Royal French women in the Ottoman sultans' harem: The political uses of fabricated accounts from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century

Journal of World History

Volumn 17, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 159-196

  Isom Verhaaren, Christine ^a  

^a BENEDICTINE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; ISLAMISM; OTTOMAN EMPIRE;

EID: 33646841180     PISSN: 10456007     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jwh.2006.0038     Document Type: Article

References (124)

1. March Cost, The Veiled Sultan (New York: Vanguard Press, 1969)
2. Prince Michael of Greece, Sultana (New York: Harper and Row, 1983)
3. Barbara Chase-Riboud, Valide: A Novel of the Harem (New York: Avon, 1986)
4. and Janet Wallach, Seraglio (New York: Doubleday, 2003). Aimée, a relative of Josephine Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon, supposedly was captured at sea and entered the harem of the Ottoman sultan in the late eighteenth century.
5. Two other works should also be included in this category, although they claim to be biographical: Benjamin A. Morton, The Veiled Empress: An Unacademic Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1923)
6. and Lesley Blanch, The Wilder Shores of Love (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954)
7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 79, 197,
8. and especially chap. II, "Memory and Forgetting."
9. Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Tradition," in Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1-14.
10. In Scotland, devising a tradition involved forgery by several individuals. As Anthony Dolphin Alderson accuses Benjamin A. Morton of doing (see n. 80), these individuals claimed to have documentary evidence, "created literary ghosts, forged texts and falsified history in support of their theories." Others relied on their claims and they became accepted as the truth and excited great indignation when they were challenged. Hugh Trevor Roper, "The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland," in Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, pp. 28, 41. Dolphin Alderson accuses Benjamin A. Morton of doing (see n. 80), these individuals claimed to have documentary evidence, "created literary ghosts, forged texts and falsified history in support of their theories." Others relied on their claims and they became accepted as the truth and excited great indignation when they were challenged.
11. Terence Ranger, "The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa," in Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, p. 212.
12. Comparing these myths with other examples of invented traditions is instructive as they develop and function in similar contexts and manners. Comparing these myths with captivity narratives of real individuals might be productive to note their similarities and differences, but it would not produce a comparison of similar forms of discourse.
13. See Mehmet Ipşirli, "Mustafa Selaniki and His History," Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi 9 (1978): 417-472 for a study of Selaniki and his work.
14. Selaniki Mustafa Efendi, Tarih'i Selaniki, ed. Mehmet Ipşirli, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basimevi, 1989), 2: 657-658.
15. Ibid.
16. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. "Pecewi"
17. Rhodes Murphey, "Ottoman Historical Writing in the Seventeenth Century: A Survey of the General Development of the Genre after the Reign of Sultan Ahmed 1 (1603-1617)," Archivum Ottomanicum 8 (1993-1994): 277-311.
18. Peçevi, Tarih-i Peçevi (Istanbul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1980), p. 345.
19. Ibid., pp. 343-346.
20. Ibid., pp. 345-346.
21. I am grateful to Professor Robert Dankoff for bringing the existence of this account in Evliya Çelebi to my attention.
22. See Robert Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Çelebi (Leiden: Brill, 2004)
23. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. "Ewliya Celebi."
24. See Christine Isom-Verhaaren, "Prince Cem: A Fifteenth-Century Ottoman View of Relations with the Infidels" in "Ottoman-French Interaction, 1480-1580: A Sixteenth-Century Encounter" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1997), pp. 138-222.
25. Evliya is unaware that the Valois dynasty of France was replaced by the Bourbon dynasty at the end of the sixteenth century.
