The Harem: Inside the Grand Seraglio of the Turkish Sultans

INDEX

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

IT would probably be impossible to think of any Eastern institution that is more familiar by name to the whole of the Western world but less understood in actual fact than the harem. From early childhood we have heard of the Turkish harem, and have been told that it is a place where hundreds of lovely women are kept locked up for the sole pleasure of a single master. And as we grow up but little is added to this early information. We perhaps realize the difference between wives and concubines, and appreciate their position in Muhammadan law. We may even discover that very few Turks ever had more than one wife, and that few could afford to keep more than a negro cook as maid-of-all-work. But most of us still imagine that the Sultan is—or, rather, was—a vicious old reprobate, spending all his time in the harem, surrounded by hundreds of semi-naked women, in an atmosphere of heavy perfume, cool fountains, soft music, and over-indulgence in every conceivable kind of vice that the united brains of jealous, sex-starved women could invent for the pleasure of their lord.

There are perhaps two main reasons why such false ideas have lingered so long in the Western mind. In the first place, so great has been the secrecy which has always surrounded the Imperial harem that first-hand and reliable information was seldom forthcoming. In the second place, the dividing line between fact and fiction, as far as the harem was concerned, was very thin and ill defined. After all, it had only been popularized in Western Europe early in the eighteenth century, when Antoine Galland first published the Arabian Nights, and the public were much too intrigued by the novelty and fascination of the tales themselves to entertain any desire to question the mise en scène or seek to dissipate the clouds of romance and hyperbole that hung so heavily over this newly discovered creation of the Orient.

The vague, and sometimes conflicting, descriptions of travellers that followed, the meagre accounts of English governesses and companions, the letters and diaries of ambassadors’ wives or secretaries, were the sole sources of information. But even so the number of the intelligent reading public was small, while many of the more important first-hand accounts still remained in manuscript, and had long since found their resting-place amid a host of dusty archives or on the shelves of some State library uncatalogued and forgotten. Thus all kinds of misunderstandings, exaggerations, distortions, and occasionally deliberate fabrications, have merely tended to add confusion to the indifferent and scanty accounts of the harem already existing.

It is not only in the more intimate details of Court etiquette that misconceptions have occurred, but even in generalities, the appreciation of which is absolutely necessary to the understanding of the whole harem system. For instance, it is still quite widely believed that harem rule was coeval with the great days of the Ottoman Empire—with the first Murad, Bayezid, Muhammad, Selim, and Suleiman the Magnificent—whereas in reality the harem must not be connected with the Ottoman power at its height, but should be looked upon as the beginning of its decline and fall. To the early rulers of Turkey the harem was unknown; it was unwanted. They were much too busy overcoming their numerous foes and establishing an empire to find time to indulge the appetite for a sensual life that only follows in the wake of security, well-filled treasuries, and abundance of leisure. Yet it must not be imagined that the harem system was solely responsible for the ultimate fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was not the system that was wrong, it was those in charge of it. So far from being a palace of women lazing about marble halls awaiting their master’s pleasure, the harem was a little world of its own, governed with the utmost deliberation and care, not by a man at all, but by a woman. Every member of it had her exact duties to perform, and was forced to comply with all the rules and regulations that in many respects were as strict and rigid as in a convent.

No one knew the etiquette of the harem more than the Sultan, and once it was respected all would be well. Even if that great lady the Sultan’s mother and the Grand Vizir were placated he still had the janissaries to reckon with. A Sultan could go so far, but no farther: deposition was certain and death probable.

And yet it is hard to lay all the blame on a man who may have spent his whole life locked up in a room in the Palace, suddenly to find himself set free and hailed as Sultan. No wonder excesses often followed, with dire results to all concerned. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A nation born and bred in slavery and dependent on slavery for its very existence is safe only so long as the machine runs smoothly, but as soon as a single cog ceases to function the whole mechanism may be affected. At the same time the machine may be well worth a close inspection, and here and there we may come across a part that will hold our interest, and perhaps even teach us something as well.

For instance, the enormous activities of the Palace seem to have almost entirely escaped general notice, and while idle curiosity has always centred on the harem, the fact that the Palace contained a great military School of State, over a dozen mosques, ten double kitchens, two bakeries, a flour-mill, two hospitals, and various kinds of baths, storerooms, sports fields, etc., is almost wholly ignored.

It is impossible to understand the harem unless we consider it merely as a single unit in a large and highly complicated system.

