Leslie Peirce, "The Exercise of Political Power",

chpt 9 of her The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Oxford Univ Press, 1993, pp. 229-265.

From the late thirteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman throne passed in an unbroken line from father to son for fourteen generations. While the sultan was compelled to exercise vigilance in order to protect himself from his sons' ambitions, he was also concerned with their survival and with protecting them from one another. Furthermore, it was he who was ultimately responsible for his sons' training for the imperial career. With the institution of succession by seniority, the link between father and son was weakened. Unable to father children until his accession, a sultan might well die before his sons reached maturity. Moreover, he could not regard his sons as his direct heirs since any brothers or cousins he might have would rule before them. If the ruler was still hailed as "the sultan, son of the sultan," the charismatic link between father and son that had endured for three centuries was broken. It was the relationship between mother and son that became the fundamental dynastic bond, in terms not only of its political utility-for the prince's mother had always been a vital figure in his career- but also its public celebration.

With the growing importance of the imperial palace as the locus of sovereign power, the status and authority of the valide sultan increased. Over time, her political role was so routinized that it came to be viewed as an office with a title. Like the holder of any position of great political influence, the valide sultan might arouse considerable opposition, occasionally even that of her son, the sultan. Yet, while she might be only one of several contenders in the political arena, at the same time she had the capacity to assume a supra-political role that enabled her to represent the dynasty as a whole. In moments of crisis, the valide sultan, as the dynasty's senior member, could act as an integrating force in the polity, smoothing over ruptures as severe even as the deposition of a sultan.

Mother of the Prince: Guardian and Tutor

One of the key political relationships of the pre­Suleymanic period was the bond between the prince and his mother. The changes in dynastic politics that occurred during the sixteenth century, while they altered the dynamics ofthe royal family, did not displace this fundamental relationship. Although a new role was introduced-that of haseki, a role which emphasized the bond between royal concubine mother and sultan-and although princesses were placed in a different relationship to power through their marriages to top of finials, the greatest source of authority and status for dynastic women continued to be the role of mother of a male dynast.

It would be wrong to think that princes needed their mothers less under the system of succession by seniority. While armed contests among princes for the succession no longer took place, the transition from the open succession that had prevailed through Suleyman's reign to the system of seniority was not smooth. When the heir to the throne was identified (as, for example, during the reign of Murad III), there was mutual distrust between the sultan and the prince, who was awaiting his own turn on the throne: the former feared dethronement and the latter execution. Even under the system of seniority, there was distrust, now between brothers. Princes continued to need protection. They no longer had tutors and the many other members of their princely courts who might have an interest in securing their survival. Confined to the palace, a prince had as his principal and sometimes only effective ally his mother and her supporters, unless one faction or another within or without the palace chose to support his candidacy. Indeed, such factional support was generally brought about through the agency of his mother.

The most vital function of the prince's mother was to keep him alive. One of the most important ways in which she did this was to guard him from the sultan's displeasure, especially by preventing any suspicion on the sultan's part of the prince's designs on the throne. As we have seen in Chapter 2, Gulruh Khatun, the mother of Bayezid II's son Alemsah, was anxious to protect her son from manipulation by members of his princely entourage and to ensure that the sultan regarded the latter-and not the prince or herself- as responsible for the reports he had received about Alemsah's misconduct. According to Guillaume Postel, Suleyman's mother Hafsa saved her son from execution at his father's hands by instructing him to deny any interest in the succession. A few years before his death, Selim I was said to have tested his sons' loyalty by telling them that he wished to retire from the sultanate and inquiring which of them wanted to rule the empire. Postel related that "those who were so bold as to respond died. The present Sultan Suleyman, admonished by his mother, who understood the Prince [Selim], refused all, and said he was his father's Slave, and not his son, and that even after his death he could assume that responsibility only with the greatest distress." While this story may be inaccurate in its details or even apocryphal, it illustrates prevalent conceptions of both the tenuousness of the relationship between sultan and prince, and the vital role of the mother in preventing its complete rupture.

Busbecq, the Hapsburg ambassador to Suleyman, described Hurrem's efforts to protect her son Bayezid from his father's wrath. Toward the end of Suleyman's reign, when only Bayezid and his elder brother Selim remained as potential heirs, Bayezid angered his father by supporting the claims of a pretender to the throne. Father and son communicated their positions through an exchange of poetry, as the Ottomans were wont to do: Bayezid's poem concluded, "Forgive Bayezid's offense, spare the life of this slave / I am innocent, God knows, my fortune­favored sultan, my father"; in response, Suleyman wrote, "My Bayezid, I'll forgive your offense if you mend your ways / But for once do not say 'I am innocent,' show repentance, my dear son." According to Busbecq, Hurrem was instrumental in dissuading the sultan from severely punishing the prince:

Letting a few days elapse in order that his wrath might die down she touched upon the subject in the Sultan's presence and dwelt upon the thoughtlessness of youth and the inevitableness of fate, and quoted similar incidents from the past history of Turkey.... It was only fair, she said, to pardon a first offense; and if his son amended his ways, his father would have gained much by sparing his son's life; if, on the other hand, he returned to his evil ways, there would be ample opportunity to punish him for both his offences. She entreated him, if he would not have mercy on his son. to take pity on a mother's prayers on behalf of her own child

In the seventeenth century, when princes and their mothers were resident in the imperial palace rather than in a distant province, they needed to be extremely discreet. They were now under the watchful eye not only of the sultan but of the valide sultan and of the mothers and supporters of rival princes. The valide sultan was the most formidable challenge to a prince's mother because she was equally intent on protecting the interests of her own son, the sultan. The clash between the two generations of mothers is most vividly illustrated in the affair of Mahmud, the eldest son of Mehmed III, whose mother was not sufficiently circumspect in her efforts to bolster the prince's candidacy. Mahmud and his mother were executed after the valide sultan Safiye intercepted a message sent into the palace to Mahmud's mother by a religious seer, whom she had consulted about her son's future. The message indicated that Mahmud would succeed his father within six months. Grown so fat and physically unfit that his doctors warned him against campaigning, the sultan was particularly threatened by this augury because of Mahmud's popularity with the Janissaries. This affair was reported at length by Henry Lello, English ambassador to the Ottoman court:

[The sultan's] eldeste sonne beinge betwen 18 & 19 yeeres of Age begane to grieve & murmur to see how his father was altogether led by the old Sultana his Grand mother & the state went to Ruyne. she respecting nothing but her owne desire to gett money, & often Lamented therof to his mother the young Sultana his fathers weir [who was] not fauored of the Oueene mother [but] who grieved likewise but could not remedie it. yet she thought wth her self that she would send to a wiseman or fortune teller (for they are very sup[er]stitious) to know yf her sonne should be the succeeding king & how longe her husband the Emperor should line. answeare whereof was returned her in writings the Messenger fayling in his messadge deliurd it to the old Sultana in steed of the yong Sultana who opening the same findeth it was directed to her daughter in lawe, wherein was sett downe that wthin six monethes her sonne should be Emperor not strewing how whether b[y] the deathe or depriuacon of his father wch the Q. mother presentlie comprehended was a plot of Trechery & therewth incensed her sonne the Emperor who conceaued noe les (& where they ha[ve] any lelosie they haue noe mercie) called his son(.) examined him hereof who indeed knewe nothing of his mothers action therein he was rayed downe & beaten upon the feete & bellie as there faishon is to make him confesse kept him in Close prison & after two daies was beaten aga[in] having evy tyme 200. bloews. & could gett nothing from him. Then the mother was called in question & examined who confessed she did send unto a wiseman to know her sonnes fortune. but wth no intention of hurte or thought of the depriu[ation] of her husband whom she tendered so much wth many p[ro]testacons of loue to him wch would not satisfie him espially the Q. mother but was p[re]sentlie that nighte wth 30. more of her followers wch they supposed to be interessed in the busines shuts vp a Iyve into sacks & so throwne inm the sea.

Lello goes on to describe the execution of Mahmud, who was "strangled & most basely & obscurely buryed" (he was, however, honored after his father's death with burial in "a goodly tombe" by his brother, Ahmed I). Ironically, Mehmed III died in December 1603, six and a half months after Mahmud's execution. Unlike his predecessor Edward Barton, Lello disliked Safiye Sultan intensely, and this account of the affair may have been colored by his views.

Kosem Sultan, haseki to Ahmed I and valide sultan during three reigns, had a long career as guardian of princes. Not only did she, like Hurrem, have several sons, but these princes were severely threatened by the dynastic politics of the previous generations. The trend toward primogeniture in the later sixteenth century suggested that her sons might well fall victim to their elder brother Osman, who was born of another concubine. It is possible that the significant modifications in the pattern of succession to the throne set in motion during the reign of Ahmed I owed something to the efforts of Kosem. Kosem was a very influential haseki at the crucial point in Ottoman dynastic history when the transition to seniority became possible. If, after producing heirs, Ahmed had executed his brother Mustafa, as custom demanded, he would have been succeeded by his eldest son Osman. The pattern of son­tofather succession thus maintained, it would have been likely that the new sultan, once he produced sons, would execute all his brothers, including Kosem's sons Murad, Kasim, and Ibrahim. In 1612 the Venetian ambassador Simon Contarini reported that Kosem had prevailed upon Ahmed to spare Mustafa, with the argument that since Ahmed, not his father's firstborn son, had himself been brought to the throne purely through an act of fate, he should not harm his own brother, even if this was against the custom of the Ottoman house. Her motive, according to Contarini, was "to see if it was possible that this mercy which she displayed at the present to the brother might also be employed later toward her son, the brother of the [firstborn] prince."

If Kosem's lobbying on Mustafa's behalf may have contributed to his survival and his accession after Ahmed's death, Osman's failure to capture the throne may have been caused in part by the absence of a mother to lobby in his favor. Osman's mother, Mahfiruz, was alive when her son was finally enthroned in 1618 after the deposition of the incompetent Mustafa. However, contrary to the assumptions of modern accounts, she did not live in the imperial palace during Osman's reign nor did she act as valide sultan (privy purse registers from Osman's reign list no valide sultan). Mahfiruz died in 1620, two years after her son's accession, and was buried in the large sanctuary of Eyub. From the middle of 1620, Osman's governess, the daye khatun , began to receive an extraordinarily large stipend (one thousand aspers a day rather than her usual two hundred aspers), an indication that she was now the official stand­in for the valide sultan. What seems likely is that Mahfiruz fell into disfavor, was banished from the palace at some point before Osman's accession, and never recovered her status as a royal concubine. Banishment in disgrace would explain both Mahfiruz's absence from the palace and her burial in the popular shrine of Eyub rather than in her husband's tomb. The Venetian ambassador Contarini reported in 1612 that the sultan had had a beating administered to a woman who had irritated Kosem; perhaps this woman was Mahfiruz. Mahfiruz's banishment would have removed a serious obstacle to Kosem's efforts to save Mustafa from execution, since the party of Osman had the greatest stake in the survival of the traditional system of succession.

Further evidence that Mahfiruz was absent from the palace as her child grew up is the positive relationship that appears to have developed between Osman and Kosem. As a small boy, Osman went for carriage rides with Kosem; he liked to make himself seen during these outings by casting coins to bystanders. Eventually Ahmed interfered with this relationship between his son and his haseki : the ambassador Valier reported in 1616 that the sultan did not allow the two eldest princes (Osman and Mehmed) to converse with Kosem. His motive perhaps, as Valier speculated, was fear that the princes' security was threatened by Kosem's well­known ambitions for her own sons. i3 Another possible motive was the judgment that it was no longer proper for the princes, who were approaching maturity, to associate with a woman who was not, according to Islamic law, within the degree of family relationship that permitted open association among males and females. Nevertheless, after Ahmed's death, the relationship resumed: in 1619, as sultan, Osman honored Kosem with a three­day visit in the Old Palace, to which she had retired as the concubine of a deceased sultanas Kosem may have cultivated this relationship with the intent that, if and when Osman became sultan, she could use her influence to persuade him to spare her sons. Indeed, when as sultan he departed on the Polish campaign of 1621, Osman executed only Mehmed, the eldest of his younger brothers, who was not one of Kosem's sons.