26. The full account is found in the autograph manuscript of Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname, which is located in the Topkapi Sarayi Library, Bagdat 304. See folios 27b-29b, 31a-31b. Volume 1 of the Seyahatname has been published.
27. See The Seyahatname of Evliya çelebi. Book One: Istanbul. Facsimile of Topkapi Sarayi Bagdat 304, Part 1: Folios 1a-106a, ed. Sinasi Tekin and Gonul Alpay Tekin (Harvard University, 1989).
28. The nineteenth-century printed version leaves out the story of Su-kemerli and Cem. However, this is contained in full in von Hammer's English translation. Evliya Çelebi, Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the Seventeenth Century, trans. Joseph von Hammer (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1846), PP. 37-43, 47-48.
29. With the second French woman we encounter a similar process. When documents prove that Aimée could not have been the mother of Mahmud because the dates do not match, she becomes his foster mother.
30. Evliya, folios 27b-29b, 31a-31b.
31. See Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986).
32. La Jonquière includes the account in his history in a discussion of Ibrahim Pasha's negotiations with the French ambassador, La Forest, thus indicating once again the political context of Ottoman-French diplomacy for the tale.
33. A. La Jonquière, Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours (Paris: Librarie Hachette, 1914), PP. 174-175.
34. Evliya and La Jonquière both refer to Ali as another source for this story but without specifying where in his vast writings this tale is to be found. Ali wrote his great work of history Künh ül-Ahbar between 1592 and 1599. In the portion of this work that was published in the nineteenth century, which includes the reign of Murad II during 1428/831-832, there is no mention of the capture of a French princess ([İstanbul]: Darütti-baatil'âmire, [1861?]). Nor is the account to be found in more recently published selections from this work. I also searched several manuscript versions without locating this story. However, as seen from the accounts by other authors previously discussed, it is probably included in another section where the topic seemed appropriate to the historian. The account of Ali would be contemporary with that of Selaniki.
35. Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel 1250-1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 334
36. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 103, 182
37. Marshall D. Sahlins, Tribesmen (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 55.
38. A. Malamat, "Tribal Societies: Biblical Genealogies and African Lineage Systems," Archives Européenes de Sociologie 14 (1973): 172, 132.
39. This use of descent has been studied in Colin Imber, "The Ottoman Dynastic Myth," Turcica 19 (1987): 7-27
40. Barbara Flemming, "Political Genealogies in the Sixteenth Century," Journal of Ottoman Studies 7-8 (1988): 1123-137.
41. See Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 16, 32-34, for a discussion of Shayk Edebali's daughter.
42. Kishwar Rizvi, "Gendered Patronage: Women and Benevolence during the Early Safavid Empire," in Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies, ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (Albany: State University of New York, 2000), pp. 125-126
43. David Pinault, "Zaynab Bint Ali and the Place of the Women of the Households of the First Imams in Shi'ite Devotional Literature," in Women in the Medieval Islamic World, ed. Gavin R. G. Hambly (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), pp. 80-81.
44. Lata'if al-ma'arif of Tha'alibi, The Book of Curious and Entertaining Information, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), p. 73. I am indebted to Professor Linda Darling for this reference.
45. Priscilla P. Soucek, "Timurid Women: A Cultural Perspective," in Hambly, Women in the Medieval Islamic World, pp. 200-202.
46. Gregory C. Kozlowski, "Private Lives and Public Piety: Women and the Practice of Islam in Mughal India," in Hambly, Women in the Medieval Islamic World, pp. 471-474.
47. Ethel Sara Wolper, "Princess Safwat al-Dunya wa al-Din and the Production of Sufi Buildings and Hagiographies in Pre-Ottoman Anatolia," in Ruggles, Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation, p. 47.
48. Peirce, Imperial Harem, pp. 32-37.
49. Ibid., pp. 31-37.
50. Isom-Verhaaren, "Prince Cem," in "Ottoman-French Interaction," p. 182.
51. Peirce, Imperial Harem, pp. 101, 277.
52. Ibid., p. 31.
53. Roxelana is often considered as the source of many evils in the Ottoman Empire.
