“The rise to power of the imperial harem is one of the most dramatic developments in the sixteenth-century history of the Ottoman Empire. From almost the beginning of the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, who came to the throne in 1520, until the mid-seventeenth century, high-ranking women of the Ottoman dynasty enjoyed a degree of political power and public prominence greater than ever before or after. Indeed, this period in the empire’s history is often referred to, in both popular and scholarly literature, as “the sultanate of women.” The women of the imperial harem, especially the mother of the reigning sultan and his leading concubines, were considerably more active than their predecessors in the direct exercise of political power: in creating and manipulating domestic political factions, in negotiating with foreign powers, and in acting as regents for their sons. Furthermore, they played a central role in what we might call the public culture of sovereignty: public rituals of imperial legitimation and royal patronage of monumental building and artistic production.” - Leslie P. Peirce. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire.
The women of ‘The Sultanate of Women’ in TIMS’s Magnificent Century & Magnificent Century Kösem