The factional strife that marked the second reign of Mustafa, Osman's uncle and successor, is further evidence that a prince's mother was clearly identified with her son in the competition for the throne in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to the Ottoman court and chronicler of the dramatic political upheavals of the early 1620s, reported that the faction that supported the incompetent Mustafa and resisted the party of Murad, Kosem's eldest son and next in line for the throne, not only demanded the execution of a pro­Murad grand vezir, but "the soldiours require also the head of the mother of Moratt sultan. . . "

In addition to protecting her son from the vagaries of succession, a prince's mother continued in the seventeenth century to play an important rob: as political tutor. With the abandonment of the princely governorate, the education and training of princes was confined to the palace. As young boys, princes had previously received both physical and intellectual training alongside the pages in the palace's third courtyard. Now, although they continued to receive training in horsemanship and the martial arts among the pages, they were taught in the "princes' school" located within the harem precinct. In his provincial capital, each prince had been surrounded by a variety of persons who contributed to his political and cultural training, whereas now several princes might be placed under the tutelage of a single teacher. While Murad In appointed the prominent and highly respected Sadeddin Efendi to be imperial preceptor to his firstborn son Mehmed, on whom the succession was bestowed during his father's lifetime, four of Murad's younger sons shared the poet Nev'i as their preceptor.

As provincial governors princes had received military training in battles commanded by their father. Suleyman, for example, personally provided each of his sons with careful training in military and administrative affairs, taking them with him on campaign and assigning them to guard areas of the empire For example, Mustafa was placed in charge of Anatolia in 1534 and 1538, when Suleyman and the grand vezir were occupied with the Persian and then Moldavian campaigns; the sultan took Mehmed and Selim with him in 1540 to spend the winter in Edirne; and Bayezid accompanied him on the 1543 campaign, the sultan's tenth, to Hungary. As Suleyman crossed Anatolia in 1548 to take up arms once more against the Safavids, his eleventh campaign, he met with each of his three sons stationed in the provinces: first with Selim, who was dispatched to Edirne to protect the capital from any incursion from the west; then with Bayezid, who rode with his father for several stations before returning to his post in Aksehir; and finally, with Mustafa, whom the sultan summoned from Amasya to accompany him for several days. Suleyman also summoned his sons and his grandsons, singly and in groups, to join him in leisure activities, especially the hunt, a custom reflected in a number of miniatures that illustrate the histories of his reign

In the seventeenth century, however, there were few opportunities for a prince to receive on­the­job training from his father. The frequent depositions meant that a prince might never even know his father. Or he might know him only as a child: Ahmed I was fourteen when his father died, Mustafa eleven, Osman II thirteen, Murad IV six, Ibrahim two, and Mehmed IV seven. Furthermore, he might spend his formative years ignored by an uncle­ or brother-sultan who was unlikely, in these times when a sultan's hold on his throne was tenuous, to expose a younger member of the dynasty to the public view. Were a sultan to feel secure enough to do so, he would undoubtedly be more interested in promoting the welfare of his own offspring (as did Mehmed IV).

It was natural under these circumstances that a prince's mother would assume much of the burden of his political education. Particularly if she was or had been a favorite of the sultan-as were Nurbanu, Safiye, and Kosem-she was likely to have acquired a considerable grasp of the problems and protocol of government. From the time of Suleyman, the inner palace was increasingly the central arena of government. Its inhabitants-the sultan's male favorites and eunuchs, his mother and his hasekis, and the harem's officers and black eunuch guards-acquired both formal and informal influence over the sultan's decisions. Far from being isolated from public events, high­ranking women of the harem lived at the very heart of political life.

The political education of royal concubines was acquired principally through the agency of other women in the harem. Turhan Sultan, for example, who bore Ibrahim's first son and was the last of the great valide sultans of this period, was largely ignored by the sultan, who in any case had little political experience or sense himself. However, as a new slave woman in the palace, a gift of Kor Suleyman Pasha to the valide sultan Kosem, she had been trained by Atike Sultan, a sister of Murad IV," and groomed by Kosem, who presented her to her son. Serving in the suite of the powerful and experienced valide sultan before she became concubine to the sultan, Turhan was no doubt privy to discussions of affairs of state and perhaps directly instructed in her duties as a potential valide sultan. A letter Turhan wrote as valide sultan some twenty years later illustrates the kind of information to which concubines had access; in the letter, written to the grand vezir, Turhan questioned the drop in revenue received from Egypt:

What is the reason why the Annual] revenue from Egypt has fallen to 800 purses when it used to be 1200 purses? . . . During the reign of my lord Sultan Ibrahim, may God have mercy on him, and during the reign of Sultan Murad, how many times, year after year, did we see the Egyptian revenues arrive. What can they be thinking of that they send such a shortfall?

However one's political education was acquired, it is clear that seclusion in the harem was not an obstacle to following public events. For example, a Venetian ambassadorial dispatch shortly after the enthronement in 1623 of Murad IV commented on Kosem Sultan's political experience: "[All power ] and authority [is with] the mother, a woman completely different from that off Sultan Mustafa, in the prime of life and of lofty mind and spirit, [who] often] took part in the government during the reign of her husband." Roe, the English ambassador, writing a month before the Venetian dispatch, commented in much the same vein, predicting that the new sultan would be "governed by his mother, who governed his father, a man of spirit and witt."

The Valide Sultan: Mentor and Guardian

The crucial role played by a prince's mother before he ascended the throng was translated into a more institutionally secure and publicly visible role when I the prince became sultan and his mother valide sultan. The valide sultan continued to carry on her roles as tutor and protector of her son. Her prominence and the nearly universal esteem in which she was held, at least formally, gave her wider and more legitimate scope for exercising her power. This is a principal reason why Ottoman writers of the period mention the valide sultan with far greater frequency than they do the sultan's haseki

The valide sultan continued to instruct the sultan as she had the prince. The extent to which her influence on her son's decisions or her direct influence on political affairs was publicly evident depended on a number of factors, including the sultan's independence of spirit, the number of other mentors with whom he had developed a close relationship, and the degree to which he was devoted to his political office. However, since only those political matters or events in which the valide sultan either appeared publicly or worked through the agency of someone outside the harem tended to enter the historical record, it is nearly impossible to know the extent to which a sultan consulted his mother's opinion on a daily basis or the degree to which she influenced events in a routine and nonpublic manner. According to Petis de la Croix, the sultan paid court to his mother on a daily basis (de la Croix was most likely describing the relationship between Mehmed IV and Turhan). While the relative silence of the sources might suggest that Kosem Sultan was a less powerful valide sultan during the reigns of her adult sons than were Nurbanu, Safiye, or Turhan, it is hard to imagine that she was not politically active.

That the valide sultan would act as mentor to her son appears to have been expected by Ottomans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was considered both her duty and her right. Earlier historical tradition attributed such a role to the mother of Osman, the first Ottoman ruler. According to the late­fifteenth­century historian Nesri, when the Seljuk sultan Alaeddin sent Osman the regalia of the sultanate, symbols of his independent sovereignty, a ceremonial assembly was held; as the Seljuk sovereign's musicians began to play, Osman's mother instructed her son to stand in respect. Standing during the playing of royal music became a feature of sultanic ceremonial tradition until it was abandoned by Mehmed II, who found it no longer appropriate to the exalted station of the Ottoman house. Like many of the events he relates regarding the early history of the Ottoman dynasty, here Nesri may have been preserving legend rather than fact. Nevertheless, the fact that Osman's mother's role as guardian-or in this case initiator-of Ottoman tradition was included in a late­fifteenth­century history suggests that such behavior was considered appropriate at that time.

The historian Pecevi, a contemporary of many of the events he relates, describes as "a mother's right" the efforts of Handan Sultan, mother of Ahmed I, to counsel her son, Describing Handan Sultan's attempts to convince Ahmed to follow the advice of the admiral Dervis Pasha, Pecevi wrote:

Sometimes the padishah would sit Dervis Pasha in the imperial garden and would act according to his suggestions. The next day all of a sudden a huge problem would develop. In fact . . the Valide sultan would get her son to swear, by her mother's right and her suckling breast, that he would not do anything contrary to [Dervis Pasha's] words and thoughts. The nature of women is well­known. She thought [Dervis] Pasha was someone free from malice and resentment, virtuous and well­intentioned.

Pecevi's reservations about the wisdom of the Valide sultan's counsel most probably stemmed from the fact that the powerful admiral was the chief political enemy of Pecevi's patron, Lala Mehmed Pasha. But while criticizing Handan Sultan for her alleged naivete, Pecevi legitimized her authority over her son in a way that would have invoked an immediate and positive response from his audience. He echoed an old and popular saying, "A mother's right is God's right." As we have seen in Chapter 2, one of Gulruh Khatun's complaints about her son's tutor and other members of his court was that they had deprived her of her 'mother's right." Mother's milk was also a traditional image, one that signified a strong bond of loyalty and obligation between mother and son and also a source of power and healing.

Of the post­Suleymanic sultans, Murad III was one of the most devoted to his mother and dependent upon her counsel. According to Paolo Contarini, who submitted his report to the Venetian government shortly before Nurbanu's death in December 1583, Murad's mother was the person on whom he most relied for guidance: "[He bases] his policies principally on the advice of his mother, it appearing to him that he could have no other advice as loving and loyal as hers, hence the reverence which he shows toward her and the esteem that he bears for her unusual qualities and many virtues." As Nurbanu lay dying, the sultan loudly lamented that he would be an orphan, with no help or counsel to support the weight of sovereignty. Nurbanu's final advice to Murad, was, in the words of the ambassador Morosini, "the most judicious and prudent caution as regards this government that could have come from a good, intelligent, and consummate statesman." Nurbanu urged her son to he particularly heedful of three matters: ensuring that swifter and more impartial justice be rendered to his subjects, restraining his natural avidity for gold and money, and above all keeping watch on the conduct of his son.

A powerful valide sultan might attempt to influence important figures directly. According to Selaniki, Safiye Sultan, seated behind a curtain, was present at a private consultation to which the sultan had summoned the mufti Sunullah Efendi in 1600. The sultan and the mufti discussed affairs of state, the former urging the latter to permit nothing contrary to the holy law. Then, recounted Selaniki,

[I]t became apparent that the valide sultan was listening. She hastened to support [the sultan's words] and said, "affairs of state have become excessively disordered, taxes imposed through harmful invention on the peasants of the empire have multiplied beyond bounds, and the whole world is becoming increasingly obsessed with pennies and pounds and taking bribes. All is being corrupted because ignorant and base persons have taken control. A remedy must be applied to these ills."

Repeating the litany of criticism that late­sixteenth­century Ottomans, including Selaniki himself, were wont to direct toward the palace, mother and son appear to have adopted the tactic of laying the responsibility for the many problems of the empire on the shoulders of their delegates. Or, in attributing this speech to the valide sultan, perhaps Selaniki was unwilling, at least in print, to lay the blame for misgovernment directly on the sovereign.