As the work proceeds the harem will appear in its right perspective; it will no longer be a vague term used as synonymous with Seraglio, but will be clearly defined as regards its scope, and described as fully as possible with the aid of a detailed plan and occasional photographs. And here it is necessary to be quite clear as to the real meaning of words such as harem and seraglio. Let us take harem ar m, al l, ar m— ar m, ar m, and added to it the termination lik. ar mlik. The suffix when added to substantives denotes place, and the ‘place of sanctuary’ exactly expresses that portion of the house allotted to the wife, her children and servants.

ar m is more correctly applied to the personnel ar mlik, although the shorter form is now almost universally adopted with all its various meanings. But in the case of the word sel mlik, which signifies the domain of the husband, no change has occurred. This could not well be otherwise, as sel m simply means ‘greeting’ or ‘salutation,’ and the one place in the house where guests could be received was naturally the sel mlik.

Relations with European Powers soon gave rise to the coining of a ar mlik and the sel mlik, but the entire Royal buildings as a whole. By a curious Italian adaptation of a Persian word the term seraglio was introduced, and came to be generally accepted by both Europeans and Turks. Its etymological history is interesting, and helps to explain its exact meaning. The modern seraglio is directly derived from the Italian serraglio, ‘a cage for wild animals’ (Latin sera, ‘a bar,’ with aculum added as suffix), and was adopted owing to its chance similarity with the Persian words sar and sar , which originally simply meant ‘a building,’ and particularly ‘a palace,’ and which are familiar to us in the word ‘caravanserai’ (Persian karw nsar ), ‘a (halting) place for camels,’ and so ‘an inn for travellers.’ In its proper sense of ‘a building’ or ‘a palace’ sar was largely used by the Tatars, from whom it was borrowed by the Russians, who degraded it to mean merely a shed.’ But in the language of the Levantine Franks it became serail and serraglio. It was at this point that a mistaken ‘striving after meaning’ with the Italian serrato, ‘shut up,’ etc., connected it with the private apartments of women. But as the old idea of ‘palace’ was still recognized in both serail and seraglio (spelled now with one ‘r’) they were universally adopted to mean the entire Royal Palace on the hill of the ancient Byzantine acropolis. In fact, the peninsula itself became known as Seraglio Point, and is still so called to-day.

The adoption in recent years of the Western alphabet and phonetic spelling has caused many curious-looking words to appear, and it is with difficulty that some of them can be recognized at all. The tourist of to-day on getting into a taxi in Pera and wishing to go to the Seraglio should ask for the Topkapi Sarayi, and he will at once be understood. As mentioned in the Preface, the meaning of the phrase is ‘the Palace of the Cannon Gate,’ and refers to an old gate that once stood at the very tip of Seraglio Point, and which was protected by several pieces of cannon now in the arms museum in the ancient church of St Irene. The 1933 Turkish guide-book to the Seraglio calls itself Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi Rehberi (Guide to the Museum of the Cannon Gate Palace).¹ But in spite of this the terms seraglio and the abbreviated serail or serail are in general use, especially among foreigners.

Yet the visitor may be perplexed when the hotel guide asks him if he has yet visited the Old Serai, or Vieux Séraï, especially if he already knows that the Old Serai, or Eski Serai, was pulled down long ago and the site first occupied by the Seraskerat, or War Office, erected in 1870, and then, since 1924, by the University.

But the reference is really to the Seraglio. The explanation is as follows: after Muhammad II had taken Constantinople he built a palace on the Third Hill in 1454, and when between 1459 and 1465 the larger palace on the First Hill superseded it the former was known as Eski Serai, or Old Serai, while the latter was called Yeni Serai, or New Serai. Among European writers, however, it was usually referred to as the Grand Seraglio.

Now when the Yeni Serai was abandoned in 1853 it immediately was called the Old Palace by Europeans. The Turks, however, preferred to call it the Top Capu (now spelled Topkapi) Sarayi.

Even so that is not all, because in 1709 Ahmed III had started building a summer palace near the Marmora on Seraglio Point. This palace was also known to the Turks as Top Capu Sarayi, but to us merely as the Summer Palace. It was totally destroyed in 1862–63. It will thus be seen that there is plenty of justification for the visitor to be confused by the redundance of names. I find it clearest to refer to the 1454 palace as the Old Serai or Old Seraglio, that which forms the subject of the present work as the Grand Seraglio, or simply the Seraglio, and the 1709 one as the Summer Palace. In this way, I think, everything will be clear.

ar m, sel mlik, and seraglio, we can appreciate the fact that, whereas the former two must be used only to refer to the apartments of the women and the men respectively, the term seraglio can be very conveniently employed for the entire Palace and all its buildings.