54. François-Emmanuel Guignard, Comte de Saint-Priest, Mȩmoires sur l'ambassade de France en Turquie, 1525-1770 (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1974), pp. 19-20.
55. Ismail Hami Danişmend, İzahli Osmanli Tarihi Kronolojisi, 4 vols. (Istanbul: Turkiye Yayinevi, 1972), 3: 351-352.
56. Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont et al., Représentants Permanents de la France en Turquie (1536-1991) et de la Turquie en France (1797-1991) (Istanbul: Isis, 1991), p. 19.
57. Dimitrie Cantemir, The History of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Alexandru Dutu and Paul Cernovodeanu, trans. N. Tindal (Bucharest: Association Internationale d'Études du Sud-Est Européen, 1973), pp. 61-62.
58. La Jonquière, Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman, pp. 174-175.
59. J. Deny, "Walide Sultan," Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 1117.
60. Isom-Verhaaren, "Ottoman,French Interaction," pp. 29-92.
61. Halil Inalcik discusses the rise of religious fanaticism in the context of the conflict between the Ottomans and the Safavids, during which the Shii Safavids of Iran promoted the Kizilbaş in Anatolia and the Ottomans responded with increasingly severe measures against heretics. This sectarian conflict contributed to increased fanaticism in Ottoman society in the seventeenth century. Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600, trans. Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1973; repr., New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989), pp. 179-185.
62. Henri Omont, "Projets de prise de Constantinople et de fondation d'un empire français d'Orient sous Louis XIV," Revue d'histoire diplomatique, 1893, pp. 195-246.
63. Selaniki, Tarih'i Selaniki, 2: 805-806.
64. See also Ipşirli, "Mustafa Selaniki," p. 468.
65. Evliya, folios 27b, 28a, 31a, 31b.
66. Anthony Dolphin Alderson, The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), Tables 27 and 29.
67. For a more general discussion of the Western construction of Oriental despotism, see Patricia Springborg, Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992)
68. Lucette Valensi, The Birth of the Despot: Venice and the Sublime Porte, trans. Arthur Denner (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993).
69. Domenico Hierosolimitano, Domenico's Istanbul, ed. Geoffrey Lewis, trans. Michael Austin (Warminster, Wiltshire: Aris & Phillips, for the E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2001), pp. i, xvii, 144, 149.
70. Domenico, Domenico's Istanbul, pp. 36, 87,1107, 117.
71. "Chierici's material forms a part of accepted 'harem mythology,' and both plagiarizers demonstrate the unreliability of the plethora of Vere Relationi and Nouvelles Descriptions upon which so much modern work is based." Domenico, Domenico's Istanbul, p. xviii.
72. Domenico, Domenico's Istanbul, p. 107.
73. Ibid., p. 109.
74. Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1668; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1971), pp. 38-39.
75. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters, ed. Malcolm Jack (London: Virago, 1994), pp. 113, 116, 118.
76. Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters, p. 85.
77. Ibid., p. 104.
78. Ibid., p. 132.
79. Alain Grosrichard, The Sultan's Court: European Fantasies of the East, trans. Liz Heron (London: Verso, 1998), p. 125.
80. Grosrichard, Sultan's Court, pp. xiii, xiv, 125, 169, 185.
81. Grosrichard, Sultan's Court, pp. 26-52.
82. The Englishman Paul Rycaut's account of the Ottoman Empire should also be read less as an accurate account of the Ottoman Empire and more as a commentary on English politics; see Linda T Darling, "Ottoman Politics through British Eyes: Paul Rycaut's The Present State of the Ottoman Empire," Journal of World History 5 (1994): 71-97. Therefore, any inaccuracies in his account of the harem can be seen less as unwitting errors and more as deliberate distortions to prove a point.
83. For a spectrum of views on this subject see the following: Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992)
84. Rana Kabbani, Europe's Myths of Orient (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
85. and Derek Hopwood, Sexual Encounters in the Middle East: The British, the French and the Arabs (Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 1999).
86. Kabbani, Europe's Myths, p. 27
87. Hopwood, Sexual Encounters, pp. 13-14.
88. Edward W Lane, The Thousand and One Nights, 3 vols. (London, 1838-1841), 3: 686
89. quoted in Kabbani, Europe's Myths, pp. 37, 40.