The valide sultan was a principal intermediary to whom statesmen could appeal to temper the sultan's behavior. When, in the spring of 1599, Mehmed III showed reluctance to contribute funds from the inner treasury to the Hungarian campaign, the grand vezir (and royal damad) Ibrahim Pasha appealed to Sadeddin Efendi, formerly the sultan's preceptor and now the mufti.Sadeddin Efendi in turn appealed to Safiye Sultan. On another occasion, Safiye was directly petitioned by the of the Yemen, who complained that his many previous petitions to the sultan regarding the lack of troops to defend the isolated province had been ignored. In 1634 it was again a mufti who appealed to the valide sultan to instruct her son. Distressed by Murad IV's execution of the judge of Iznik for a minor offence, the mufti Ahizade Huseyin Efendi petitioned Kosem to advise Murad on the requirements of proper treatment of members of the religious estahlishment: "It is our hope that you will give counsel to him and thus receive the blessings of the ulema." (As we shall see later in this chapter, this affair had disastrous consequences for the mufti.) As valide sultan to the lackluster Mehmed IV, whose passion for hunting increasingly overwhelmed his interest in government, Turhan Sultan was the principal stimulus encouraging the sultan to perform his kingly functions. In the words of the historian Silahdar Mehmed Agha, when Turhan died in 1683, "everyone was sad and sorrowful and wailed, saying 'Alas, the strongest prop of the state is gone.'", Indeed, the sultan's utter lack of concern over the empire's crumbling European frontier led to his deposition four years later.

In works they addressed to the valide sultan, writers and poets might appeal to her to guide her son to better government. Mustafa All, historian, government official, and critic of late­sixteenth century Ottoman society, presented to Safiye Sultan and Mehmed III a brief history, extracted from the longer work he was preparing. The purpose of the shorter work was to warn the sultan and his mother that if measures were not taken to correct defects in government, the Ottoman Empire could easily succumb to their ravages. In his introduction Ali alluded to Safiye Sultan's powerful role in government and her close ties with a number of the grand vezirs of Mehmed's reign (several were her sons­in­law

Though the sultan does not condone oppression. his vezirs . . . bring unworthy ones into service and destroy the order of the world by bribe­taking. They do not tell the sultan the truth, excusing themselves by saying they cannot tell him such things out of fear. However, they contradict themselves. Do they imagine it will be easier for them if, fearing his anger. do they tell the valide sultan? She would never allow such disruption of order or such affairs to besmirch the reputation of her dear son.

Similarly, in one of the poems addressed to Safiye by Nev'i, preceptor to four of the sons of Murad III, the poet heaped superlatives on the queen mother, praising her as "the queen of the age, mother of the commander of the faithful." He then appealed through her to urge the sultan to take up arms against the infidel:

My padishah,">make prosperous the domains of this lone world,
It does not matter that the revival of government may cause anguish to the sultanate.
Your sword has already found the scabbard of sovereignty,
It is time that you drew it against the evil infidel.

During the years of the "mad" Ibrahim's reign, when he was amenable to instruction, Kosem Sultan may have been instrumental in the preparation and presentation of advice memoranda to her son. Koci Bey, who had prepared such memoranda for Murad IV, was called upon to do so for the new sultan. Whereas for Murad, Koci Bey had laid out the problems of the empire and suggested reforms, for Ibrahim he prepared simple explanations of the structure and function of different offices and organizations within the palace and outer government. It is possible that Kosem had earlier suggested the usefulness of such memoranda to Murad, for whom a number were written around the time that he began to take active control of government. At least one such work had been presented to Osman II, with whom Kosem was on friendly terms; it may have provided inspiration for those written for her sons. While undoubtedly useful as a substitute for the training princes formerly received in their provincial post, these memoranda frequently urged a return to policies and institutional structures that no longer fit the realities of Ottoman administration.

In addition to counsel, the valide sultan continued to provide vigilant protection to her son, particularly during his absences from Istanbul. Because her tenure in office was dependent upon that of her son, she was his most trusted and watchful ally. The constant threat of sedition against the throne, particularly in this period of dynastic transition, made her efforts to guard the sultan as necessary as they had been when he was merely prince. One of the reasons the sultans of the post­Suleymanic period were reluctant to leave the capital was that princes who might be enthroned in their place were ready at hand in the palace rather than scattered in the provinces.

During the Erlau campaign of 1596 Mehmed III gave his mother Safiye Sultan virtual executive power not surprisingly, since she was for all practical purposes co­ruler with her son. According to Selaniki, he left her in control of a treasury of a billion aspers. The degree of Mehmed's deference to Safiye's authority during her interim rule is revealed in two appointments to office he made during the campaign and then rescinded. He granted the judgeship of Istanbul to the son of his preceptor, Sadeddin Efendi, but upon the appeal of the lieutenant grand vezir, Safiye Sultan decided in favor of the incumbent, and the sultan refused to override this decision when pressed by Sadeddin. When Mehmed received letters from Safiye congratulating him on the Ottoman victory but criticizing his bestowal of the grand vezirate on Qigalazade Sinan Pasha, at the first opportunity the sultan reappointed the former grand vezir Ibrahim Pasha, who had been largely responsible for the victory. Perhaps more important, Ibrahim Pasha was Safiye's son­in­law.

In 1634 Kosem Sultan moved swiftly to protect Murad IV from a threat of sedition during his absence on a royal progress in the area around Bursa. Murad's execution of the judge of Iznik for a minor offense generated such discontent among the religious hierarchy in Istanbul that rumors began to circulate that the mufti Ahizade Huseyin Efendi was stirring up sentiment against the sultan and aiming at his overthrow. When accusations against the mufti were brought to the valide sultan's attention, she immediately sent word to Murad to return to the capital as soon as possible. The unfortunate Huseyin Efendi was strangled before proof of his innocence could react the irate sultan. This was the first execution of a mufti in the history of the Ottoman state.

In the sultan's absence the valide sultan might protect his honor as well as his throne. When the Marquis de Nointel, ambassador of Louis XIV, arrived by ship in Istanbul in 1670, he did not make the customary artillery salute when passing by the imperial palace, both because he wished to assert the superiority of the French monarchy to the Ottoman sultanate and because the sultan, Mehmed IV, was absent in Edirne. The city was scandalized and the ambassadorial community furious at the French for jeopardizing its collective standing. The diplomatic crisis was resolved when Turban Sultan appeared one day with her retinue on the shore of the palace grounds in order to inspect a ship under construction and demanded that the French perform the royal salute in her name. The French ships were immediately decked out with multicolored banners, and their artillery began to fire, vying with the palace cannon, which were also fired in the valide sultan's honor. Soon, however, the volume and duration of the French detonations began to annoy the population of the city, and the Ottoman admiral sent word that pregnant women were miscarrying because of the disturbance

Conflict: Uncertain Boundaries of Power

Despite the importance of the valide sultan as the sultan's ally, her expanded power and status in the second half of the sixteenth century were not without their problems. Not all sultans welcomed their mother's influence once they mounted the throne or reached an age at which they felt competent to take up the reins of government themselves. This was not surprising: as the valide sultan acquired public status and a claim to legitimate authority in government, the tensions that had previously existed between father and son, an inescapable feature of their shared claim to power, were transferred to the relationship between mother and son.

The most difficult task of a sultan was surely to recognize which of his intimate advisers offered counsel that was most beneficial to the stability and well­being of the empire and thus to the security of his throne. While his mother's career ultimately depended upon his own, her power was not exclusively derived from his. Her networks of influence were extensive: her daughters were married to leading statesmen (these marriages were often contracted before her son's accession), her freed slaves were important allies outside the palace, and her influence over important inner palace officials- for example, high­ranking black eunuchs or the sultan's preceptor-could be considerable The valide sultan's cultivation of these networks, which required her to reward her supporters with influential and lucrative offices, meant that she was anxious to arrogate as many of the resources of government as possible. This placed her in competition with other intimate counselors of the sultan-the vezirs, the mufti , the chief black eunuch, the sultan's preceptor, his male and female favorites-who were equally eager to create supporting factions within the governing elite. In an absolute monarchy such as the Ottoman Empire, political power consisted of maintaining the ear, the trust, and the good will of the sultan. In the Contest for influence, the sultan's mother was a formidable competitor.

The sultan was not always willing to countenance his mother's attempts to promote her allies or her own interests, particularly when these clashed with his own. Even Mehmed III, who so often gave in to his mother, resisted on occasion. To a certain extent Mehmed had no choice but to restrain his mother because of her unpopularity with the soldiers and many statesmen. Indeed, Safiye can be said to have rivaled Hurrem as the most unpopular female member of the dynasty in this period. According to the ambassador Agostino Nani, who resided in Istanbul from 1600 to 1603, Safiye's position was tenuous:

[A]t one time she was taken away from the palace and sent to the Old Palace by her son, the present king, but a few days later she was brought back and restored. She will succeed with difficulty in escaping being removed [again] at the petition of the soldiers, who want her sent to some faraway place although they do not want to shed her blood This might be accomplished by having her driven away to Edirne. They attribute many disorders to her, in particular the consumption of money for a most superb mosque she is having built; but she has halted its constructions. The suspension of construction was only temporary: John Sanderson commented a few months later that "the Great sultanaes church goeth up apace, and she rayneth as before." The English ambassador Henry Lello also commented on Safiye's unpopularity: "[S]he was ever in fauor & wholy ruled her sonne: notwthstanding the Mufti & souldiers had much compleyned of her to ther king for misleading & Ruling him."

The most difficult crisis Safiye had to weather was an uprising in 1600 of >the imperial cavalry troops in the capital. The rebellion was directed at Esperanza Malchi, one of a series of Bras , Jewish women who acted as agents for the valide sultans. The kira and one of her sons, known as "the little padishah" because of his and his mother's influence, were brutally murdered. It was with difficulty that Safiye herself was protected from the anger of the rebels, who held the valide sultan responsible for the huge fortune the kira had amassed (her assets in commercial goods and cash alone were fifty million aspers). They also blamed Safiye for the debased coins with which they were paid because of the kira and her son's control of the customs office. According to Sanderson, "This was an acte of the Spahies [the imperial cavalry], in spight of [to spite] the Great Turkes mother; for by the hands of this Jewe woman she toke all hir bribes...." Mehmed calmed the rebels by telling them that "he would counsel! his mother and correct his servants." The palace was extremely wary after this event of any appearance that Mehmed was the tool of his mother or any other. The Venetian ambassador described the precautions taken to prevent suspicion that decrees were being improperly issued in the sultan's name:

[T]he Sultan, on the persuasion of his mother has refused to issue any more signs manual [signed decrees]; [instead] the Grand Vizir in the presence of the other Vizirs, writes out the Sultan's replies, as used to be done in the days of Suleiman Sultan. In this way the Sultana and the Chief Eunuch hope to obviate the danger which threatens them from the insolent soldiery, and to free themselves from the charge of turning the Sultan round absolutely; all the same, owing to their secret influence with the Grand Vizir, everything is arranged to suit their views.

The affair was not yet over. Safiye tried to have her sons­in­law, the grand vezir Ibrahim Pasha and the admiral Halil Pasha, removed from office for failing to protect her interests and save her agent from the rebellious troops. Mehmed resisted her pressure. According to Selaniki,

[S]he decided on revenge, saying "my sons­in­law have become my enemies, this was not the way to protect the honor of the state and the sultanate" and "they both had a role in the troops attacking in this way. She sent a message to her son saying, "If it was determined that the Jewish woman had to be punished with death, did it have to be in such an obscene fashion? Why couldn't she have been thrown into the sea? Couldn't this have been more thoughtfully planned and carried out? If not, it's clear that they are too weak and deficient to manage the majority of the affairs of government and incapable of discharging their duties as ministers."