As is well known, among all Eastern nations the gate was most important both architecturally and politically, whether it was the gate of the city wall, the gate of the palace, or the gate of a private dwelling. We have just noticed that the Seraglio itself is known by the name of a gate; the seat of Ottoman Government was named after a gate—the Bab-i-Humayun, or Sublime Porte. So also the divisions of any large building were regulated by its gates. I shall have a good deal to say about gates later; here I am merely anxious to stress the importance of gates not only in the understanding of the plan of the Seraglio, but in giving their name to the court into which they lead, and in some cases to the buildings surrounding or in the vicinity of that court.

ar mlik and the sel mlik were the two main divisions of the buildings which formed the private apartments of the Royal household, there were other buildings beyond the famous Gate of Felicity, or Bab-i-Sa‘adet as it was called. Hence all that unknown part of the Seraglio beyond that gate was known as the House of Felicity.

As we shall see in a later chapter, the semi-public First Court was bounded on its inner side by a thick wall pierced by a gate known as the Ortakapi, past which admittance was limited to those seeking audience at the Divan. Only the Sultan was allowed to proceed past this gate on horseback. From the Second Court access was gained to the House of Felicity only through the Gate of Felicity, and only members of the Sultan’s own household were allowed entrance.

With these few details we are in a much better position to understand the early descriptions of the Seraglio that have come down to us, and from what direction attempts to view the Palace were made, and how far the would-be sightseers got.

During the whole period over which the Seraglio continued to be the Royal residence the number of people who claim with good justification to have seen any part of it past the Gate of Felicity can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even if we include men who at one time were actually employed in the Inside Service of the Seraglio itself, the total still remains under a dozen.

ar m was still trivial and unreliable, if, indeed, any was forthcoming at all. Thus the first three accounts, those by Angiolello (1470–81), Bassano da Zara (c. 1530–40), and Menavino (c. 1545), deal almost entirely with the Palace School. Bassano da Zara, however, discourses on the general manners and customs of the Turks as well, and I shall have occasion to refer to his work again.

ar m is contained in a description of Constantinople by one Domenico Hierosolimitano, entitled Relatione della gran città di Costantinopoli² (sicar m ar m ar m still remained the place of mystery it ever was.

In 1615 the well-known traveller Pietro della Valle had told his readers that nothing could be learned about what existed beyond the Gate of Felicity. And as recently as 1926 we find such an authority as Sir George Young telling us the same thing, only in an even more emphatic way. Up till now, he says,

the Seraglio Hareem and the Hirkai Sherif Odassi [Chamber of the Holy Mantle] remain two of the very few places on earth that no Anglo-Saxon or American foot has as yet trod. As the Pole used to be for explorers—as Everest still is for mountaineers—so have the Sultan’s Hareem and the Hirkai Sherif been for tourists.³

ar m was well kept, and even in recent years when Yildiz housed 370 women and 127 eunuchs in the service of Abd ul-Hamid II nothing was really known until after the fall of the Sultan.

ar m ar m system definitely ended in 1909. There are many accounts of its dispersal and the first and last public appearance of the women. Perhaps the best version is that given by Francis McCullagh,:

One of the most mournful processions of the many mournful processions of fallen grandeur that passed through the streets during these days was one composed of the ladies from the ex-Sultan’s Harem on their way from Yildiz to the Top-Kapu Palace [the Seraglio]. These unfortunate ladies were of all ages between fifteen and fifty and so numerous that it took thirty-one carriages to convey them and their attendants. Some of them were sent to the Old Seraglio in Stamboul, but this old palace of the early Sultans had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it was found to be unsuitable for them and they were sent back again to Yildiz. Finally they were all collected in the Top-Kapu Palace in connection with one of the strangest ceremonies that ever took place even there. It is well known that most of the ladies in the harems of the Turkish Sultans were Circassians, the Circassian girls being very much esteemed on account of their beauty and being consequently very expensive. As Abd-ul-Hamid’s Seraglio was no exception to this general rule, the Turkish Government telegraphed to the different Circassian villages in Anatolian, notifying them that every family which happened to have any of its female members in the ex-Sultan’s Harem was at liberty to take them home, no matter whether the girls had been originally sold by their parents or had (as was the case in some instances) been torn from their homes by force.

