The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch in Ceremonies and Festivals

The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch in Ceremonies and FestivalsAuthor(s): Jane Hathaway Source: Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association , Vol. 6, No. 1, Ceremonies, Festivals, and Rituals in the Ottoman World (Spring 2019), pp. 21-37 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jottturstuass.6.1.04 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch in Ceremonies and Festivals Jane Hathaway AbstrAct: The Ottoman chief harem eunuch played an essential role in court ceremonies and festivals from the inception of the office of chief harem eunuch in 1588 through the mid-eighteenth century. This article examines changes in his ceremonial role over this time span. He was most instrumental in the celebration of milestone life cycle events such as circumcisions and weddings, which were often the occasion for lavish public spectacles. Over this 160-year period, the public visibility of his function in these events steadily increased. Meanwhile, he acquired new ceremonial functions. In the late seventeenth century, future chief eunuchs delivered congratulatory gifts to the Köprülü grand viziers after landmark military victories. In the eighteenth century, they presided over the springtime entertainments known as the Çırağan Eğlenceleri. In all these cases, the chief eunuch performed a mediating role, guiding members of the imperial family from one stage of life to another and from one palace space to another, or transporting valuable goods across spatial boundaries. At the same time, he reinforced the boundaries between different parts of the palace and between public and private spaces. Whenever the Ottoman sultan, his sons, or the women of his harem participated in a lavish celebration or a landmark life cycle ritual, the chief eunuch of the imperial harem was close at hand. This official headed the corps of mostly African eunuchs, numbering some three to five hundred by the late sixteenth century, who guarded the harem of Topkapı Palace.1 The office was formally created in 1588, when Sultan Murad III, who had chosen to reside in the harem, named the head of the harem eunuchs supervisor of the imperial pious foundations for Mecca and Medina (Evkâfü’l-haremeyn).2 From that 1. On the African provenance of Ottoman harem eunuchs and on race and gender questions pertaining to them, see Jane Hathaway, The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem: From African Slave to Power-Broker (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), ch. 2. 2. Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Mühimme Defteri 62, no. 563, p. 249 (2 Receb 996/28 May 1588); Hathaway, Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem, 60–63; eadem, “The Role of the Kızlar Ağası in 17th–18th Century Egypt,” Studia Islamica 75 (1992): 141–42, 151–52; eadem, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 21–37 Copyright © 2019 Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.6.1.04 This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 22 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 date until the mid-eighteenth century, when the grand vizier became a serious challenge to his authority, the chief eunuch was one of the most influential figures in the Ottoman Empire: essential to the upbringing of the dynasty’s princes, a key ally of the sultan’s mother and favorite concubine, a major force in provincial politics and even Ottoman foreign policy.3 thus it is hardly surprising that this powerful figure featured prominently in court ceremonies of various kinds throughout this period. His functions in such ceremonies were various: organizer, facilitator, participant, memorialist. In performing these duties, the chief eunuch followed a very lengthy court eunuch tradition dating back at least to the Neo-assyrian Empire, which ruled much of present-day Iraq and Syria from 911–612 BCE. Eunuchs serving the rulers of ancient Mesopotamia and Persia, imperial China, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and many African kingdoms guarded the private spaces of the ruling family; presided over royal births, weddings, and deaths; oversaw the education of princes; and transmitted messages from the ruler and the imperial women to various government officials and even to foreign lands. Similar roles fell to eunuchs in Islamic empires predating and contemporary with the Ottomans. In a number of civilizations, eunuchs had a much broader array of functions. Eunuchs in China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644) were active in all areas of the economy, while Byzantine eunuchs could hold positions in the church hierarchy and found monasteries.4 Many, if not all, of these earlier and contemporary empires helped to shape the framework within which Ottoman harem eunuchs operated. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 140, 147–60; eadem, Beshir Agha, Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006), 13–14; Mustafa Güler, Osmanlı Devlet’inde Haremeyn Vakıfları (XVI.–XVII. Yüzyıllar) (Istanbul: Tarih ve Tabiat Vakfı, 2002), 213–15. 3. On the chief eunuch’s political influence and participation in networks of power, see Hathaway, Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem, ch. 4–7. 4. E.g., see Hathaway, Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem, 4–6, 13–23; Sean Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society (London: Routledge, 2008); idem, ed., Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales and Duckworth, 2002); Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Shih-shan henry tsai, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); Humphrey Fisher, Slavery in the History of Muslim Black Africa (New York: New York University Press, 2001), esp. 280–98; David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans: A Study in Power Relationships (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, the Hebrew University, 1999); Shaun Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Kathryn Babayan, “Eunuchs, IV. The Safavid Period,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1999), 9:67–68; Gavin Hambly, “A Note on the Trade in Eunuchs in Mughal Bengal,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 94, no. 1 (1974): 125–30. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 23 This article seeks to demonstrate how the chief eunuch’s role in ceremonies and his representation in official commemorations of these events changed in accordance with the shifting profile of the sultan and the Ottoman royal family, as well as shifting dynamics among the royal family and the members of the court, during this 160-year period. The chief eunuch retained a pivotal role in ceremonies celebrating life cycle milestones, notably circumcisions and marriages, throughout this period, yet his visibility in the textual and pictorial commemorations of these events increased steadily. In the late seventeenth century, furthermore, the ritual of delivering congratulatory gifts to a victorious grand vizier functioned as a test of a prospective chief eunuch’s fitness for office. During the early eighteenth century, finally, the chief eunuch presided over new secular seasonal ceremonies that highlighted the Ottoman Empire’s economic recovery during this period, and the increasing consumption of European luxury goods by the members of the court. Life Cycle Ceremonies: Circumcisions, Marriages, and Surnames Habeşî Mehmed Ağa and the 1582 Circumcision Festivities As the guardian of the harem, the chief eunuch naturally presided over births and deaths in the Ottoman imperial family. To him fell the happy task of announcing the birth of a prince or princess to the sultan, as well as the doleful duty of informing the sultan of his mother’s death (he also participated in her funeral). In these capacities, he played a more or less private role, as a trusted member of the sultan’s household and that of his mother. But his role as “master of ceremonies” for pivotal life cycle events extended far beyond births and deaths in the privacy of the harem. He was an indispensable part of the lavish public celebrations that accompanied the circumcisions of Ottoman princes and the marriages of Ottoman princesses. This particular ceremonial function began with the very first chief harem eunuch, Habeşî (Abyssinian) Mehmed Ağa, who became head of the harem eunuchs in 1574, the year Sultan Murad III took the throne. Habeşî Mehmed may have helped to organize the lavish festivities surrounding the circumcision of Murad’s son Mehmed, the future Sultan Mehmed III, in 1582. At the least, as Emine Fetvacı has pointed out, he co-commissioned the famous Surname, or Book of Festivals, that commemorates the festivities, which were the longest ever recorded in Ottoman history, spanning over fifty days.5 this Surname has been well-studied by Fetvacı and by Nurhan Atasoy, while the meaning of the festival that it depicts has been analyzed by Derin 5. Emine Fetvacı, Picturing History at the Ottoman Court (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 175–81, 183–85. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 24 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 Terzioğlu.6 In folio after folio of the extravagant work, Murad III sits on the enclosed balcony of the palace of Süleyman I’s grand vizier İbrahim Pasha (tenure 1523–36), watching Istanbul’s craft guilds march through the hippodrome below. Habeşî Mehmed is mentioned in the text at the beginning of the Surname and is pictured in the manuscript’s final folio, where he and the influential eunuch dwarf Zeyrek Ağa, seated side-by-side at the center of the illustration, receive the work’s author, the poet İntizami. The not-so-subtle subtext of this image, as Fetvacı points out, is that the two eunuchs are responsible for the book since they interceded with the sultan to win the commission for the little-known poet.7 As if to reinforce this point, Habeşî Mehmed, who is the largest figure in the picture, holds a bound volume—presumably the Surname itself—as does İntizami.8 Nevertheless, and despite the critical role he obviously played in the book’s genesis, Habeşî Mehmed Ağa is not depicted in any of the manuscript’s many other folios. If he participated in any of the processions or other rituals comprising these celebrations, the manuscript provides no record of it. His ceremonial function, then, seems to be mainly private and behind the scenes: planning the ceremony, commissioning the festival book that commemorated it, probably even overseeing the palace atelier that produced the work.9 Hacı Mustafa Ağa The chief harem eunuch’s participation in life cycle ceremonies continued into the crisis years of the early seventeenth century, when a series of exceedingly youthful sultans held the throne and died in their teens or twenties, leaving behind underaged or mentally challenged heirs. Early in the reign of Ahmed I (1603–17), the future of the Ottoman dynasty came under threat when the teenaged ruler came dangerously close to succumbing to smallpox.10 even as an adult, Ahmed rarely left the palace, allowing his grand viziers to lead the Ottomans’ military campaigns against the Habsburg Empire and against the Celali rebels in Anatolia. 6. Nurhan Atasoy, 1582 Surname-i Hümayun: Düğün Kitabı (Istanbul: Koçbank, 1997); Derin Terzioğlu, “The Imperial Circumcision Festival of 1582: An Interpretation,” Muqarnas 12 (1995): 84–100. 7. Fetvacı, Picturing History, 176–77; Zeren Tanındı, “Topkapı Sarayı’nın Ağaları ve Kitaplar,” Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 3 (2002): 44–45. On Zeyrek Ağa, see Zeren Tanındı, “Bibliophile Aghas (Eunuchs) at Topkapı Sarayı,” Muqarnas 21 (2004): 337–38. 8. Fetvacı, Picturing History, 177–78. 9. Ibid., 175–87; Tanındı, “Topkapı Sarayı’nın Ağaları ve Kitaplar,” 42–46; eadem,“Bibliophile Aghas (Eunuchs) at Topkapı Sarayı,” 337–38. 10. Günhan Börekçi, “Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) and His Immediate Predecessors” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2010), 83–84. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 25 In these circumstances, public ceremonies that affirmed the vitality of the imperial family arguably acquired unprecedented importance. This helps to explain why Ahmed’s chief eunuch, the powerful Hacı Mustafa Ağa (terms 1605–20, 1623–24), was publicly visible in such ceremonies in a way that his predecessors, including Habeşî Mehmed Ağa, had not been. Mustafa Ağa regularly participated in imperial processions in Istanbul and in the former capital of Edirne, which served the Ottomans as a forward base against the Habsburgs and, during the seventeenth century, as a veritable second capital. The chronicler Topçular Katibi, a military administrator who understood the importance of such rituals for the projection of imperial authority, describes Mustafa Ağa leading the harem eunuchs in a procession in Istanbul in February 1612 to mark the betrothal of the future grand vizier Nasuh Pasha to Ahmed I’s daughter. Two years later, Mustafa Ağa led the other harem eunuchs in a similar procession in Edirne to celebrate the long-delayed marriage.11 Regrettably, no visual mementoes exist of this spectacle. Although numerous festival books of varying length survive from the seventeenth century, none is illustrated with miniature paintings.12 We might assume that the palace, during this era of galloping inflation, lacked the resources to commission such works, yet Ahmed did commission albums and other illustrated manuscripts, at least two of which feature images of Hacı Mustafa Ağa.13 A more plausible explanation might be that the court was turning its attention to different kinds of illustrated works.14 Yusuf Ağa and Mehmed IV’s 1675 Şenlik The precedent that Hacı Mustafa Ağa set in taking a publicly visible role in imperial ceremonies was sustained by his successors as chief eunuch, most notably the long-serving Yusuf Ağa, whose term (1671–87) occupied the final 11. Topçular Kâtibi, Topçular Kâtibi ʿAbdülkâdir (Ḳadri) Efendi Tarihi: Metin ve Tahlil, ed. Ziya Yılmazer (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2003), 1:617. 12. see mehmet arslan, ed., Osmanlı Saray Düğünleri ve Șenlikleri, 8 vols. (Istanbul: Sarayburnu Kitaplığı, 2008). 13. Only two miniatures depicting Hacı Mustafa Ağa are known to exist: one, in an album assembled for Ahmed I by the paper-joiner known as Kalender, shows the eunuch standing alone; the other, from a Turkish translation of the Şahname, shows Hacı Mustafa heading the entire contingent of African harem eunuchs in front of the enthroned Osman II. See Tülay Artan, “Arts and Architecture,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 419–20, 421–22; Tülün Değirmenci, İktidar Oyunları ve Resimli Kitaplar: II. Osman Devrinde Değişen Güç Simgeleri (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2012), 76–77, 181; Mehdi, Șehnāme-i Türkī, Uppsala University Library, MS O. Celsig 1, fols. 1b–2a. 14. Emine Fetvacı, “Enriched Narratives and Empowered Images in Seventeenth-century Ottoman Manuscripts,” Ars Orientalis 40 (2011): 243, 244, 258–62. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 26 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 years of Mehmed IV’s reign. In 1675, Yusuf presided at Mehmed IV’s lavish two-week celebration (şenlik) in Edirne of the circumcisions of his two sons, the future Mustafa II and Ahmed III, which was followed by the eighteen-day celebration of the marriage of his daughter Hatice Sultan to Musahib Mustafa Pasha.15 In his account of the wedding celebration, the chronicler Abdurrahman Abdi Pasha describes Yusuf dressing the viziers and the chief judges (singular kadıasker) of Rumelia and Anatolia “with his own hand” in sable furs sent to them by the sultan, after which the “best man,” Defterdar Ahmed Pasha, personally dressed the chief eunuch in a fur sent by the bridegroom.16 the sultan also attended at least one night of the festivities, which took place outside Musahib Mustafa’s palace, accompanied by one of his (presumably recovered) sons and Yusuf Ağa.17 The court poet Abdi Efendi (not to be confused with Abdurrahman Abdi Pasha), who had served as Yusuf Ağa’s scribe, composed a surname commemorating the circumcision celebrations, almost certainly at Yusuf’s behest. Like Habeşî Mehmed, then, Yusuf Ağa commissioned the official record of this ceremony, in which he, like Hacı Mustafa Ağa, played a significant, publicly visible role. In this sense, Yusuf combined the two modes of chief harem eunuch participation in life cycle ceremonies pioneered by his predecessors: participation in the events themselves and supervision of the events’ commemoration. As in the case of other seventeenth-century surnames, no miniatures appear to be associated with Abdi’s text, and in fact no image of Yusuf Ağa survives at all, to the best of my knowledge. Hacı Beşir Ağa and the 1720 Circumcision Festivities These traditions of the chief harem eunuch’s public and private ceremonial functions culminated in the career of Hacı Beşir Ağa (term 1717–46), the longest-serving and arguably the most powerful chief harem eunuch in Ottoman history. Taking advantage of a period of peace and economic recovery, 15. Özdemir Nutku, IV. Mehmet’in Edirne Şenliği (1675) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1972; 2nd printing 1987), 42–48 and insert following p. 48; Abdurrahman Abdi Pasha, “Abdurrahman Abdi Paşa Vekâyiʿnâme’si: Tahlil ve Metin Tenkidi, 1058–1053/1648–1682,” ed. Fahri Çetin Derin, (PhD diss., Istanbul University, 1993), 394ff; Defterdar Sarı Mehmed Pasha, Zübde-i Vekayiât: Tahlil ve Metin (1066–1116/1656–1704), ed. Abdülkadir Özcan (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1995), 63. 16. abdurrahman abdi, Vekâyiʿnâme, 394–95; Defterdar Sarı Mehmed, Zübde-i Vekayiât, 66. 17. Efdal Sevinçli, “Festivals and Their Documentation: Surnames Covering the Festivities of 1675 and 1724,” in Celebration, Entertainment, and Theatre in the Ottoman World, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi and Arzu Öztürkmen (London: Seagull Books, 2014), 199; idem, “Şenliklerimiz ve Surnamelerimiz: 1675 ve 1724 Şenliklerine İlişkin İki Surname,” Journal of Yaşar University 1, no. 4 (2006): 377–416. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 27 Sultan Ahmed III (r. 1703–30) and his long-time grand vizier, Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Pasha (term 1718–30), used the circumcision of four of Ahmed’s sons in 1720 as an opportunity to emulate the opulent celebrations of the late sixteenth century. This rite of passage was the occasion for a two-week (18 September–2 October) festival in the imperial capital. As in 1675, the circumcision festival was associated with weddings: in this case, two daughters of the late Sultan Mustafa II were married before the circumcisions.18 As in 1582, the festivities resulted in a lavishly illustrated surname. this new work was consciously modeled on its sixteenth-century predecessor. The text, dominated by description of the circumcision festivities, was composed by Seyyid Vehbi Efendi, a poet and member of the ulema who later served as kadı in several important provincial cities. At least two painters attached to the imperial court prepared miniatures to illustrate Vehbi’s text. By far the better-known (and more technically skilled) artist is the painter known as Levni, whose miniatures have been widely reproduced even though he was not a permanent member of the corps of court painters.19 As Sinem Erdoğan İşkorkutan has pointed out, however, the painter İbrahim Çelebi—who, though a court painter, was apparently not as well-connected as Levni—prepared illustrations of many of the same festivities.20 Vehbi’s text overflows with praise of Grand Vizier Damad İbrahim Pasha,21 and in fact he seems to have owed his commission to the grand vizier and the sultan, rather than to the chief eunuch. Hacı Beşir Ağa was probably closer to the two painters, Levni and İbrahim Çelebi, at least to judge from the fact that he is far better represented in their illustrations than he is in the text, where he is mentioned only four times, and only once by name.22 In contrast, he appears in nine of Levni’s miniatures, while other harem eunuchs appear in twenty-four (İbrahim Çelebi depicts him in four paintings). By comparison, Habeşî Mehmed Ağa, as we have seen, appears only in one miniature at the 18. Mehmed Raşid Efendi, Tārīh-i Rāşid (Istanbul: Maṭbaʿa-yı ʿĀmire, 1282/1865), 5:215; Mertol Tulum, trans., “Günümüz Diliyle Sûrnâme,” in Seyyid Vehbi Efendi, Sûrnâme: Sultan Ahmed’in Düğün Kitabı, dir. Ahmet Ertuğ (Bern: Ertuğ and Kocabıyık, 2000), 56 (fol. 5b), 60 (fol. 9a). Also see M. Çağatay Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1980), 76, 78. Esin Atıl, Levni and the surname: The Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Festival (Istanbul: Koçbank, 1999), 41–42, seems to have misread this passage. 19. Atıl, Levni and the Surname, 31–35; this publication also features reproductions of all the miniatures. 20. Sinem Erdoğan İşkorkutan, “The 1720 Imperial Festival in Istanbul: Festivity and Representation in the Early Eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire” (PhD diss., Boğaziçi University, 2017), esp. 388–40 and the Appendix, in which many of the illustrations are reproduced. 21. For example, Vehbi, Sûrnâme, fols. 61b, 103a, 136a, 147a (pp. 132, 144, 177, and 195 in Tulum’s modernized text). 22. Ibid., fols. 12a (by name), 144b, 145b, 155a; pp. 65, 191, 193, and 208 in Tulum’s text. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 28 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 Figure 1: Hacı Beşir Ağa presents the grand vizier’s gifts to Sultan Ahmed III. From Vehbi, Surname-i Vehbi (1720), illustrated by Levni. Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS A. 3593, fol. 26b. Courtesy of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. very end of the 1582 Surname, although he is prominently mentioned in the text at the beginning of the work.23 The two eighteenth-century painters’ pictorial depictions of Beşir Ağa even contradict Vehbi’s textual descriptions at several key points. Vehbi’s summary of the first day of the festival, for example, notes the presentation of the grand vizier’s gifts to the sultan but makes no mention of the chief harem eunuch. Levni and İbrahim Çelebi, however, have Hacı Beşir Ağa presenting the gifts to the sultan as the latter sits in his tent with three of his four sons standing next to him (two-year-old Prince Bayezid was too young to participate in the festivities) (Figure 1). Both painters position Beşir at the center of the illustration, although only Levni shows lower-ranking African harem eunuchs attending the princes.24 At the end of the Surname illustrated by Levni, Hacı Beşir 23. Fetvacı, Picturing History, 177–78. 24. Vehbi, Sûrnâme, fols. 25a–26a; pp. 72–73 in Tulum’s text; İbrahim Çelebi, Surname-i Vehbi, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi MS A. 3594, fols. 59b, 79b, 86b, 167b. I am grateful to Sinem Erdoğan İşkorkutan for bringing İbrahim Çelebi’s images to my attention. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 29 Figure 2: Hacı Beşir Ağa leads the sons of Sultan Ahmed III to the Circumcision Room. From Vehbi, Surname-i Vehbi (1720), illustrated by Levni. Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS A. 3593, fol. 173b. Courtesy of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. leads the three princes past the new library in the palace’s Third Court to the Circumcision Room in the Fourth Court. In Levni’s painting of the scene, he is right at the front of the picture frame, in front of Damad İbrahim Pasha, who, along with another vizier, is guiding ten-year-old Prince Süleyman by the arms (Figure 2). What Vehbi’s text says, however, is that Damad İbrahim Pasha took Prince Süleyman’s right arm while the chief eunuch took his left and four other viziers guided the other two princes.25 In these paintings, Levni and İbrahim Çelebi have, in effect, elevated Beşir Ağa’s status by depicting him as the most important figure in these scenes—literally putting him front and center. The association of the chief harem eunuchs with circumcision and marriage festivities seems to be a sustained theme in early modern Ottoman history, as it is in the history of other Islamic empires. (Where marriage alone is concerned, of course, the similarity extends to many other Old World empires.) It is a logical association since both types of event mark the transition of an imperial family member out of the harem: in a prince’s case, from the harem to his own 25. Vehbi, Sûrnâme, fol. 155a; p. 208 in Tulum’s text. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 30 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 mini-household within the palace (although in the case of extremely young princes, such as two-year-old Prince Bayezid, this move may in actuality have been years away); in the case of a princess, from the palace harem to the harem of her new husband’s residence. The chief eunuch was not simply standing at the harem threshold waving good-bye, however; rather, he was metaphorically guarding the boundary between, and even offering safe passage between, one taboo space and another—for certainly the princes’ apartments and the harem of a pasha’s palace would be similarly off-limits to outsiders. delivering gifts to the grand Vizier While the chief eunuch’s participation in life cycle ceremonies was a sustained feature of the office for most of its existence, new modes of ceremonial participation emerged in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During the reign of Mehmed IV (1648–87), high-ranking harem eunuchs drew public attention to the landmark military victories that the reforming grand viziers of the Köprülü family had achieved by traveling to the battlefield to present them with robes of honor and other costly gifts. For their part, Köprülü Mehmed Pasha (term 1656–61) and his son and successor, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha (term 1661–76), used these occasions to cultivate ties with these powerful eunuch officials and to test their suitability for the top eunuch office. In fact, the Köprülü era commenced with just such a ceremony. When Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, the founder of the grand vizier “dynasty,” conquered Bozca Ada (Tenedos) at the beginning of his term, the harem treasurer (hazinedar-i şehriyarî), Solak (Left-handed) Mehmed Ağa, brought him a robe of honor. In the course of the elaborate investiture ritual, Köprülü Mehmed apparently formed a bond with Solak Mehmed. In 1658, he asked Mehmed IV to depose the incumbent chief eunuch, whom he did not trust, and replace him with Solak Mehmed, who was also a favorite of Mehmed IV’s mother Turhan Sultan. Solak Mehmed became the first harem treasurer to become chief eunuch, setting a lasting precedent.26 This pattern repeated itself in the next generation, when Köprülü Mehmed’s son, Fazıl Ahmed, succeeded him as grand vizier. In this case, the harem eunuch Yusuf Ağa, who had been demoted from the post of harem treasurer, delivered congratulatory gifts to Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed, who had just conquered the Cretan capital of Candia, bringing the siege of that city to a close after twenty-five exhausting years and finally establishing Crete as an Ottoman 26. abdurrahman abdi, Vekâyiʿnâme, 99–100; Mustafa Naʿîmâ, Târîh-i Naʿîmâ, ed. Mehmet İpşirli (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007), 3:1653; 4:1697, 1749–50, 1755, 1759, 1774; Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa, Silāḥdār Tārīhi (Istanbul: Devlet Maṭbaʿası, 1928), 1:99, 101, 117. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 31 province. Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed’s capture of Crete was even more momentous than his father’s conquest of Tenedos since the campaign had dragged on for so very long and since, with this conquest, the Ottomans had all but expelled Venice and the Knights of St. John of Malta from the eastern Mediterranean. Symbolically, as well, the arrival of a high-ranking harem eunuch to acknowledge the victory avenged the murder of the chief eunuch Sünbül Ağa by Maltese pirates near Crete in 1644, which had supposedly triggered the Ottoman attempt to conquer the island.27 The eunuch emissaries who delivered gifts after major conquests were surely carefully chosen, but the criteria for selection remain unclear. Both Solak Mehmed and Yusuf were companions of Turhan Sultan, who was a key ally and patron of both Köprülü Mehmed and Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed. But there was obviously more to this sort of mission than simply representing the sultan’s mother. The eunuch would presumably have remained encamped alongside the grand vizier for days or even weeks, as the victory celebrations took their course. He may even have been expected to participate in the festivities, setting the stage for his later participation in ceremonies as chief eunuch. During victory celebrations, naturally, spoils of war, including prisoners, were inventoried and distributed. Under the circumstances, one of the eunuch’s duties might have been escorting select female captives from among the conquered population to Istanbul or Edirne to enter the imperial harem. In this connection, it is worth recalling that Râbia Gülnuş Emetullah Sultan, Mehmed IV’s favorite concubine and the mother of Ahmed III, had been captured by the grand admiral when the Ottomans took Rethymno in the early years of the Crete campaign.28 So far as the Köprülü grand viziers were concerned, these missions presented an opportunity to assess the eunuch leaders’ reliability, as well as their personal compatibility with the grand vizier and his entourage. In the best circumstances, the grand vizier could effectively co-opt a eunuch who belonged to the sultan’s entourage or that of his mother. Köprülü Mehmed Pasha clearly co-opted Solak Mehmed Ağa in the wake of the Tenedos victory. And if Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed did not co-opt Yusuf Ağa, he nevertheless forged a durable working relationship with him. Shortly after the conquest of Crete was completed, Yusuf was reinstated as harem treasurer; two years later, in 1671, he was promoted to chief harem eunuch. The theme of co-optation underlines the fact that the chief harem eunuch’s role in these victory ceremonies was inherently subordinate to that of the 27. Kâtib Çelebi, Fezleke (Istanbul: Cerīde-i Havādis Maṭbaʿası, 1286–87/1869–71), 2:234. 