The sultan, however, refused to meet his mother's demands; in Selaniki's words, "the padishah of celestial dignity stated, 'The vezirs have committed no crime in this affair.' "

So wary was Ahmed I of appearing to be dominated as his father had been dominated by his grandmother Safiye that he allowed his mother Handan little scope for influencing political affairs. When Ahmed was urged by his intimates to grow a beard like that of his father, he replied that he did no mind emulating his father in this respect, but wished to be like him in no other way. Only fourteen when he inherited the sultanate, Ahmed asserted his control from the very beginning (he even mounted the throne himself without waiting for the customary ceremonial in which leading statesmen enthroned the sultan). The execution in 1603 of the vezir Mehmed Pasha, son of the five­times grand vezir Sinan Pasha, illustrates the sultan's disregard of his mother's wishes. Sent to quell rebellious Jelali forces in Anatolia, Mehmed Pasha proved ineffective, and conducted himself so inappropriately as to arouse suspicions that he had turned rebel himself. With the valide sultan's intercession, he was pardoned by the sultan and returned to Istanbul expecting to take up his duties as vezir. However, he was executed at the first sitting of the imperial council. When Handan Sultan asked Ahmed why he had not respected the pardon, he reportedly replied: "[M]y pardon permitted him to return to his place in the council; he returned and received his punishment." When Handan Sultan died two years after Ahmed's accession, he refused to postpone his departure from Istanbul on campaign against the Jelalis for the customary seven days of mourning, despite the appeals of his vezirs.

While Kosem Sultan had the longest career as valide sultan, hers is perhaps the least documented. Three reigns opened with her regency-for the eleven­year­old Murad in 1623, for the emotionally disturbed Ibrahim in 1640, and for her seven­year­old grandson Mehmed IV in 1648. There was tension in the governments of both her sons as each became impatient with his mother's control as regent. Here we encounter one of the most important issues in the politics of the dynasty in this period, the boundary of the valide sultan 's authority. The tension lay in determining just where and when her duty to counsel became an infringement of the sovereignty of the sultan.

In some remarkably candid letters Kosem wrote to the grand vezir during Murad's reign, we can trace the young sultan growing independent of his mother's tutelage and her resignation to the fact that he would increasingly manage affairs on his own. His assertions of independence would appear to date from 1628, when he was sixteen, if not earlier. Murad was certainly aware that his father Ahmed and his brother Osman, both fourteen at their accession, had taken charge of affairs. No doubt he also knew that sixteen was the age at which a boy was considered to pass into adulthood. It was also the age at which many of his ancestors had taken up provincial governorates.

In one letter to the grand vezir, Kosem indicates that she is very troubled about Murad's health. We can also sense her frustration at her inability to exercise direct influence on important decisions:

Letters have come from Egypt-apparently to you too-which describe the situation there. Something absolutely must be done about Yemen-it s the gate to Mecca. You must do whatever you can. You'll talk to my son about this. l tell you, my mind is completely distraught over this [the Yemen situation].... It is going to cause you great difficulty, but you will earn God's mercy through service to the community of Muhammad. How are you getting along with salary payments? Is there much left? With the grace of God, you will take care of that obligation and then take up the Yemen situation. My son leaves in the morning and comes back at night, l never see him. He won t stay out of the cold, he's going to get sick again. l tell you, this grieving over the child is destroying me. Talk to him, when you get a chance. He must take care of himself. What can I do-he won t listen. He's just gotten out of a sickbed and he's walking around in the cold. All this has destroyed my peace of mind. All l wish is for him to stay alive. At least try to do something about Yemen. May God help us with this situation we are in.... You two know what's bestial.

A Venetian ambassadorial dispatch of September 1628 related that Murad was twice ill to the degree that his life was in danger; it is possible that the letter above dates from this period. Another letter reveals the same that the young sultan be counseled and disciplined, if not by Kosem Sultan. herself, then by the grand vezir. It also suggests that Kosem Sultan was acquiring some information concerning affairs outside the palace through Murad rather than directly:

I heard from my son that he had written you and warned you that [your steward] is not a man of good intentions. Is it true that he is giving you a bad name? To a degree it is a pasha's own men who cause his bad reputation. May God give them the reward they deserve. I'm not referring to anything specific. A friend is one who tells a person his faults to his face. I wouldn't wish ill on any of you. May God protect us all from evil. I wish you would listen to me and have them stop practicing the javelin in the Hippodrome. Why can't they go play in Langa ? My son loves it, I lose my mind over it. Whoever says it s good for him is lying. Caution him about it, but not right away. What can I do? My words are bitter to him now. Just let him stay alive, he is vital to all of us. I have so many troubles I can't begin to write them all. You must give him as much advice as you can-if he doesn't listen to one thing, he'll listen to another.

Murad may have felt circumscribed by the close relations between his mother and the grand vezirs of his early reign. During these years the government was managed in relative harmony, principally by the grand vezir and the valide sultan . None of these early grand vezirs was a damad , although one, Hafiz Ahmed Pasha, was married to the princess Apse shortly after his dismissal from the post. In 1628 the sultan moved to sever the damad tie that linked Kosem to the admiral Catalca Hasan Pasha, husband of her daughter Fatma. Angered by his mother's excessive patronage of Hasan Pasha, Murad had the marriage dissolved Hasan Pasha had enjoyed the protection of the powerful chief black eunuch as well as that of the valide sultan . He had begun his career in the saddlery of the chief black eunuch's household, whence he passed into the sultan's service as a kitchen attendant and then head courier cavusbasi . Murad's move against the otherwise successful admiral may have been the result of his growing desire to shake off the influence of his inner palace advisers and assert his control over prominent and powerful officials of the government. Kosem Sultan reportedly attempted to appease her son with a gift of elaborately outfitted horses and a banquet costing ten thousand aspers.

Contemporary sources present Murad as emerging rather abruptly in 1632 to take over the government. Given the present lack of research on Murad's reign, the most plausible explanation for this change seems to be that the sultan bided his time until he had acquired the resources and personal authority to assert control-a control that was then so total and relentless that it was paralleled perhaps only by that of Selim I. Murad's success in restoring the military fortunes of the empire and in filling its treasures is legendary, as is the cost in the thousands of lives exacted by the sultan.

This does not mean, however, that Murad ceased to rely on his mother for advice during the second half of his reign. As the Ahizade affair demonstrates, he trusted her to look after his interests during his absences from the capital. However, brooking no restraints on his actions, he did not permit her the degree of influence that Nurbanu and Safiye had exercised. Indeed, one must assume that every sultan after Mehmed III was aware of the harmful political consequences of the excessive exercise of power by the valide sultan and was vigilant in monitoring the boundaries of his mother's authority. The few indications of the relationship between Murad and his mother suggest a modus vivendi in which each respected the other's formal role. Kosem Sultan figured in public ceremonies, but she did not endow a mosque complex during her son's reign.

While Ibrahim, Kosem's second sultan son, began his sultanate under the tutelage of his mother, he ultimately rejected her authority entirely. Saved by Kosem from death at the hand of his brother Murad. Ibrahim had been spared because he was considered incompetent to rule. Unexpectedly brought to the throne as a result of Murad's early death and lack of heirs, Ibrahim in the early years of his sultanate appears to have cooperated with his mother and the grand vezir Kemankes Kara Mustafa Pasha. Mustafa Pasha was an able and effective statesman who had been Murad's last grand vezir. As Ibrahim became increasingly disturbed, however, he began to resist their attempts to guide him. This was partly a result of the influence of individuals introduced into his company to cure him. Most notorious was Jinji Hoja, a minor religious official with a reputation for occult powers who was brought into the palace to remedy the sultan's lack of heirs. For his success, the sultan endowed Jinji Hoja with the highly inappropriate reward of a chief justiceship, the second highest of ulema ranks.

Jinji Hoja's appointment was only one of several instances of the overturning of hierarchies of power and protocol at court when Kosem and Mustafa Pasha lost control of the sultan. The grand vezir was executed in January 1644. Ibrahim even tried to banish his mother. He planned to have her exiled to the island of Rhodes, but this indignity was resisted by his haseki s, and the sentence commuted to exile in one of the imperial gardens in the capital. According to the historian Naima,

[T]he valide sultan would sometimes speak affectionately, giving counsel to the. . . padishah. But because he paid no attention to her, she became reluctant to talk with him, and for a long while resided in the gardens near Topkapi. During this time the padisah became angry as a result of some rumors and sent the grand vezir Ahmed Pasha to exile the valide sultan to the garden of Iskender Celebi, thereby breaking the hearts of all, great and small.

In another assault on palace protocol, Ibrahim subjected his sisters, Kosem's daughters Ayse, Fatma, and Hanzade, and his niece Kaya to the indignity of subordination to his concubines. He took away their lands and jewels (presumably to award them to his hasekis , and made them serve Humasah, the concubine he married, by standing at attention like servants while she ate and by fetching and holding the soap, basin, and pitcher of water with which she washed her hands.

The valide sultan 's power might also be resisted by grand vezirs. Through the sheer weight of her power she was bound to inspire opposition. Traditionally, the grand vezir was the most powerful individual in the empire after the sultan; now, with the greater influence of palace­based networks and particularly of women of the royal family, the grand vezir often found his efforts to persuade the sultan frustrated. Sinan Pasha, a distant damad through his marriage to a granddaughter of Selim I, was particularly resentful of Nurbanu and Safiye's influence. As we have seen, he incited Nurbanu's anger by asserting that 'empires are not governed with the counsel of women." Sinan blamed his dismissal from the post of grand vezir in 1591 on Safiye; according to the Venetian ambassador, he "said to the English dragoman these very words, that he knew that he had not fallen through any demerit on his part, but only because the Sovereign had allowed himself to be influenced by a whore, and this was a consolation to him...." When Alvise Contarini arrived in Istanbul in 1640, sent by the Venetian government on the occasion of Ibrahim's accession, he gave letters of congratulation addressed to the valide sultan to the grand vezir Kemankes Kara Mustafa Pasha for delivery. The latter, Kosem's rival for control of the weak Ibrahim, did not forward the letters, "as if scorning them," reported Contarini, "and told me that the queen mothers of the Ottomans are slaves of the Grand Signor like all others, not partners or heads of government, like those in Christian countries." In the comments of these two powerful grand vezirs is revealed the reverse side of the aggrandized image created for the valide sultan. Their need to deflate her image, to stain it, is a negative testimony to the challenge posed by her authority. Even though the grand vermin themselves wore slaves of the sultan, their choice of slander, based as it was on the slave concubine origin of the sultan's mothers, appears to be an attempt to undermine the aura of dynastic legitimacy cultivated for them in the post­Suleymanic period.

Damad vezirs, of course, were more likely to get along with the valide sultan. They were often beholden to her for their office and therefore less free to oppose her--at least openly. It is possible that recognition of the potential for open conflict between the valide sultan, on the one hand, and the grand vezir and other high­ranking statesmen, on the other hand, was an important reason for the intensification in the late sixteenth century and especially the seventeenth century of the practice of linking the latter to the dynastic family through marriage. Yet even a damad might find the queen mother's influence bothersome. Urging temperance on the rebel grand vezir Ibsir Mustafa Pasha, the lieutenant grand vezir Melek Ahmed Pasha, who was married to Kosem Sultan's granddaughter, described the trials he had endured when he had held the post of grand vezir. He included the valide sultan in the list of those whom he had had to put up with; "I was sick of them all," he commented, "but I made a virtue of necessity, and I got through my sixteen­month stint as grand vezir unscathed." Melek Ahmed continued by advising Ibsir not to make the mistake of his successor, Siyavus, Pasha, who thought he could simplify his job by eliminating his opponents, including the valide sultan (assassinated in a palace coup); Siyavus's tenure lasted only fifty­four days.

