T
From its inception in around 1540 until its dissolution in the early 20th century, the Topkapi harem was home, prison and entire world to almost four centuries of palace women.
The word means 'forbidden', a ruling that applied to all men except the sultan, the princes and the eunuch guards. Women had no problem getting in, but once admitted they were in for life.
Most entered as slave girls presented to the sultan as gifts : it was forbidden to make slaves of muslims, so they were all Christians or Jews.
Circassian girls who came from what is now Georgia and Armenia were favoured because of their fair skin, although even the fairest was still only valued at a fifth of the price of a good horse.
The girls were converted to Islam and palace-trained, which means they were taught to sing, dance, play instruments and to give pleasure of a more tactile kind.
But notions of the harem as a sensual hothouse are misplaced.
It was a highly competitive and cut-throat environment in which each girl sought to catch the eye of the sultan or a prince and so secure a better station.
At any one time, a dozen or so girls would be chosen as imperial handmaids and bedmates.
Giving birth to the sultan's child ensured exalted status.
If it was a boy, there was even the chance he might one day become sultan and his mother valide sultana, 'mother of the sultan' - the most powerful woman in the land.
At such high stakes, with the sex came violence as the women manoeuvred, plotted, poisoned and knifed their way up the harem hierarchy.
A mother with the sultan's child was particularly vulnerable -Murat 3 (1574-95), for example, fathered 103 children, only one of whom was ever going to make the throne.
All the while, harem girls also had to court the favour of the present valide sultana, responsible for selecting girls for the sultan, while avoiding the displeasure of the chief black eunuch.
These latter characters were the go-betweens for the sultan and his mother and so privy to all palace secrets.
At the same time, physically and psychologically mutilated as they were, the chief black eunuchs tended to be a dangerous combination of corrupt, scheming and vindictive.
Some of them got their kicks by stuffing girls in sacks, loading them into a boat, and dumping them into the Bosphorus, usually on the instructions of the valide sultana.
술탄과 왕자가 부자지간이면서도 O동서인 경우가 허다하였다 한다.