In consequence of this, a large number of Circassian mountaineers came in their picturesque garb into Constantinople, and on a certain fixed day they were conducted in a body to the Old Palace of Top-Kapu, where, in the presence of a Turkish Commission, they were ushered into a long hall filled with the ex-Sultan’s concubines, cadines and odalisques, all of whom were then allowed to unveil themselves for the occasion. The scene that followed was very touching. Daughters fell into the arms of their fathers whom they had not seen for years, Sisters embraced brothers or cousins, and in some instances relatives met who had never met before, and were only able to establish their relationship by means of long and mutual explanations.

THE ROOFS OF THE SERAGLIO, SHOWING THE SEL MLIK AND ADJOINING BUILDINGS

The contrast between the delicate complexions and costly attire of the women and the rough, weather-beaten appearance of the ill-clad mountaineers who had come to fetch them home was not the least striking feature of the extraordinary scene; and in some instances the poor relatives were quite dazzled by the beautiful faces, the graceful manners, and the rich apparel of their kinswomen. The latter seemed all very glad, however, to get away; and as a rule they lost no time in packing their trunks and departing, sometimes after a very affectionate leave-taking of the other odalisques. The number of female slaves thus liberated was two hundred and thirteen.

Clad in Circassian peasant dress, they are now in all probability milking cows and doing farm work in Anatolia. . . . This joyful reunion in the Top-Kapu Palace had its sad side, however, as more than one of the men did not fmd the face he sought. Some of the girls had died, some had been put to death by Abd-ul-Hamid, and others of them, after Abd-ul-Hamid’s fall, had been brought with him to Salonica by the ex-Sultan or quietly drafted into the harems of imperial princes who had taken a fancy to them. Moreover a good many of the women, especially those who had already passed their first youth, were disheartened to learn that nobody came to fetch them. Apparently their relatives had died or migrated, or did not relish the prospect of bringing back into their miserable mountain huts women no longer young, who had contracted expensive tastes and forgotten the language of their childhood. . . . These unfortunate ladies will probably pine away the rest of their lives in company with the other ladies—remnants of the Harems of the past Sultans—who fill the Top-Kapu Palace and who, in the best manner of the Arabian Nights, sigh audibly at the barred and latticed windows and have on one or two occasions dropped roses and perfumed handkerchiefs before good-looking youths passing in the street below.⁴

Sic transit . . . ar m.

As soon as the few remaining women had been allotted other residences in the town the treasures in the Seraglio were arranged as a museum, and after long preparation it was open for inspection to a selected few. Then gradually other rooms were thrown open, and the public were finally allowed to inspect them on payment of a small entrance fee.

Thus in the autumn of 1924 the chief local guide-book afforded the following information :

At the moment one may visit:

The Bagdad Kieuschk.

The Moustapha Pacha Kieuschk.

The Terrace of the Abdul Medjid Pavilion.

The Museum of Porcelaines.

The Reception Room or Arz Odassi.

During the next ten years more and more rooms were opened, until in 1933 it was possible to publish an official guide-book and lay down exactly what rooms were open and what closed. This was most necessary, as previously no fixed rule appeared to exist by which a tourist was able to discover what portions of the Seraglio he could see and what portions he could not see. He was merely passed on from one official to another by means of beckoning and pointing. And although this method of direction still obtains to a certain degree, signboards and notices are put up everywhere.

The guide-book, unfortunately, was only published in modern Turkish, but the Director informed me that by the end of 1936 he hoped to have an edition in French or English. At the end of the guide is an excellent map showing clearly the exact itinerary to be followed, while a list of the rooms and courtyards is attached. This list is arranged in two columns. That to the left includes all places open to the public (Gezilen Yerler)—forty-two in all—while in the right-hand column are those which are closed (Gezilmiyen Yerler)— only thirty-eight in number. Thus at first sight it would appear that the visitor is free to inspect more than half the Seraglio. A closer inspection of the list, however, will reveal the fact that this is not the case, for in the Gezilen list several rooms of a single suite are numbered separately, while in the Gezilmiyen list they are not. Then, again, there are many places on the map left entirely blank, without any numbers at all. These would swell the ‘taboo’ list quite considerably.

At the same time the intelligent visitor can get a good idea of the main features of the Palace, and, quite apart from the glories of the Treasury, can obtain first-hand information on the interior decoration of the Turkish, Syrian, Arabic, and Persian schools. But unless he has studied the history of the Seraglio he will go away little wiser than he came, seeing only a jumble of rather tawdry little rooms, not to be compared in size or splendour with others he has seen in palaces in nearly every other part of Europe or the Near East. It is he who will be the loser, for no more interesting or grimly romantic spot exists in the world to-day. It is in the attempt to supply such necessary information, in however small and inadequate a way, that the present work has been written.