The valide sultan 's great financial wealth could also be a controversial subject. In his memoirs, Karacelebizade Abdulaziz Efendi, a prominent member of the ulema, described a meeting of the imperial council in which the subject of crown lands held by royal women was being discussed. When it was reported that the valide sultan Kosem held lands whose annual income was three hundred thousand kurus, Karacelebizade protested, "A valide with so much land is unheard of!" Those who disagreed with him, he contended, did so only because of personal enmity toward him or because they were recipients of the halide sultan 's largesse. Even such seemingly commendable deeds as charitable acts could be criticized. The historian Sarih ul-Menarzade argued that Kosem Sultan's extensive charities were misconceived since they were financed from her immense personal fortune; he viewed the wealth she had accrued as an abuse of the empire's fiscal management, especially harmful at a time when the treasury was in severe straits, the peasantry impoverished, and the soldiers unpaid. A century later, however, the historian Naima defended Kosem from the criticisms of Sarih and others. On the subject of her charities, Naima commented that, had her substantial fortune remained in the general treasury, it might well have been squandered rather than spent for the benefit of the populace, as it was through her efforts.

The Valide Sultan as Regent

While an adult sultan could limit his mother's political role, there were few limits placed on the valide sultan 's exercise of power during the reign of a less than fully competent sultan. Of the six sultans to come to the throne in the first half of the seventeenth century, four were fourteen years old or younger, and two were deemed incapable of ruling by themselves. The first two, Ahmed and Osman, ruled actively from the time of their accession, but the mothers of the others took leading roles in their sons' governments. The Ottomans of the seventeenth century did not use a term such as "regency" to describe or differentiate these periods in whichvhalide sultans took charge. This role was simply one manifestation of the historic function of mothers as political mentors. The closest any contemporary account comes to a label is "the duty of training and supervision," a term used by Karacelebizade Abdulaziz Efendi in recounting the appointment of Kosem Sultan as 'great valide sultan" to her seven­year­old grandson Mehmed IV.

The first sultan who required someone to act in his stead was Mustafa, who reigned for three months in 1617 and 1618 and again for a year in 1622 and 1623. During both of Mustafa's reigns, it was his mother who made decisions for her son. According to Katip Celebi, "when signs of mental and physical illness became apparent in the illustrious sultan, he was committed to the care of doctors . . ., and the conduct of government was delegated to his honored mother." Mustafa's mother did not exercise sole authority, but she assumed the functions that could be performed only by the sultan, for example, controlling appointments to high office. When high­ranking members of the religious establishment wanted the chief black eunuch Mustafa Agha, an extraordinarily powerful figure in the palace during the previous reign, removed from of lice, they made their case to the valide sultan. Mustafa Agha was attempting to persuade leading statesmen that the sultan's bizarre conduct necessitated his dethronement (according to his critics, the agha found his authority diminished under the new sultan). The valide sultan, however, "deceived by his weeping eyes and his sweet tongue," did not dismiss him, with the result that her son was soon replaced by Osman II.

When Osman II was deposed four years later, rebels removed Mustafa from his room within the imperial palace and hastily rccnthroned him. Their next move was to find his mother, who from that point on assumed a central role in the stormy events of the next few days. When Osman was murdered, it was to her that his severed ear was brought as proof of his death. The Janissary chiefs who had led the rebellion against Osman consulted with the valide sultan as to who should assume the office of grand vezir; seeing that she was inclined toward Davud Pasha, her son­in­law, they urged his appointment. Three months later, when troops in the capital demanded the dismissal of Davud Pasha's successor in the grand vezirate, a royal letter was issued from the palace in the sultan's handwriting-but almost certainly dictated by his mother-naming three candidates from whom the troop leaders were to choose. Unable to agree, they threw the decision back to the palace, which named Lefkeli Mustafa Pasha, the husband of the sultan's wet nursed The readiness of the soldiers to appoint the valide sultan 's candidate may have reflected their recognition that the first priority was crisis management, which required a workable alliance between the valide sultan and the grand vezir.

One of the most pressing of the many problems that plagued Mustafa's second reign was finding money to cover the quarterly payment of the troops. The treasury had been bankrupted by the payment of three accession bonuses in six years, and the financial health of the empire further weakened by severe inflation between 1615 and 1623. Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador, described cooperation between the grand vezir Mere Huseyin Pasha and the valide sultan in heading off a fiscal crisis occasioned by lack of funds:

The sultana mother, with this vinier, fynding it impossible to prouide for the next pay by the ordinarie entrata, haue resolued to chandge the mynt, and to remoove it into the Seraglio; wher they now give out all the saddles, bridles, bitts, stirrups, chaynes, and ould plate of silver and gourd that can bee found, to make coyne. Thus they hope to patch up their quiets for a tyme. .

Cooperation between the two most powerful figures in government, valide sultan and grand vezir, continued when Kosem Sultan assumed the role of regent to Murad IV after Mustafa's second deposition in 1623. Roe noted a surprising calm following Murad's accession: "As yett all seemes serene and quiets; never appeared so great a chaunge, even in affections if not dissembled. The most disordered assume a face of obiedience (which I once thought banished this citty)...." Nevertheless, money problems continued to be an urgent issue, especially when the troops broke their promise not to demand an accession bonus from the new sultan. Furthermore, the loss of Baghdad to the Safavids a year after Murad's accession necessitated the mounting of an expensive campaign for its recovery

Kosem Sultan's correspondence with the grand vezir indicates that he counted on her help with the twin problems of finding enough money to furnish the army with military provisions and its soldiers with pay. In one letter the valide sultan wrote, "You say that attention must be paid to provisions for the campaign. If it were up to me, it would have been taken care of long ago. There is no shortcoming on either my or my son's part." In another, she sends good news: "You wrote about the provisions. If I were able to, I would procure and dispatch them immediately. I am doing everything I can, my son likewise. God willing, it is intended that this Friday ten million aspers will be forwarded to Uskudar, if all goes well. The rest of the provisions have been loaded onto ships." Bayram Pasha, the governor of Egypt and Kosem's son­in­law, wrote directly to the valide sultan on a number of issues, and she communicated the contents of the governor's Ietters to the grand vezir along with her own comments on these matters. Among the problems discussed were delays in the provision of gunpowder, the troublesome situation in the Yemen, and shortfalls in the province's revenue (in 1625 Egypt sent only half of its normal revenue because of the ravages of a plague known in Egyptian annals as "the plague of Bayram Pasha"). The extensive cooperation between grand vezir and valide sultan is suggested by Kosem Sultan's frank comment to the former: "You really give me a headache. But I give you an awful headache too. How many times have I asked myself, 'I wonder if he's I getting sick of me?' But what else can we do?" l With the accession in 1640 of the emotionally disturbed Ibrahim, Kosem Sultan was once again politically active as regent. However, she enjoyed a less compatible relationship with the powerful grand vezir Kemankes Kara Mustafa Pasha than she had with the grand vezirs of Murad's early reign. Now entering her second regency and fourth decade of political involvement, Kosem was a shrewd and experienced politician. However, Mustafa Pasha, who had been the final grand vezir of Murad IV, no doubt also expected to exercise untrammeled power. The competition between the two was reported by the Venetian ambassador Alvise Contarini:

In the present government, to the extent that this son's capabilities are less, she is held in greater esteem [than at the end of Murad's reign]. And thus, with her commanding affairs within the palace and the grand vezir [commanding] those outside, it happens quite often that these two rulers come up against each other and in doing so take offense at each other, so that one can say that in appearance they are in accord but secretly each is trying to bring about the downfall of the other.

Nevertheless, the early years of Ibrahim's reign, during which affairs were managed principally by the grand vezir and the valide sultan, were relatively peaceful and prosperous ones. Ten years later, Mustafa Pasha's administration was remembered as a model of sound fiscal management. Ultimately, however, Ibrahim got the best of both his mother and his grand vezir, exiling the former and executing the latter in 1644. The empire's quick slide into fiscal and military disorganization soon thereafter demonstrates how dependent the Ottoman polity was on strong control at the center.

When Ibrahim was deposed in 1648, it was clear that his successor, the seven­year­old Mehmed IV, would require a regent. In this case, there were two valide sultans: Mehmed had a very young mother, Turhan Sultan, who was perhaps twenty­two or twenty­three, and a very experienced grandmother, Kosem Sultan, the "cider" valide sultan. According to Karacelebizade Abdulaziz Efendi, then the chief justice of Rumeli and a central figure in the dynastic upheavals of the time, it was considered prudent to appoint the more experienced woman regent in contravention of tradition:

It being an ancient custom that upon the accession of a new sultan the mother of the previous sultan remove to the Old Palace and thus give up her honored office, the elder valide requested permission to retire to a life of seclusion. But because the loving mother of the inew] sultan was still young and truly ignorant of the state of the world, it was thought that if she were in control of government, there would result the possibility of harm to the welfare of the state. Therefore the elder valide was reappointed for a while longer to the duty of training and guardianship. and it was considered appropriate to renew the assignment of crown lands to the valide sultan.

Karacelebizade's comment is particular testimony to the degree to which the role of valide sultan had been institutionalized by the mid­seventeenth century, for the chief justice usually wasted no opportunity to criticize Kosem. Kosem Sultan's interpretation of her mandate appears not to have been universally accepted, however. A seasoned politician, certainly one of the most experienced and knowledgeable of the governing elite, she now assumed direct exercise of sultanic authority. It was inevitable that Kosem Sultan would clash with the grand vezir, Sofu Mehmed Pasha, who seems to have considered himself not only regent but also a kind of temporary ruler. According to the historian Mustafa Naima, the grand vezir was misled by "certain would­be doctors of religion" who quoted legal texts to the effect that the guardian of a minor sultan was entitled to exercise the prerogatives of sovereignty. The grand vezir's mistake, in Naima's view, was that he failed to understand that "the soldiers of this exalted state respect only the honor of inherited nobility," honor to which, in Naima's view, the mother of the sultan could lay claim. In other words, government was not legitimate without some participation by the dynasty, represented in this case by the valide sultan.

In any event, the grand vezir was unable to resist the power of Kosem Sultan and her Janissary allies. During an imperial audience to which all leading statesmen were summoned, the sultan, with his grandmother seated at his side behind a curtain, dismissed Sofu Mehmed Pasha and appointed the Agha of the Janissaries, Kara Murad Pasha, to the vacant office. Speaking from behind the curtain, Kosem defended her role and silenced her critics in a speech the vehemence of which surprised all present. She cited the former grand vezir's shortcomings, including his plans to assassinate her, to which she commented, "Thanks to God, I have lived through four reigns and I have governed myself for a long while. The world will be neither reformed nor destroyed by my death." She then berated Karacelebizade Abdulaziz Efendi, ally of the disgraced former grand vezir, by referring to his chiding of Mehmed IV: "When certain imperial commands have been issued, they have said [to the sultan], 'my dear, who taught you to say these things! such patronizing behavior towards sultans is impermissible! And what if the sultan is instructed?" In Naima's words, Abdulaziz Efendi "drowned in the sea of mortification."

Kosem Sultan next faced a challenge from the young sultan's mother. A faction formed around the junior valide sultan Turhan, in which her principal supporter within the palace was Suleyman Agha, the head black eunuch in her suite. The viability of the faction's claim to legitimacy-the defense of Turhan Sultan's right to the regency-was bolstered by popular discontent with the domination of outer government by the ruling elite of the Janissary corps, Kosem Sultan's allies. Moreover, Turhan's faction was supported by the new grand vezir, Siyavus Pasha. In a pre­emptive move, Kosem planned to overthrow Mehmed and enthrow Suleyman, the second son of Ibrahim. Her aim was less to switch one child ruler for another than to replace Turhan with Suleyman's mother, Dilasub, whom she believed to be more tractable and "not anxious to exercise the authority of the valide sultan's station." But one of Kosem's female servants, Meleki Khatun, betrayed her, and informed Turhan of the plot. During the night of September 2, 1651, Kosem Sultan was murdered by Suleyman Agha and his followers. The murder was at least sanctioned, and perhaps instigated, by Turhan Sultan.