28. Betül İpşirli Argıt, Rabia Gülnuş Emetullah Sultan, 1640–1715 (istanbul: kitap Yayınevi, 2014), 33–34. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 32 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 military commander. He did not script the ceremony, nor did he determine how it was remembered. Instead, he played a mediating role, linking the palace, and more specifically the harem, to the battlefield and symbolically extending membership in the sultan’s household to the grand vizier by clothing him in a robe of honor. At first blush, this might seem a very different sort of duty from those that the chief eunuch performed in circumcision and marriage festivities. Yet in these life cycle events, his role was similar: delivering another official’s gifts and accompanying members of the imperial household as they made the transition from one phase of life to another. The Çırağan Entertainments In stark contrast to these ceremonies honoring military victories, the Çırağan entertainments (Çırağan Eğlenceleri) celebrated the life of urban leisure made possible by the era of peace over which Nevşehirli İbrahim Pasha presided. These were, moreover, not public festivals but private celebrations of the blooming of the tulips in late March or early April; they were restricted to the sultan and the women of the imperial harem. The festivities initially took place not at Topkapı but at various pleasure palaces, villas, and pavilions (the Turkish terms are saray, yalı, and köşk) on the shores of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, as well as at Saʿdabad, the pleasure palace at Kağıthane, north of the Golden Horn.29 The name Çırağan, or “lantern,” alludes to the illumination of the evening by tiny candles that circulated throughout the space, borne on the backs of turtles or placed inside egg- and seashells and set to float in the water channels that ran through Saʿdabad and similar pleasure sites.30 In describing the April 1720 festivities, the chronicler Mehmed Raşid Efendi tells us that for a week the harem women lodged in the palace that Nevşehirli İbrahim Pasha had built for his wife in Beşiktaş—the approximate site of the 29. shirine hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), 25; Selda Ertuğrul, “Çırāğān,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: İSAM, 1993), 8:304–06. Also see Tülay Artan, “Architecture as a Theatre of Life: Profile of the Eighteenth-century Bosphorus” (PhD diss., M.I.T., 1989). Mouradgea d’Ohsson notes that the harem women spent “la belle saison” with the sultan in the Beşiktaş palace: Tableau général de l’empire ottoman (Paris: Imprimerie de Monsieur Firmin Didot, 1787–1820), 7:83. 30. Tahsin Öz, “Čirāghān,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1962), 2:49; Ertuğrul, “Çırāğān,” 304–06. This is reminiscent of the Qianlong emperor’s (r. 1735–96) “floating cup canal,” a purpose-built stream in Xishang Pavilion in the Forbidden City in Beijing in which wine cups were floated during similar parties. This in turn drew on a fourth-century ce precedent. See Che Bing Chiu, Jardins de Chine, ou la quête du paradis (Paris: Éditions de la Martinière, 2010), 16. Suraiya Faroqhi has also suggested the influence of floating candles used in the Hindu festival of Diwali (commentary, “Recent Perspectives of Ceremonies, Rituals, and Festivals in the Ottoman World,” Yale University, April 2017). This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 33 current Çırağan Palas—and played games of various sorts while delighting in music and conversation. The celebrations culminated in the presentation of lavish gifts according to rank. At the end of the festivities, those assembled relocated to the yalı of Ahmed III’s late mother, Gülnuş Emetullah Sultan, at Eyüp.31 Küçükçelebizade, a.k.a. İsmail Asım Efendi, more or less replicates Raşid’s account in his description of the Çırağan festivities beginning on 26 Şaʿban 1139/4 April 1727. However, he also describes a similar, but public, festivity at the same location meant to mark iftar, nightly fast-breaking, during Ramadan, which also fell in April that year. In fact, a pavilion called the İftariyye Pavilion was added to the Beşiktaş palace in 1748.32 In these two accounts, we see parallel efforts to link these “secular” festivities in some way with memorialization of the Prophet, whether by connecting them to Eyüp, site of the tomb of his standard-bearer, Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī, next to whom Hacı Beşir Ağa would eventually be buried, or by portraying them as a sort of prelude to the sacred fasting month. This prophetic emphasis is consistent with the chief eunuch’s function as superintendent of the Evkâfü’l-haremeyn.33 the religious element was more difficult to inject into the Çırağan festivities than it was into circumcision or wedding celebrations since these life cycle events contained integral religious components. But it was important to the chief eunuch to gesture toward a mirror-image commemoration linked in some way to the Prophet precisely because of his position as overseer of the pious endowments for the Holy Cities. This in turn was part of a more general attachment to the Prophet.34 Although Damad İbrahim’s saray was burned down during the 1730 Patrona Halil rebellion, the French merchant Jean-claude Flachat, writing during the reign of Mahmud I (1730–54), recalls the festivities being held at the “new palace,” i.e., Topkapı, which he describes as the sultan’s winter residence. According to Flachat, the sultan and the women assembled, presumably during the afternoon, in a garden on the palace grounds, guarded by Bostancıs outside and harem eunuchs inside.35 The culmination of the celebration 31. Raşid, Tārīh-i Rāşid, 5:205–06. 