Every author writing on Constantinople has endeavoured, some more successfully than others, to give a general impression of the Seraglio as a whole. But excellent as the descriptions may be they can never convey to the reader as much as really good modern photographs. There has always been the greatest difficulty in obtaining photographs, and in the 1933 guide-book it is very definitely stated more than once that no cameras are allowed past the entrance gate, and no photographs whatever may be taken.

ar m roofs is really most extraordinary, as I trust my readers will agree from an inspection of the photographs themselves (see the plates facing pp. 20 and 24).

ar m in its relation to the sel mlik has been obtained. It is one thing to photograph the roofs, and quite another thing to identify what rooms the forest of chimneys and domes surmounts. A thorough knowledge of the Palace is necessary for this, so I make no excuse for describing the pictures in detail. For the sake of future reference or comparison, I may mention that I took these photographs on September 28, 1934. The photograph reproduced opposite p. 20 gives us a view of the Palace buildings that stretch out along the apex of Seraglio Hill towards the Bosphorus. They include practically the whole of the sel mlik and the quarters to the left of the Hall of the Divan. Low down in the middle foreground is the roof of the canopy in the courtyard of the black eunuchs. To the left are the windows and roof of the Princes’ School (No. 36 in the plan at the end of the book), and in the extreme bottom left-hand corner we can see the beginning of the roof of the black eunuchs’ dormitories (No. 35 in the plan).

ar m Treasurer and Chamberlain (Nos. 38 and 39), while to the right are the cupolas of the Inner Treasury, now the Arms Museum (No. 26). In the very middle and a little to the left are (respectively) the low and high cupolas of the Chief Black Eunuch’s suite (No. 37). Beyond the wall to the right is the mosque of the Palace School, now the Library (No. 98); while stretching away in the distance to a point where Marmora and Bosphorus meet we can just identify, among other buildings, the Hall of the Royal Bedchamber (No. 111), the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle (No. 110), the Hall of Circumcision (No. 94), the suite of the Princes, known as the Cage (No. 90), and, finally, the Revan and Baghdad Kiosks (Nos. 113 and 114).

Reference to the plan at the end of the book will greatly facilitate the identification of the various buildings.

ar m and that part of the sel mlik ar m ar m (No. 54)·

THE ROOFS OF THE SERAGLIO, SHOWING THE AR M BUILDINGS

Continuing along the outer wall, we notice the suites of the Sultan Validé, mother of the reigning Sultan (Nos. 65–68), and Selim III (No. 83), with a pointed cupola. Farther still can be seen the wall kiosk of Osman III (No. 85). The three square chimney-stacks surmount fireplaces in the rooms of the Sultan Validé nearest the courtyard, while the dome to the left covers her dining-room (No. 67).

ar m (No. 77) and the bedroom of Murad III (No. 87).

And here I may be allowed to say, without any boastful intent, that at this moment of writing I know of no person whatever who has seen more of the Seraglio than I have myself. The point is of more interest than it may appear. The student of Oriental history or sociology may go to Istanbul armed with letters to the Director of Public Works, the Curator of the Museum, and so on, and after much palaver and patience be specially conducted over those parts of the Seraglio not shown to the general public. After hours of inspecting rooms, passages, courtyards, kitchens, etc., he will be politely told that he has seen everything. And who is he to say them nay? By this time his mind has become so bewildered by the labyrinthine nature of the place that as far as he can judge he has seen everything. It is not that the authorities have anything to hide or any wish to deceive, but there are many parts of the Seraglio that, for one reason or another, are not in a fit state to be shown to visitors. And when the authorities say they have shown you everything they mean everything that is in a fit state to be shown, or that, as far as they can judge, could be of any possible interest to you.

Each time I went to the Seraglio I discovered some part I had not seen before. Sometimes it was a connecting corridor that had been passed previously as of no interest; on other occasions it was a small room to which the key had not been found on former visits. Once I came upon a flight of steps of the existence of which I had had no idea. Then, again, my persistence led me one day to a part of the girls’ hospital that my guide himself had never seen before, and in front of one doorway the cobwebs were over three feet high, and so thick that we had to get two long sticks to remove them before it was possible to enter. I merely mention all this to show how intricate and misleading the place is, and how difficult it is to attempt to make a plan of such a conglomeration of buildings of all shapes and sizes, erected in different styles at different times, and, worst of all, on different levels.

Even now I am convinced that there are still parts of the Seraglio that I have not seen: some because the