The death of this powerful, widely respected, and widely feared woman provoked a political crisis. When news of the valide sultan 's violent death became public, the people of Istanbul shut down the city's mosques and markets for three days in mourning. Kosem's murder precipitated a series of reprisals. The first phase was the execution of Kosem's Janissary allies and the elimination of the faction they had led, which had controlled government during the three years of Kosem's regency to Mehmed. In the second phase, popular anger at this purge led to pressure on the new palace regime under Turhan to dismiss the grand vezir, who had carried out the executions.

This power struggle between the two valide sultan s illuminates a number of features of mid­seventeenth­century political life. It demonstrates that the palace was not a political monolith. It also suggests the complexity of links between inner palace politics and the outer world of administration. Furthermore, the competing claims to legitimate authority by the mother as well as the grandmother of the sultan are another indication of the degree to which the role of the valide sultan as guardian and representative of the sultan had been institutionally secured by the mid­seventeenth century. Indeed, in this period when there were no adult male members to represent the dynasty, the intergenerational competition between the two valide sultan s appears to be a kind of continuation of the tension surrounding the succession that had previously existed between fathers and sons.

If Turhan Sultan was swept into the position of regent by forces over which she may not have been fully in control, she found herself in command of government by virtue of her office. Only the valide sultan could formally represent the child sultan. even though she may at first have been extensively counseled by her allies in the palace: Suleyman Agha, who was soon promoted to the position of chief black eunuch, and the royal preceptor Hoja Reyhan Efendi. The large number of letters exchanged between Turhan and the grand vezirs of the early years of her regency testifies to the fact that it was she who ratified decisions made by officials of state and who at times even initiated policy. Once again, it was the valide sultan and the grand vezir who ran the government of the empire.

Turhan Sultan was very concerned about custom and propriety. When she was not certain of protocol or legal procedure, she consulted knowledgeable people or the kanunname s (compendia of imperial edicts and traditions) in which such matters were codified. For example, in a letter concerning the death of a Crimean khan, she wrote to the grand vezir: "You've requested a sword and a robe of honor for his successor. From what I hear, it is customary rather for the Tatar Khan to send [gifts] to the sultan. It's true I've never witnessed such a thing but that's what I hear. Now you examine the kanunname s and act accordingly." On another occasion, concerned about lack of funds for outfitting the navy, she informed the grand vezir that she had learned that the income of certain state lands was set aside for naval expenses and demanded to know where these lands were and the extent of their revenue: "Bring me all the registers [of these lands]. I have learned that there are regulations governing everything down to the cloth for sails. I must know everything in precise detail." That Turhan Sultan's grasp of the reins of government became firmer as she rapidly acquired experience and widened her circle of advisers is evident in the increasingly impatient tone she takes in her letters with the incompetent Gurcu Mehmed Pasha, the second grand vezir of her regency, dismissed after nine months in office. Her communications with later grand vezirs or lieutenants are more businesslike and contain little of the rote exhortation to assiduous service characteristic of her earlier letters.

When the young Mehmed IV attended important meetings of state, his mother was at his side to help him play his role, as his grandmother had been during her regency. At an imperial assembly during which the inability of the province of Egypt to pay its yearly tribute was heatedly discussed, the eight-year­old sultan turned to Turhan Sultan, seated behind a curtain, for guidance. "Did you hear what he said?" he asked, referring to the opinion voiced by Mesud Efendi, chief justice of Anatolia. "He speaks the truth," she replied, "what he says is right." On another occasion Turhan spoke up from behind her curtain to admonish Gurcu Mehmed Pasha for boasting of the wisdom he possessed by virtue of his age (his "whitebeardedness") and to instruct him to implement the suggestions of Mesud Efendi, increasingly her trusted adviser: "Really, pasha! White beards and black beards are not the issue. Sound policy comes not from age but from intelligence. Whatever [Mesud Efendi] says, do immediately; listen to him and discuss everything with him. I warn you, do nothing contrary to his views!" The combination of child­sultan and young valide sultan was not sufficient, however, to command the requisite etiquette, for the meeting turned into a shouting between Mesud efendi and Gurcu Mehmed Pasha, and had to be abruptly terminated. A letter that appears to be from Gurcu Mehmed Pasha to Turhan Sultan complains about the influence of Mesud Efendi and may have been written at this time:

I have been dealing with military affairs for over seventy years, and I still have shortcomings. What does the honorable chief justice know about war? Where can he have learned anything about it? Every area of government has its experts who know the ost expedient ways of dealing with the problems they encounter. Yesterday in the imperial audience he said a hundred things, but the management of the war is not his duty….

As Turhan Sultan matured politically, her circle of advisers widened to include people outside the palace, such as the royal architect. Kasim Agha, who became her personal steward, and Mesud Efendi, a member of the powerful ulema family known as "the sons of the Hoja" (Hojazade )descendents of the late­sixteenth­century imperial preceptor, mufti, and scholar Sadeddin Efendi. Nine months after assuming the regency, Turhan dismissed Gurcu Mehmed Pasha and her erstwhile ally, Suleyman Agha, whose political goals had begun to run counter to her own arts Turhan apparently did not regard allying herself with a single element in the ruling elite as the most effective means of implementing her decisions. She thus avoided the principal error of Kosem's final years, when the elder valide sultan relied almost exclusively on the Janissary leaders. Rather, Turhan resembled the younger Kosem of the early years of Murad IV's reign, attempting to work together with the grand vezir in the classic pattern of authority shared between the sovereign center and its "absolute deputy."

Indeed, Turhan Sultan appears to have struggled to find a grand vezir able and astute enough to overcome the factional strife that flourished in this period of weakened central government stemming from the ravages of Ibrahim's follies and the presence of a child on the throne. Turhan's second grand vezir, Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha, was instructed during his installation ceremony that one of his goals must be a balanced budget. The seriousness of this charge was demonstrated by the ten­year­old sultan's unusual request (no doubt engineered by his mother) that the mufti and the two chief justices act as guarantors that the grand vezir carry out his charge honestly. Tarhuncu requested the authority to institute austerity measures and received an imperial decree to that effect. His lack of success may have been what prompted the palace to call a high­level conference on the financial crisis. Katipcelebi, in a memorandom composed as a result of this conference, provides us with an eyewitness account of its proceedings:

At the Hijri year 1063 [1652­1653], 364 years had passed since the founding of the Ottoman state. As a natural result of the divinely ordained course of events, there began to be observed change in the society which made up the Ottoman state and disagreement among its different elements. The sultan . . . commanded that experienced clerks of the council and prominent persons responsible for the problems of government come together and debate these matters among themselves and resolve upon measures to relieve the distress.... According to the imperial command, the members of the council assembled in the presence of the defterdar pasha , who is the noble vezir in charge of financial affairs, and debated the problems of insufficient income, excess expenditure, the resultant impoverishment and distress of the peasants and the excessive numbers of the military.

All the [previous] meetings that had taken place since the sultan's accession had been consumed with gossip about the past. Here is how this meeting went: a decision was made to draw up written discussions to address the following: "At the end of the grand vezirate of Kemankes Kara Mustafa Pasha, in the year 1053 [1643­1644], income and expenditure wore equal. Let the reasons for the decline of income and rise of expenditure from that time until now be determined; let each of these issues be studied in detail and then let appropriate corrective measures be prescribed." The meeting was then adjourned.

>According to Naima, nothing came of these efforts because no one was strong enough to enforce the necessary reforms; the would­be reformer Tarhuncu was brought down by the discontent of influential persons injured by his attempts to economize. The year­and­a­half­long grand vezirate of Dervis Mehmed Pasha in 1653 and 1654 was a respite of relative solvency and harmony, but after his death matters once again began to deteriorate. The integrity of the throne was increasingly threatened both internally by rebellious pashas and externally by Venetian advances in the war over the island of Crete, as well as by chronic fiscal shortages now exacerbated by the costs of mounting campaigns against these internal and external enemies. A serious uprising of the troops in March 1656 that resulted in the execution of many palace officials demonstrated the urgent need for a political solution. It was found six months later when Turhan Sultan appointed the elderly Koprulu Mehmed Pasha grand vezir.

The End of the "Sultanate of the Women"

In agreeing to the conditions Koprulu Mehmed Pasha demanded before accepting office, Turhan Sultan willingly surrendered much of the authority she wielded as regent for her son. The new grand vezir was guaranteed virtually unlimited power in government, including the authority, generally reserved to the sovereign, to control the appointment to office of high­ranking government servants. The efforts of Koprulu Mehmed Pasha and of succeeding members of the dynasty of grand vezirs that he initiated brought about a period of relative political and fiscal stability that lasted until the failure of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 and the dismissal of Koprulu Mehmed Pasha's son­in­law, Merzifoniu Kara Mustafa Pasha-perhaps the first important political error committed by Mehmed IV after his mother's death. Like the brief renaissance of Ottoman power under Murad IV, this period of stability was sustained, at least initially, by means of severe authoritarian control and large­scale execution.

Turhan Sultan has been praised by some historians who regard her appointment of Koprulu Mehmed Pasha as a recognition that women had no role in the political realm; for these historians, the appointment marks the restoration to the grand vezir of his "rightful" authority "wrongfully" usurped by palace figures, in particular the women of the harem."" Such a judgment is untenable for several reasons.

First, it is based on the erroneous assumption that the seclusion of women in Muslim society precluded their playing a significant public role. The institutional authority inherent in what had become by the mid­seventeenth century the "office" of valide sultan negates the notion that this authority was illegitimately and capriciously exercised. Turhan Sultan would certainly have regarded her exercise of power as natural and legitimate-after all, she had sanctioned the murder of her mother­in­law so that she herself might enjoy the authority of the valide sultan 's office. Turhan's efforts both to instruct herself in the ways of government and to find capable delegates can be interpreted as a manifestation of the role of the valide sultan as protector of the sultanate, since political and fiscal chaos increasingly threatened her son's security on the throne.

Second, while it is true that Turhan Sultan significantly increased the power of the grand vezir by guaranteeing Koprulu Mehmed Pasha the security in office he required to undertake unpopular measures, in so doing she was limiting not only her own authority as valide sultan but that of her son as well. Her efforts appear to have been aimed at restoring the traditional balance between sovereign and grand vezir that constituted the basis of Ottoman government. Turhan's political acumen was manifested not, as the view of her frequently encountered in modern histories would have it, in the admission that she as valide sultan had no proper place in the government of the empire, but rather in her realization that the excessive factionalism of the time could not be contained by executive power confined to the palace alone. Indeed, the bestowal in 1654 on the grand vezir of his own residence to be used for the conduct of government in place of the council chambers located within the imperial palace was an expression of the perceived need to restore the balance between inner and outer political authority.