32. İsmail Asım Efendi (Küçük Çelebizade), Tārīh-i İsmāʿīl ʿĀsım Efendi (istanbul: Maṭbaʿa-yı ʿĀmire, 1282/1865), 456–59, 556–57; Hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures, 28, 31 fig. 8, 191, 204, 230–31. 33. Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 13–14; eadem, Politics of Households, 140. On the chief eunuch’s role in handling the Prophet’s relics, see d’Ohsson, Tableau général, 2:358–68, 390–91; 7:81. 34. See Hathaway, Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem, 60–63, 118–25; eadem, Beshir Agha, 47–55. In the late seventeenth century, it became customary for deposed chief harem eunuchs to head the corps of eunuchs who guarded the Prophet’s tomb in Medina. 35. Jean-claude Flachat, Observations sur le commerce et sur les arts d’une partie de l’Europe, de l’Asie, de l’Afrique et même des Indes orientales (Lyon: Chez Jacquenod père et Rusand, 1766), 2:9ff, 27–29. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 34 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 was the sultan’s selection of a “favorite,” after which the chief harem eunuch distributed jewels and costly textiles. Flachat himself supplied many of these goods directly to the chief harem eunuch, at the time Moralı Beşir Ağa, who served from 1746–52. In the evening, when the private party had ended, the sultan received what Flachat calls “les Grands de l’Empire,” and they enjoyed a musical soirée. It is not clear whether the chief eunuch had a hand in this entertainment, as well. By Flachat’s account, this sort of entertainment was particularly popular under Mahmud I, whom he describes as fond of luxury and fascinated by exotic merchandise. His successor, Osman III (r. 1754–57), was, by many accounts, not just Flachat’s, far more austere.36 This does not mean, however, that such entertainments ceased after 1754. In particular, the helva sohbetleri (helva gatherings), first popularized under Mahmud I, retained their appeal into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These were winter-time indoor entertainments organized by the chief harem eunuch and the Silahdar Ağası, his counterpart in the sultan’s privy chamber, at which the semolina-based sweet helva was prepared while palace residents watched from gender-segregated spaces.37 No miniature paintings survive of the Çırağan entertainments, although a number of Levni’s single-sheet paintings depict comely young women and men who might conceivably have participated in them.38 instead, the main commemorations are Raşid’s chronicle and the panegyrics of the court poet Nedim (d. 1730). Nedim’s poems tend not to mention specific personages, preferring to extol the setting, above all Saʿdabad.39 As for Raşid, he, like Vehbi, praises the grand vizier above all, although he does mention the chief harem eunuch in passing. This is perhaps a bit ironic since we know that the chief harem eunuch and his subordinate eunuchs were instrumental in bringing these entertainments to pass and were probably present throughout; the chief eunuch was also the chief supplier of western luxury goods distributed at the palace, through his close connection with European merchants such as Flachat. But this is in the nature of such chronicles and poems. If they praise anyone, it is usually the overall patron responsible for ordering the festivities, 36. For example, see İ.H. Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, vol. 4, part 1 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1956; 2nd printing 1978; 3rd printing 1982), 30. 37. hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures, 53; Mehmet Ali Beyhan, “Amusements in the Ottoman Palace in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Celebration, Entertainment, and Theatre, 229. 38. On these, see Artan, “Arts and Architecture,” 438–42. 39. For example, see Nermin Menemencioğlu with Fahir İz, eds. The Penguin Book of Turkish Verse (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1978), 113–14. On Nedim more generally, see kemal silay, Nedim and the Poetics of the Ottoman Court: Medieval Inheritance and the Need for Change (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 35 namely, the sultan himself or the grand vizier. The chief eunuch is the textually unacknowledged facilitator behind the scenes. The Çırağan entertainments represent a nexus of new eighteenth-century realities. Perhaps most striking is the increasing lavishness of private entertainments restricted to palace personnel, combined with a growing cosmopolitanism that exposed the ruling elites, merchant classes, and, increasingly, the urban populace at large to consumer goods and decorative tastes from western Europe (especially France), Safavid Iran, and Mughal India. The locations in which the festivities occurred, meanwhile, reflect the migration of court entertainments outside the immediate vicinity of the palace. This is true not only of the Çırağan entertainments but of imperial circumcision and marriage commemorations, as well. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such celebrations occurred on Istanbul’s hippodrome, at only a slight remove from Topkapı Palace, or on Edirne’s Sırık Meydanı, just outside Murad II’s fifteenth-century “new palace.”40 By the early eighteenth century, in contrast, both life cycle and seasonal celebrations had, to a large extent, moved entirely out of the palace precinct: to the shores of the Golden Horn and up the western coast of the Bosphorus.41 Construction of pleasure palaces, lodges, and pavilions, such as Nevşehirli İbrahim Pasha’s Sahilsarayı on the Bosphorus and Aynalıkavak and Saʿdabad palaces on the Golden Horn, facilitated this internal expansion. Although the chief harem eunuch did not build these particular structures, his own architectural patronage contributed fundamentally to the transformation of Istanbul’s urban environment. Chief eunuch-endowed mosques rose in Beşiktaş and Üsküdar beginning in the early seventeenth century; meanwhile, Hacı Beşir Ağa’s many residential properties (menazil; singular, menzil) and fountains could be found near Kağıthane and along the Bosphorus from Tophane through Beşiktaş all the way up to Emirgan and Sarıyer.42 This expansion reflected the return of the court to Istanbul after decades in Edirne, as well as normal growth of the imperial capital. However, it also reflected what Shirine Hamadeh has called the relative “opening up” (décloissonement) of private court festivities to the public at large.43 Spaces such as Kağıthane and the park-like settings along the Bosphorus were more accessible to the masses of the sultan’s subjects than the enclosed courtyards of Topkapı or the palace at Edirne. Even if members of the court were separated from the public by screens of trees or 40. Nutku, IV. Mehmed’in Edirne Șenliği, 45–52 and insert between pp. 48–49. 41. hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures, 25–27, 30, 59–62, 65–75, 101–08, 113, 135–36, 229–35; 236; Artan, “Arts and Architecture,” 442, 465–68. 42. hamza abd al-aziz Badr and Daniel Crecelius. “The Awqāf of al-Ḥājj Bashīr Āghā in Cairo,” Annales islamologiques 27 (1993): 295. 43. hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures, 18–21, 103 and 266 n. 39. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 36 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 6.1 “walls” of textiles, the masses could at least catch glimpses of the festivities. In such circumstances, rather ironically, members of the royal family and palace residents needed harem eunuchs more than ever to guard the boundary separating them from the public. Conclusion The office of chief harem eunuch, or Ağa-yı Darüssaade, was inherently linked to court ceremonies. This was especially true of ceremonies commemorating transitional life cycle events, above all the circumcision of princes and the weddings of princesses. As early as the 1580s, when the office of chief eunuch was inaugurated, this official was instrumental in the planning, execution, and official commemoration of such ceremonies. Over the next century and a half, however, his participation in the celebrations themselves steadily expanded and grew more publicly visible. Over the same time span, he acquired new ceremonial duties in accordance with the political and economic tenor of the times. Thus, in the late seventeenth century, he ritually affirmed the military triumphs of the reforming Köprülü grand viziers. In the early decades of the eighteenth century, a period of relative peace and prosperity, he presided over seasonal celebrations of conspicuous consumption and leisurely conviviality. These changes in the chief harem eunuch’s ceremonial function reflect the increasing public accessibility of court ceremonies. The “opening up” of imperial ceremony observed by Hamadeh coincided with a more generalized tendency among the public at large by the early eighteenth century, both in Istanbul and in the Ottoman provinces, to engage in various forms of public sociability, whether this meant celebrating life cycle events in outdoor settings or taking regular promenades along alluring bodies of water.44 While the chief eunuch’s prolonged encampment next to the grand vizier after a military victory might be construed as symptomatic of this movement to public or semi-public outdoor spaces, removed from a palace compound, the Çırağan festivities and the circumcision celebrations centered on the Okmeydanı and the Golden Horn were unquestionably a part of it. Yet despite all these changes in the chief eunuch’s ceremonial role and in the types of ceremonies over which he presided, one element remained consistent, and indeed connected the Ottoman chief harem eunuch to his counterparts in earlier Old World empires, both Islamic and otherwise. In all three types of ceremonies considered here—life cycle ritual, military victory celebration, seasonal soirée—he acted as an intermediary, moving between two 44. For example, see James Grehan, “Smoking and ‘Early Modern’ Sociability: The Great Tobacco Debate in the Ottoman Middle East (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (2006): 1352–77. This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Hathaway / The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch 37 distinct, if not mutually exclusive, realms: the harem and the Circumcision Room in Topkapı Palace or in the Edirne Palace, the palace and the battlefield, the marketplace and the pleasure pavilion. In each case, as well, he transported valuable people and things across a boundary: he guided the princes from the harem to the Circumcision Room, carried the grand vizier’s gifts to the sultan’s tent or the sultan’s robes of honor to the grand vizier’s battle camp, and channeled luxury goods into the harem for distribution during the Çırağan entertainments. These spatial boundary-crossings corresponded to temporal or life phase boundaries: between childhood and adulthood, between winter and spring (or fall and winter), even between campaign season and the end of campaigning. In this respect, his function in these lavish public or private outdoor ceremonies corresponded to the part he played in the secluded rituals of announcing births and deaths to the sultan; at these times, he crossed the temporal boundary between gestation and birth, and between life and death, even as he crossed the spatial boundary between the harem and the sultan’s privy chamber, or between the sultan’s mother’s apartments and the sultan’s bed chamber inside the harem. In crossing these boundaries, furthermore, he enforced and policed them, helping to maintain the established order of palace hierarchies and the separation between the secluded world of imperial family members and the public space of their subjects. This was the quintessential role of eunuch guardians at royal courts through the ages. JAne HAtHAwAy is an Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. (Hathaway.24@osu.edu) This content downloaded from 128.36.7.178 on Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:48:53 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms