Ottoman socio-economical life.
Keywords:  Jewish woman, Ottoman woman, Ottoman Jews, Sephardic woman.

The studies on the history of Ottoman women indicate that there were a large number of sexual
assault cases in the court records. In these studies the risks of suing someone for rape and sexual allegations were
discussed. In spite of the risks seen, it is tried to understand why women choose to go to court in the light of the
knowledge given by shari’a court records. The records of the nizamî courts that appeared in the 19th century
contained much more information than the shari’a court records offered to the reader about criminal cases. The
statements of the plaintiff, the defendant and the witnesses were recorded in the interrogation reports. These files in
the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive allow us to hear the arguments of women from the first-hand who go to the
court with the claim of rape and the ways they defend themselves. This study reviews the allegations of the plaintiff,
the defence of the defendant and the testimonies of the witnesses and the records of the nizamî courts belong to a case
of 1862 and focus on how the crime of rape was punished in the 19th century. Also it is going to be tried to be
examined that after 1858 Criminal Code and the regulations made in following years, how did the state approach to
sexual assault crimes and the effect of modernization on the attitudes of women in such cases.

Though to varying degrees prominent and successful in her day, today, Grace Ellison, is largely unknown to Western readers and she is not too familiar to readers in Turkey and little is known about the details of her life. The idea/possibility of English journalist/writer Grace Ellison's being French journalist Madame Léra (Marie Léra, who wrote under the name of Marc Hélys) is the main argument of this article. In addition to this, this study concentrates on Grace Ellison and one of her neglected historical records called, " An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem (1915) " to explore the literary forgery in which she is involved.

As members of a modernizing, urban community, Ottoman women increasingly took part in the intellectual and literary public arena in the second half of the 19th century, following the development of journalistic press and printing and the expansion of public education. This essay discusses the development of the scholarship concerning Muslim literary women of the late 19th- and early 20th- century Ottoman Empire, within the general context of the rise of Ottoman history and women’s history studies in academia. It surveys Ottoman and early Republican periods, evaluates the rise of interest in the 1950s, and demonstrates the identifiable growth of specialized studies and the range of literature produced post-1990. It finally comments on the importance of employing gender as a category of analysis in the field to gain insights into women’s literary existence in this era and to avoid the marginal status of high quality work in this field in the historiography of the period.