Third, Turhan Sultan did not retire from an active role as valide sultan upon Koprulu Mehmed Pasha's appointment. The year 1656 is a significant date not because the delegation of extraordinary power to the grand vezir was unusual: it had been tried earlier with Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha. Furthermore, there were precedents for an independent executive authority exercised by the grand vezir, most notably that of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, perhaps the most lauded of all Ottoman grand vezirs. The year 1656 is significant rather because Koprulu Mehmed Pasha succeeded where most of his predecessors had failed. The grand vezir could have been removed from office at any time by the sultan and his mother. Koprulu Mehmed Pasha's success was due in no small measure to Turhan's continuing commitment to his appointment in the face of bitter opposition to the grand vezir both within and without the palace

Fourth, Koprulu Mehmed Pasha was, in a sense, Turhan's man. He owed his appointment entirely to political connections that inspired her patronage and protection. Koprulu understood very well the political utility in his era of the valide sultan's patronage. Sent in 165(0 to execute a miscreant pasha, he instead urged him to appeal to the then valide sultan Kosem: "[S]eek the protection of the valide sultan, repent of your sins, and God willing, there is no doubt that you will be pardoned." In spite of his advanced age and unspectacular career, Koprulu had been consistently recommended to Turhan as a valuable statesman and potential grand vezir by Kasim Agha, her trusted adviser and Koprulu's ally and fellow Albanian. Originally skeptical of such a political unknown's ability to overcome the formidable opposition he would face, Turhan did not seriously consider his candidacy early in her regency. Nevertheless, she agreed to make him a vezir of the imperial council; for this act of patronage she suffered the consequence of having to exile Kasim Agha because of rumors that he had given her a bribe of five hundred purses of aspers to appoint his friend. While Turhan could not prevent the grand vezir Gurcu Mehmed Pasha from exiling Koprulu Mehmed Pasha so that he would be out of the running as a potential replacement, she was able several months later to force his recall. In 1656 Turhan ran a serious risk by appointing the unpopular (insofar as he was known) Koprulu to the grand vezirate. It was an act of daring that succeeded. Lacking daughters, Turhan did not have the opportunity of appointing a damad grand vezir on whom she could rely. The next best kind of tie was that of intisab -- the mutual relationship of patronage and loyal service that had come to exist between the valide sultan and Koprulu Mehmed Pasha.

The year 1656 is, nevertheless, an appropriate date at which to conclude a study of the political role of dynastic women in this period, for henceforth the emphasis in Turhan Sultan's role as valide sultan would be altered. As her overt political involvement lessened, her ceremonial and philanthropic roles increased considerably. Indeed, the appointment of Koprulu Mehmed Pasha seems to have initiated a period of intense ceremonial aggrandizement of the dynasty. It was shortly after his appointment that Turhan undertook the construction of the Qanakkale fortresses and her great mosque-both reportedly at the grand vezir's urging. The elaborate royal progresses between Edirne and Istanbul and to Bursa and other areas near the capital also date from this period. Mehmed IV, who in the forty­five years of his reign displayed little interest in the government of his empire, nevertheless campaigned a number of times as a figurehead ghazi under Koprulu Mehmed Pasha's successors. It may be that these royal rituals were planned by Koprulu Mehmed Pasha, or Turhan Sultan, or both, in order to divert attention from continuing crises and the severe and bloody solutions imposed by the grand vezir. With political power and military leadership delegated to the grand vezir, the most useful function that the sovereign might perform was to furnish visible symbols of majesty and piety to maintain the subjects' loyalty and sense of community.

The year 1656 is a watershed date in the history of Ottoman dynastic women for a second reason. After Mehmed IV's reign there were no other occasions on which the valide sultan acted as regent to her son. It was in large part the series of dynastic accidents in the first half of the seventeenth century necessitating regencies that had endowed the valide sultan with extraordinary political power. Despite the fact that by the mid­seventeenth century the valide sultan's role as regent was an accepted phenomenon, it was clearly considered a temporary arrangement. The choice of Mustafa over the sons of Ahmed I had been publicly justified in terms of the wisdom of avoiding child sultans. Karacelebizade Abdulaziz Efendi's comment that at Mehmed IV's accession Kosem Sultan was delegated to act as regent "for a while longer" implies that she was expected to yield her authority as the sultan matured. Indeed, through Kosem Sultan's letters to the grand vezir during the early years of Murad IV's reign, we observe the valide sultan withdrawing from active control of affairs of state, despite the misgivings with which she accepted her son's independence. When the fifteen­year­old Mehmed IV was forced to meet with rebellious soldiers during the 1656 uprising, the soldiers' spokesman began his petition by thanking God that the sultan had come of age. He then urged Mehmed to assume the duties of the sultanate on his own: "Our fortune­favored padishah has reached the age of maturity and possesses the aptitude and capacity to be a perfect champion of fortune and to be able to manage all the affairs of the sultanate. Why then doesn't he take heed and show effort and solicitude regarding the order and regulation of the world?" Turhan Sultan's relinquishing of direct control of government in the same year was undoubtedly in part a recognition that the natural span of her regency was coming to an end.

The Valide Sultan as Dynastic Matriarch

While the direct political authority of the valide sultan was ultimately limited both in scope and duration, she was the individual most responsible for ensuring the continuity and survival of the dynastic family. Certain aspects of her power were independent of and different in nature from that of her son. The valide sultan exercised a kind of authority that transcended the particular sultanate and reinforced the legitimacy of the dynasty as a whole. The sultan was the ultimate repository of political authority, but as head of the harem the valide sultan wielded authority over the dynastic family, particularly after it was concentrated within the imperial palace. Because the sultan's residence was also the seat of government, the authority of the valide sultan over the harem had repercussions in the public domain. In a system in which the household was the model of government and the basis of social organizations (at least for the ruling class), the structure of the dynastic household had a profound effect on the management of government. As the sultanate became more sedentary, the status of the domestic household was enhanced: not only did the valide sultan acquire greater authority, but her relationship with her son was transformed from an essentially private one into one that encompassed the whole of society. The valide sultan came to represent the royal family as a whole, providing a vital link between dynastic generations and, symbolizing the continuity of the in times when it seemed perilously threatened

Reproducing the Dynasty

At the most fundamental level, the valide sultan was entrusted with preventing the extinction of the dynasty. She accomplished this task both by encouraging the birth of princes and by preventing their execution. This task became ever more vital as the exigencies of dynastic politics placed the burden of reproduction on the sultan alone. It could be said that, beginning with Ahmed I, the first sultan to come to the throne childless, a new valide sultan's first order of business was to encourage her son to father children. Infant mortality being what it was, the birth of the sultan's first son was a welcome but not sufficient event. Moreover, while the generation of sons was obviously essential, daughters too were necessary to the dynasty for the political alliances formed by means of their marriages.

It was principally because of the importance of her son's producing heirs, rather than the alleged motive of jealousy of her daughter­in­law, that Nurbanu Sultan, mother of Murad III, tried to dissuade her son from his monogamous relationship with his first concubine, the haseki Safiye. In the twenty years Murad remained faithful to her, Safiye had provided him with only two sons, one of whom died young. Frequent epidemics, one of which took the lives of hundreds of the Old Palace's inhabitants in the late sixteenth century, must have made the possibility of the young prince's death a constant fear. Furthermore, his own ability to produce offspring was untested. Nurbanu Sultan's attempts to interest Murad in a succession of concubines were unsuccessful until his sister Ismihan Sultan, daughter of Nurbanu and widow of the former grand vezir Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, presented her brother with two concubines, probably sometime in the early 1580s. The graphic account by the historian Pecevi of Murad's subsequent impotence, the valide sultan's discovery and dispelling of a hex that had supposedly been cast on the sultan by the haseki sultan, and his ensuing concupiscence (resulting in the birth of nineteen more surviving sons before his death in 1595) is surprising to the modern reader for what appears to be its prurient interest but more likely represents contemporary concern with a politically vital activity of the sultanate.

As valide sultan to Murad IV, Kosem Sultan's principal effort in protecting the dynasty appears to have been dissuading the sultan from executing all his brothers toward the end of his reign. The princes Bayezid and Suleyman were executed during the celebrations over the victory at Erivan (1635) and Kasim, Kosem's own son, during the Baghdad campaign. Only Kosem Sultan's plea that the sole surviving prince, Ibrahim-also her own son-was incapable of governing prevented his execution and thereby saved the dynasty from extinction. During the first two years of the hapless Ibrahim's reign, the dynasty experienced its most perilous moment, for the emotionally disturbed sultan failed to produce any children. Kosem Sultan's task was to encourage the repopulation of the dynasty-an obligation Ibrahim ultimately met so successfully (perhaps the only sultanic duty that he adequately discharged) that the final words he spoke as sultan were, "I am the father of a dynasty! It was the valide sultan who presented the sultan with his first concubine Turhan. the birth of whose son, the future Mehmed IV, caused great rejoicing both within and without the palace.

As with Murad III, pressure on the sultan to father children, which took the form of a flow into the harem of concubines presented by leading state officials, resulted in a greater interest on Ibrahim's part in the pleasures of the bed than either the palace or the outer administration might have wished. His obsession led to notorious extravagances that depleted the treasury and ultimately led to his dethronement. Kosem Sultan has been blamed for encouraging Ibrahim's interest in procreation-she is alleged to have diverted him with concubines so she might take over the reins of government-but her motive, at least originally, was the perpetuation of the dynasty. Moreover, like others, Kosem rued the inordinate influence Ibrahim's concubines came to have over public affairs. During the final chaotic weeks of Ibrahim's reign, Kosem Sultan was once again cast into the role of protector of the dynasty when the Janissary aghas, planning to demand the dismissal of the unpopular grand vezir, sent word that she should take extreme precautions to ensure the safety of the princes.

As he came of age, Ibrahim's son and successor, Mehmed IV, wanted to invoke the practice of fratricide in favor of his sons Mustafa and Ahmed, both born of his beloved haseki Rabia Gulnus Sultan. Public opinion, however, had come to regard the practice of fratricide as effectively lapsed. It was the valide sultan Turhan who assumed the responsibility of protecting Mehmed's brothers, Suleyman and Ahmed, neither of whom was her own son. According to the French ambassador, the Marquis de Nointel, who during a visit to Edirne in 1673 had the valide sultan as an unexpected neighbor on the midcity island on which he was lodged, Turhan Sultan exercised constant vigilance over the two princes. She had been summoned several times to the court in Edirne (where the sultan spent much of his time) but had hesitated to go for fear that if she brought her son's two brothers, he would have them executed. The valide sultan appears to have kept the two princes always at her side during her many migrations between Istanbul and Edirne. According to Galland, de Nointel's secretary, the sultan planned to construct a separate palace in Edirne for his mother and his two brothers.

Preserving Dynastic Continuity

The death of a sultan was always a time of potential dynastic crisis. Until the lapse of the princely governorate, a number of days might pass between the death of the sultan and the arrival in Istanbul of his successor. The news of the death of Suleyman, which occurred while the sultan was heading a military campaign in Europe, was concealed for more than five weeks while word was sent to his heir, Selim II, who journeyed at top speed from his post in Kutahya to meet the imperial troops and pray over his father's corpse. During the waiting period the grand vezir Sokollu Mehmed Pasha had the sultan impersonated by an official who sat dressed in the sultan's robes and turban in the imperial carriage, while another official, whose handwriting resembled Suleyman's, issued written orders.

Interregnums were periods of social disruption. Because of the personal nature of the bond between sultan and subjects, oaths of loyalty were considered to have lapsed at the death of a sultan. This led to the practice of looting and general insubordination until the next sultan had been enthroned and could demand the obedience of his subjects. At these times of potential disruption, royal women played a vital role in preserving dynastic continuity: bv hiding the death of the old sultan and thus preventing social disruption, by protecting the interests of the new sultan, and by preserving the traditions of the dynasty.