90. Kabbani, Europe's Myths, pp. 55, 64
91. Hopwood, Sexual Encounters, p. 203.
92. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, pp. 150-154.
93. Deny, "Walide Sultan," p. 1117
94. Alderson, Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty, Table XLIV, n. 3.
95. Comtesse de la Ferté-Meun, Lettres sur le Bosphore, ou relations d'un voyage à Constantinople et en différentes parties de l'Orient pendant les années 1816, 1817, 1818, et 1819, 2nd ed. (Paris: Chez Locard et Davi, 1822), letter 87, pp. 329-331.
96. Bacqué-Grammont, Représentants Permanents, pp. 52-53.
97. Wallach, Seraglio, p. x.
98. For a more in-depth analysis of the elaboration of the Ottoman ideology of the caliphate, see Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert, An Economic and Social History of the Ottman Empire, 1300-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 20-21
99. Halil Inalcik, "Islamic Caliphate, Turkey and Muslims in India," in Shariah, Ummah and Khilafa, ed. Yusuf Abbas Hashmi (Karachi, Pakistan: Dr. Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi Chair, University of Karachi, 1987), pp. 14-34
100. Selim Deringil, The Well Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1999 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 46-99, 169-175
101. Sir William Muir, The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (From Original Sources) (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1891), p. 590,
102. quoted in Selim Deringil, "The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908," Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (1993): 27.
103. William Ramsay Mitchell, "The Intermixture of Races in Asia Minor," Proceedings of the British Academy 1915-1916, pp. 359-422
104. quoted in Deringil, "Invention," p. 11.
105. Morrison appears to have originally come from Scotland, and there is a British perspective in her novel.
106. "The theory set out in Morton, The Veiled Empress, and elsewhere, to the effect that ... Nakşidil ... is to be identified with Marie Marthe Aimée Dubuc de Rivéry of Martinique, does not bear examination. By courtesy of the late Dr. J. K. Birge - himself a believer in the theory - this writer was enabled to see photostats of copies of the documents on which Morton based his argument; careful collation of these with the book showed that Morton had completely misused and even falsified the evidence. Above all there is no proof whatsoever that Aimée even reached Istanbul, let alone became Princess-Mother." Alderson, Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty, table XLIV, n. 3.
107. Above all there is no proof whatsoever that Aimée even reached Istanbul, let alone became Princess-Mother." Alderson, Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty, table XLIV, n. 3.
108. "Anyone wishing to see this sort of fantasy carried to its extreme should read ... The Wilder Shores of Love (New York, 1954).
109. In it there is the story, purportedly based on fact, of one Aimée Dubucq de Rivéry who, captured by corsairs, found herself in the harem of Abdul-Hamid I. There she became the valide sultan Nakşidil, mother of Mahmut II, brought about the pro-French policy of that monarch and instigated reforms. She was helped in all this by being the cousin of Empress Josephine!" Domenico, Domenico's Istanbul, p. xxiv.
110. Reeva S. Simon, The Middle East in Crime Fiction: Mysteries, Spy Novels, and Thrillers from 1916 to the 1980s (New York: Lilian Barber, 1989), pp. vii, viii, 42, 66.
111. In 1809 Napoleon divorced Josephine because she had failed to produce a child by him.
112. Compare her love for Selim to the standard view of relationships between Western women and Middle Eastern men found, for example, in Shakespeare's Othello and Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, in which such love is either viewed as doomed or impossible.
113. Chase-Riboud, Valide, p. ix.
114. Wallach, Seraglio, p. vi.
115. Ibid., pp. ix, xii.
116. Wallach has also written a biography of Coco Chanel, the French fashion designer, and a book on how to dress for success.
117. Wallach, Seraglio, pp. 11, 71-73, 128.
118. Ibid., p. 258.
119. Ibid., pp. ix-x.
120. Simon, Middle East in Crime Fiction, pp. 135-136.
121. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
122. Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 177
123. Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (New York: Random House, 2003).
124. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, pp. 2, 162-168.