Bu araştırmada, 19. Yüzyılda Osmanlı hanedan ailesindeki kadınların durumu hakkında bir örnek olarak Fatma Sultan’ın biyografisi ele alınmaktadır. Fatma Sultan, Tanzimat döneminin henüz başlarında, 1840’ta Sultan Abdülmecid’in kızı olarak doğdu. Osmanlı’nın modernleşme ve ıslahat devirleri olan mühim bir dönemde yetişti. Padişahın en büyük kızı olarak, babasının saltanatında imtiyazlı ve muteber bir konumdaydı. Sulta-nefendi iki defa evlendi. İlk izdivacı, henüz 14 yaşındayken, meşhur Osmanlı Sadrazamı Mustafa Reşid Paşa’nın oğlu Ali Galib Paşa ile gerçekleşti. Bu durum, hem iç kamuoyu nezdinde hem de yabancıların bakış açısında siyasi bir evlilik şeklinde algılandı. Bu ev-lilik ne Fatma Sultan ne de Ali Galib Paşa için mutlu bir netice vermedi. Çiftin 1855’te bir kızları dünyaya geldiyse de çok kısa sürede hayatını kaybetti. 1858’de ise Ali Galib Paşa ani ve talihsiz bir kaza sonucu Boğaz’da boğularak hayata veda etti. Bunun üzerine Fatma Sultan, kurenadan Mehmed Nuri Bey ile yeni bir evlilik yaptı. Bu ikinci evlilikten bir kız bir erkek olmak üzere iki çocukları olduysa da onları da birkaç yıl sonra 1860’ların başlarında kaybettiler. Böylece bu evlilik de pek iyi sonuçlar doğurmadı. Fatma Sultan’ın ikinci eşi Nuri Paşa, Sultan II. Abdülhamid tarafından teşekkül ettirilen Yıldız Mahke-mesi’nde yargılanarak Sultan Abdülaziz’in ölümüyle ilişkisi bulunduğu gerekçesiyle 1881’de idam cezasına çarptırıldı. Cezası müebbet hapse çevrildi ve diğer mahkûmlarla beraber Taif’e sürgün edildi. Fatma Sultan ise bütün bunlara karşılık hayatının son yılla-rını Baltalimanı’ndaki sarayında mahzun ve umutsuz bir vaziyette geçirdi. 1884’te orada hayata veda etti.
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This study presents a biography of Fatma Sultana as an example on the condition of female of the Ottoman Imperial Family in the 19th century. Fatma Sultana was born in 1840, the early period of the Tanzimat era, as a daughter of Sultan Abdulmedjid. She grew up in the critical era of the Ottoman modernization and reform period. As the eldest daughter of the sultan, she had a privileged and special condition in her father’s reign. Fatma Sultana was married twice. Her first marriage was when she was just 14 years old, with Ali Ghalib Pasha, son of the well-known Ottoman Grand-Vizier Mustapha Reshid Pasha. This was perceived as a political marriage, both by the domestic public and fore-igners. This marriage did not lead to happiness either for Fatma Sultana nor for Ali Ghalib Pasha. The couple had a daughter in 1855 but the child just passed away in short time. Ali Ghalib Pasha also died in 1858 in an unexpected drowning incident in Bosphorus. Thereupon the sultana was married again with Mehmed Nuri Pasha, a courtier of Sultan Abdulmedjid. While she had two children in this second marriage, these children also passed away after a few years in the early 1860s. Thus, this marriage also failed to bring about very positive results. Fatma Sultana’s second husband Nuri Pasha was put on trial by the Yildiz Court during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II and sentenced to death in 1881 due to allegations related to the death of Sultan Abdulaziz. His sentence was com-muted to life imprisonment and the pasha was exiled to Taif with other convicts. After all of this, Fatma Sultana spent her last years in Baltaliman Palace under desperate and un-happy circumstances. It was there that she passed away in 1884.

The 19th century was the century in which the urban fabric of Istanbul underwent its biggest transformation. During this period when the reform movement gained momentum, the state carried out a Western-style restructuring and introduced many new city planning regulations. Among the important developments that took place in this period after municipalities were established in 1855 were significant changes to the city plan and the building regulations put in place to facilitate and coordinate the residential areas and constructions. This process affected all spheres of society and the women of the Ottoman court emerged as commanding figures. These women left their mark on Istanbul’s urban fabric thanks to the constructions and repair of social, military, and secular architecture which they brought about either using personal savings or state funding. Modern city planning gave Ottoman construction projects a new direction, it is evident that the numbers of buildings named after and funded by the women of the Ottoman court in the 19th century gathered momentum, and these structures have left their mark on Istanbul’s skyline. This article deals with the edifices built by ladies of the Ottoman court, namely the Şah Sultan Complex (1800), the Nakşidil Valide Sultan Complex (1818), the Bezmiâlem Gurebâ Müslimîn Hospital Complex (1845), the Bâlâ Süleyman Ağa Complex (1863) and the Aksaray Valide Sultan Complex (1871). These buildings have been studiedtheir location and structural features and they were examined on contemporary maps.

Öz: Kendilerini "öteki" yoluyla tanıtma ve tanıma çabası içerisinde olan şarkiyatçılar, sıklıkla kadınların temsiline odaklanmış, anlatılarında cinsiyetlendirilmiş bir mekân olarak harem ve kafesli pencerelerin gerisinde hayattan kopuk olarak yaşayan, korunmaya muhtaç, aciz doğulu kadını betimlemişlerdir. Şarkiyatçıların edilgen olan ve "Türk Kadınları" diye genelde çoğul olarak kullanılan anlatımları, milliyetçi söylem içerisinde etkin olan ve kitleler önünde konuşabilen bir bireye dönüşür. Milliyetçi söylemde Türk kadını savaşa katkı veren "ulusun annesi" haline gelir ve kadın olarak temsil edilen vatan gibi o da korunmalıdır. Bu çalışmada, Birinci Dünya Savaşı ve sonrasında Türk kadını algısı, şarkiyatçı ve milliyetçi söylem içerisinde incelenip karşılaştırılacak, savaş zamanı Türk kadını anlatılarından örnekler verilecektir. Çalışmada amaçlanan, şarkiyatçı söylem ile milliyetçi söylemin Türk kadını betimlemeleri bağlamında karşılaştırılmasıyla her iki dil kullanımında da kadının bir araç olarak kullanıldığını göstermektir. 2 Abstract: Orientalists who are struggling to identify and recognize themselves through the "other" have often focused on women's representation, describing women in need of protection, incapable of living in a state of disarray behind harem and caged windows as gendered spaces. Orientalists' passive and often plural narrative of "Turkish Women," turns into an individual who is active and who can speak in front of masses in nationalist discourse. In the nationalist discourse, the Turkish woman becomes a "mother of the nation" who contributes to the war and therefore must be protected like the homeland represented as a woman. In this study, the perception of Turkish women during and after World War I will be examined and compared within orientalist, and nationalist discourses and examples will be given from the Turkish women's wartime narratives. By comparing the orientalist discourse and the nationalist discourse within the context of the representation of Turkish women; the study aims to show that women are used as a tool in both language usages.

Archival sources, but also self-narratives, newspapers, and periodicals, have been important sources for political and military historians of the last two decades of the Ottoman Empire in general and the First World War in particular. In recent years, an increasing number of historians have become interested in more than the political and military history of the period. The field has been broadened to include social history. Conventional sources have been reread to get a better understanding of the effects of the War on the social domains and everyday life. Self-narratives have proven to be invaluable sources for social historians working on the period. These self-narratives were not only produced by the men in charge, but by people from all walks of life: soldiers and civilians, men and women noted down their wartime experiences in their diaries or letters home and in memoirs and autobiographies. In most cases, the self-narratives used by historians were, however, those written by men in which women were objectified. In this paper, the self-narratives of women living in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War are preliminarily explored to give them a voice and turn them into subjects rather than objects.

Gülnuş Emetullah Sultan is one of the little known female sultans of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Ottoman world. At the beginning, she was the favourite of Mehmed IV and later she became queen mother during the reigns of Mustafa II and Ahmed III, and occupied an important position both in the Harem and in state politics. However, her building activities are not well known, although she surpassed her husband and sons in patronage and financed several buildings, most of which still survive, but some unfortunately have disappeared. Yet, the significance of Gülnuş Sultan for the cultural heritage is not limited with her buildings. She also repaired a series of buildings during her tenure as queen mother, and these were not investigated thoroughly so far. As a result, not only the patronage of an important Ottoman woman, but also her role in the conservation of cultural heritage was overshadowed.
This article aims to reveal the buildings that Gülnuş Sultan repaired by making use of documents from Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive and Topkapı Palace Museum Archive, as well as other primary and secondary sources. After briefly examining Gülnuş Sultan’s life and her building activities, this study will cover the repairs of fountains and waterways around Edirne and Menemen; repair of the roof, stairs and Hicr-i İsmail of Kaaba in Mecca as well as the renovation of Makam-ı İbrahim, Kaaba curtains and pulpit finials; repair of Nasrullah Efendi Mosque in Kastamonu; repair of Yasemin Hatun double bath in Anadoluhisarı; and the repair of the waterways of Vani Mehmed Efendi's complex in Bursa, Kestel. The extent, cost and significance for architectural history of these repairs will be revealed, and the reason why Gülnuş Sultan undertook these repairs will be determined. Thus, a little known woman sultan’s uncommon and overlooked efforts for the conservation of cultural heritage will be brought into day light.

Before the dawn of our narcissistic modern age, detailed accounts of intimate life-and particularly of the intimate lives of women-are excruciatingly rare, presenting a perpetual problem for historians. What a surprise, then, to discover that one of the richest sources to shed light on intimate life in 17-century Europe comes from the pen of one the continent's most voiceless historical subjects: a Muslim slave. Osman of Timişoara, a young soldier in a provincial Ottoman cavalry unit, was taken prisoner by the Habsburg army in 1688 and spent the next twelve years as a captive, forced to work first as a stable boy, and later as a household servant to a family of Viennese aristocrats. Many years later, after a daring escape and a successful return to Ottoman territory, he wrote an account of his experience, known today by the title Prisoner of the