The death or deposition of a sultan was the event that transformed the concubine mother of the heir into the valide sultan. Her very first duty was to ensure the smooth accession of her son. The responsibilities of Nurbanu Sultan toward her son Murad III and Safiye Sultan toward Mehmed III were particularly great because of the presence of the new sultans' younger brothers in the capital. According to the historian Selaniki, when Selim II died, Nurbanu had his body preserved in ice until her son Murad could arrive from his post at Manisa, see to his brothers' execution, and then bury his father. No one was informed of the sultan's death except the grand vezir Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, the courier sent to notify the prince, the admiral Kilic Ali Pasha, who set out to transport the new sultan across the Sea of Marmara, and presumably a few others who had to be informed. When Murad III died, the grand vezir Ferhad Pasha wanted to send another vezir to fetch the new sultan, Mehmed III, but, according to the ambassador Marco Venier, "the Sultanas declared that this sudden departure would waken suspicion. Accordingly they resolved to send the . . . chief gardener, in the middle­sized caique, as he was accustomed to go every day to . . . fetch water for the Sultan's use." New sultans made their way to the harem at the earliest opportunity after arriving in the capital: Selim II sought his sister Mihrimah (his mother Hurrem had died eight years earlier), and both Murad and Mehmed conferred with their mothers. This urgency no doubt reflected the new sultans' need to be informed of the political situation in the capital by a trusted ally, as with as their desire to be reunited with loved ones. It also reflects the importance of female elders in the hierarchy of the imperial household.

Venier's dispatches from the days following Murad III's death provide a sense of the tension rife in the capital during this uncertain period (obviously the palace's attempt to hide the sultan's death was not entirely successful). He reported that he had hidden the embassy archives and brought in armed men to protect his house because of his fear that it might be looted or burned.

The rumour of the Sultan's death has spread down to the very children; and a riot is expected, accompanied by a sack of shops and houses as usual.... In the eleven days which have elapsed since the death of the Sultan Murad, several executions have taken place in order to keep the populace in check. Inside the serraglio there has been a great uproar, and every night we hear guns fired-n sign that at that moment some one is being thrown into the sea.

Venier also reported that before his death, Murad had ordered the eldest of his sons. Mahmud, to be placed in safekeeping so that the women of the harem should not make away with him. Presumably Murad feared that Mahmud's partisans withal the harem would try to save him from execution or perhaps even attempt his enthronement.

The valide sultan might also act to preserve custom in the enthronement of a new sultan. When the group of government officers who had decided that Ibrahim must be removed from office demanded that the palace send the sultan's seven­year­old son to be enthroned in a mosque, Kosem Sultan refused to comply and demanded that they come to the palace instead. She based her refusal on the grounds that no sultan had ever been enthroned in a mosque. No doubt her motivation was in part to force the occasion to take place where she could have some control over the course of events. At issue was not only the preservation of her own authority but also the welfare of the new sultan, a small boy who might be psychologically harmed by suddenly being thrust into a world of which he had had no previous experience.

The role of the valide sultan during the crises of deposition reveals another aspect of her unique authority within the dynastic family: she provided sanction for these potential ruptures in dynastic continuity. One of the most salient features of the seventeenth­century history of the sultanate was the advent of deposition by soldiers and statesmen. Whereas no popular depositions had occurred before the reign of Suleyman, of the twenty­seven sultans following him, thirteen were forcibly deposed. A number of explanations for this phenomenon can be suggested.

Of central importance were changes in dynastic politics. The increasingly sedentary nature of the sultanate brought about a transformation in the basis of sultanic legitimacy, outlined in Chapter 1. Sultans no longer established their right to rule by proving themselves victorious over their brothers and therefore, in theory, more qualified to rule, or by being designated heir by their fathers. Instead, they were passively brought to the throne as a result of dynastic accident or the new system of succession by seniority. This was particularly true in the first half of the seventeenth century, when no sultan ascended the throne as an adult possessed of full mental competence. Weak or unpopular dynasts might no longer be disqualified before coming to the throne. Deposition was the only way for subjects to rid the polity of rulers who proved to be, or were perceived to be, incompetent. Furthermore, the consolidation of the imperial family in the capital afforded discontented statesmen and soldiers easy access to princes who might be substituted for an unpopular sultan.

These changes had the effect of subtly altering the relation of subjects to their sultan. With the lapse of open succession and the princely governorate, a prince became sultan without the legitimating aura of victory over his brothers or designation by his father. Moreover, the duties of loyalty were no longer personally enjoined by the sultan through his public leadership of government, nor were the rewards of loyalty personally bestowed. From a sultan on campaign, the ordinary soldier might hope for the honor of personal recognition and recompense. On holy days during campaigns, the sultan prayed in the midst of his troops, and then, following an ancient ritual, allowed them to playfully devour his holiday meal. In the capital, petitions for the redress of grievances might be pressed by the ordinary citizen on a sultan who assiduously pursued his duty of attending Friday prayers with his subjects. But the diminished public role of the sultans following Suleyman meant that there were fewer opportunities for the renewal of the mutual bonds of bounty and loyalty, of justice and service, between ruler and ruled. Loyalty of its subjects to the House of Osman appears in the seventeenth century to have become more abstract, a loyalty more to the dynasty than to the individual. Islamic norms regarding the theoretical qualifications of the ruler began to be invoked more frequently in debates about eligibility, and muftis became more involved in decisions as to who should rule. Noting this shift in the relationship between ruler and ruled, we can better reconcile what at first seem to be irreconcilable attitudes on the part of the people toward the sultanate: the absolute devotion of its subjects to the Ottoman dynasty, so that the substitution of another ruling house was never considered, yet absolute scorn for a deposed sultan, exemplified by the treatment meted out to Osman as he was dragged through the main streets of the city.

Another factor in the frequency of depositions was the fact that since the second half of the sixteenth century, Janissary and imperial cavalry troops stationed in the capital had become increasingly willing to voice their grievances through uprisings. The problems created by the troops and the government's difficulties in paying them form a constantly recurring theme in the histories, reform tracts, and government documents of this period. The causes and consequences of their discontent were many and complex, and will only be briefly mentioned here. Chronic fiscal problems resulted in delays in the troops' quarterly payments and sometimes failure to pay them at all; when they were paid, it was often with debased coinage that merchants would refuse to accept. Military campaigns now brought less booty, and the mercenary troops increasingly employed in warfare competed with the imperial troops for their share of what war profit could be had.' The numbers of troops stationed in the capital swelled enormously through the legally dubious enrollment of unqualified persons in their ranks, creating greater competition for scarce salary resources and for alternate employment in the city. In the uprising of 1656, one unpaid member of the imperial cavalry described his situation to the sultan in these words: "[W]e languish in the corners of boarding houses hungry and impoverished, and our stipends aren't even enough to cover our debts to the landlords." There was no lack in the capital of potential allies in a demonstration against the sultan: merchants and tradesmen, members of the religious establishment, factions among the governing elite, both within and without the palace, and the rootless mass of immigrants to the capital.

It is in this changing political environment that the significance of the valide sultan's role in depositions can best be understood. The mother of the deposed sultan performed the function of providing sanction for the rejection of the individual sultan, thus allowing dynastic legitimacy to be preserved. The mothers of three of the five seventeenth­century sultans who were deposed­Mustafa, Ibrahim, and Mustafa II (r. 1695­1703)-were alive at the time of their sons' depositions. There is evidence to suggest that each of these women was formally petitioned by the highest officers of state-the grand vezir and the mufti -- not only to approve but also to assist in the transfer of authority.

When it became clear to all that Mustafa's mental incompetence was such that his continued rule was harmful to the empire, his mother assented to the petition of ulema leaders that she meet with the grand vezir and mufti to sanction his deposition. She requested, however, that he be spared execution. The deposition of Ibrahim in 1648 was formally accomplished only after a long confrontation between the valide sultan Kosem and leading statesmen who had come to the decision that the unbalanced sultan's conduct could no longer be tolerated. The lengthy and dramatic account of the event by the historian Naima is an indication of its historical importance.

The extended debate during which the assembled statesmen tried to persuade Kosem of the propriety and legality of the deposition reveals the complexity of the valide sultan 's role. The confrontation between Kosem and the assembled statesmen over Ibrahim's deposition was actually a bit of a sham, since Kosem was by this point anxious to get rid of her son, whose disastrous administration had undone the restorative work done by his elder brother. To the grand vezir Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha she had written, "In the end he will leave neither you nor me alive. We will lose control of the government. The whole society is in ruins. Have him removed from the throne immediately." Nevertheless, it was necessary that she publicly resist the deposition, since it was expected of her that she invoke her roles as protector and mentor rather than appear too eager to sanction her son's demise. When urged to carry out Ibrahim's overthrow and deliver the child Mehmed to be enthroned, Kosem Sultan pleaded at great length against the deposition, giving in only after attempting to counter the several arguments adduced by the statesmen. Naima explains Kosem Sultan's efforts as stemming from maternal compassion so strong that it overrode the anger and sorrow she felt at the sultan's ruination of the state and his mistreatment of her and her daughters.

The valide sultan 's resistance fulfilled another purpose: it allowed important political arguments to be rehearsed. Kosem reminded the politicians of the need for loyalty to the dynasty: "Wasn't every single one of you raised up, through the benevolence of the Ottoman dynasty?" They countered with the imperative of the holy law: a mentally impaired individual cannot govern the umma, the community of Muslim believers. At a key point in the discussion, the statesmen employed a brilliant strategy: they addressed the valide sultans as umm al­mu 'minin, "mother of the [Muslim] believers." An honorific title that had been bestowed through Qur'anic revelation on the wives of the Prophet Muhammad, this accolade endowed Kosem with an identity that enabled her to extend her maternal role as mentor/guardian beyond her son and the dynasty to the empire, indeed to the whole Muslim community, and thus to sanction the deposition. Furthermore, it allowed her to mediate the two contending forces in the Ottoman polity: the sovereign authority of the dynasty and the law of Islam.

That this legitimizing function of the valide sultan became routinized is suggested by the events surrounding the deposition of Mustafa II in 1703. His mother, Rabia Gulnus Sultan, had played a comparatively minor public role during her son's reign. Yet she was petitioned to approve and apparently to effect the deposition of Mustafa and the enthronement of her second son, Ahmed III. Sending separate replies to the petitions of the grand vezir and the mufti, she wrote, "All of you have requested in concord and unanimity that my majestic son Sultan Ahmed be seated on the imperial throne and that my other son Sultan Mustafa be deposed. Your petition has been complied with."

The valide sultan 's role in these dramatic events was to some degree a formality: she was asked to ratify a decision that had already been made by leading politicians and religious dignitaries. Yet her sanction of the forcible transfer of power from one sultan to another was necessary because it symbolically prevented the rupturing of dynastic continuity. Despite the fact that Islamic legal tradition allowed rebellion against a sovereign who prevented the pursuit of the proper Muslim life (it was precisely this kind of argument that had been put forth to justify Ibrahim's deposition), the devotion of Ottomans to their dynasty was so great that the rebellion of the sultan's servants against their master appeared to violate their oath of loyalty to their sovereign and to return ingratitude for the bounty he had bestowed on them (it was principally with this argument that Kosem Sultan countered the religio­legal argument). In being called upon to legitimate the subjects' withdrawal of their loyalty, the valide sultan, as the senior member of the royal family, was endowed with the responsibility of representing the welfare of the dynasty as a whole, even if this meant sacrificing the interest of a particular sultan.

There was another aspect to the valide sultan 's crucial role in the transfer of sovereignty. With the lapse of the princely governorate and the decline of sultanic ghaza, this transfer occurred within the palace. The new sultan no longer arrived in Istanbul after a hurried and well­guarded journey from his provincial capital, awaited by the leading officers of state who immediately performed the ritual gestures of obeisance that invested him with sovereignty. Moreover, it was not always simply a question of inaugurating the new sultan. In the case of a deposition, the former sultan had to be convinced to give up his station and the new sultan had to be brought out from his quarters. These crucial moments had to be attended to by individuals who possessed the requisite status and authority to enter the inner precincts of the palace. It would have been a violation of the sanctity of the imperial residence for statesmen to have forcibly done so. The valide sultan , as head of the imperial harem, was the one individual who could sanction the crossing of its boundary if necessary. In the absence of the sultan, she was the one individual who could exercise authority in both the outer and inner worlds of government.