Chapter One

Introduction: Royal Ottoman

Women as Architectural Patrons
This book examines the person and architectural patronage of Hadice Turhan
Sultan, the mother of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed IV (Figs 1.1 and 1.2). Like
many women oI the Ottoman harem, Turhan Sultan entered the Topkapi palace
court as a concubine. She had been captured in Russia at the age of twelve and
brought to Istanbul to serve Ksem Sultan, the mother oI the reigning Ottoman
sultan. Turhan gradually rose through the ranks of the Ottoman harem, bore a male
child to the sultan and, upon the death oI her husband Sultan Ibrahim, became a
valide sultan (or queen mother) in 1648. As the mother of the new sultan (a six-
year-old child), Turhan became the de facto ruler of the Ottoman Empire for over
three decades, until her death on 4 August 1683. During this time she shaped many
of the political and cultural agendas of the Ottoman court and assumed much of the
power, wealth, and traditional privileges of the sultanate. Among these privileges
was the patronage of large-scale architectural works in both the Ottoman capital
and its provinces. By her early thirties Turhan Sultan had become an active patron
of architecture. In 1658 she initiated the construction of two large fortresses at the
Aegean entrance to the Dardanelles. In 1661 she began to build a large mosque
complex (or klliye), which included a tomb, primary school, royal pavilion, and
market complex, in Eminn, the center oI Istanbul`s busy harbor on the Golden
Horn. Later in her life, she endowed several other structures in Ottoman Thrace,
the Balkans, and Crete; she also provided for charitable foundations along the
pilgrimage route to Mecca. It was through her ambitious patronage of architectural
works that Turhan Sultan legitimated her new political authority as a valide and
became a visible force in the early modern era of Ottoman history.
1
1 I am using the term early modern throughout this book as it is less cumbersome
than 'the late-fIteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the main time period in the
Ottoman Empire examined here. The inadequacy of this newer scheme of periodization for
European history is recognized by Europeanists and there is still debate about the centuries
it should include, as well as the implicit binarism and Eurocentrism that this nomenclature
connotes. See Merry Wiesner-Hanks, 'Women`s History and Social History: Are Structures
Necessary? in Time and Space in Womens Lives in Early Modern Europe, ed. Thomas
Kuehn, Anne Jacobson Schutte and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Sixteenth Century Essays and
Studies, vol. 57), (Kirskville MO: Truman State University Press), 316.
Ottoman Women Builders 2
Contrary to the popular notion that women in Islamic empires were powerless
because of cultural practices which restricted their physical access to the public
sphere and forbade display of their persons, recent scholarship has shown that
My use of early modern for these two and a half centuries of Ottoman history is not
intended to impose a European chronology upon a geographic area which experienced
modernization in a diIIerent way and at a diIIerent time. My choice oI 'early modern refects
a desire to be more concise than to burden the reader repeatedly with 'the late fIteenth,
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout this book. For other Ottomanists who have
used the term 'early modern see Madeline Zilf (ed.), Women in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden:
Brill, 1997), 4. See also Daniel GoIIman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), xiv.
Figure 1.1 Hadice Turhan Sultan, an imagined portrait. Attr. Sir Paul
Rycault, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, 1668
Introduction: Royal Ottoman Women as Architectural Patrons 3
Figure 1.2 Mehmed IV on Horseback, c. 1663, Austrian National Library,
Vienna
Ottoman Women Builders 4
many royal female members of Islamic courts undertook quite ambitious building
projects and actively engaged in ceremonial as a way to represent themselves and
to insure visibility among their subjects.
2
Ottoman women were no exception to
this phenomenon. Turhan Sultan had a long line of female patrons of architecture to
emulate, from imperial women of early Islamic courts such as Zubayda, the wife of the
Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid, to Ottoman women who were her near predecessors
such as Hrrem Sultan, Sleyman the Magnifcent`s wiIe. The latter, known in Western
sources as Roxelana, had built extensively in Istanbul, Jerusalem and other regions oI
the empire only a century before Turhan became a queen mother.
Changes in various aspects of Ottoman policies concerning succession during
the mid-sixteenth century brought imperial women, and particularly the mothers of
Ottoman princes, closer into the Iolds oI the sultanate in Istanbul. In a process which
Peirce has referred to as the sedentarization of the Sultanate, the royal family
was gradually gathered in from the provinces and installed in the imperial palace
in the capital oI Istanbul.
3
This shift in the locale of members of the royal family
impacted, in turn, the stage upon which imperial women set their patronage. Prior
to the mid-sixteenth century, the major architectural foundations built by imperial
Ottoman women had been realized outside the capital oI Istanbul. The mothers
of potential heirs to the sultanate, serving as guardians and advisors to their sons,
directed much oI the business oI the princes` provincial courts in various regions oI
the empire. In the royal households of the provinces it was often the mother of the
prince, as the eldest member of the court, who stepped into the role of the patron
of architecture. However, as the loci of princely residences shifted increasingly to
Istanbul, imperial women responded by Iocusing their building eIIorts in the capital
and less in the provinces. With the exception of the Sultan Ahmed mosque, founded
in the frst halI oI the seventeenth century, most oI the large klliye built in the
capital city oI Istanbul Irom the mid-sixteenth through the late seventeenth century
were built by women of the Ottoman court: the wives, daughters, and mothers of the
Ottoman sultans.
4
A central question asked in Ottoman Women Builders is how architecture was used
as a vehicle for self-representation and expression by imperial woman of the Ottoman
court. Because of the customary views and religious laws of the time which restricted
the degree to which royal women could be seen in public, Turhan Sultan and many
royal women who lived in the Ottoman court before her were neither expected nor
allowed to present their physical selves, unveiled, before the gaze of their subjects.
2 Gavin Hambly (ed.), Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage,
Piety (New York: St Martin`s Press, 1998); Fatma Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam,
trans. M. J. Lakeland (Minneapolis MN: University oI Minnesota Press, 1993).
3 Leslie Peirce, Shifting Boundaries: Images of Ottoman Royal Women in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Critical Matrix 4 (61) (Fall/Winter 1988), 47.
4 One author has calculated that in the mid-sixteenth century close to 37 percent of all
Ioundations established in Istanbul belonged to women. See Gabriel Baer, 'Women and WaqI:
An Analysis oI the Istanbul Tahrir oI 1546, Asian and African Studies 17 (1/3), 1983, 10.
Introduction: Royal Ottoman Women as Architectural Patrons 5
In this respect the imperial experience oI Turhan Sultan diIIered signifcantly Irom
that lived by many of her contemporaries in Europe who often used the physical
display of their persons to create an aura of power, piety and legitimacy. However,
Ottoman women`s greater access and ability to exercise control oI their wealth
made a signifcant diIIerence in the patronage agendas oI European and Ottoman
imperial women. Chapter Three, Ottoman Women/Other Women, explores the
different ways in which imperial women in the Ottoman world and in early modern
Europe represented themselves through acts of patronage and ceremonial during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While the patronage agendas of the imperial
European women Elizabeth I, Catherine and Maria de` Medici selected here
for comparative purposes, are as unique as the patrons themselves, my intention
in Ottoman Women/Other Women is not to make generalizations about imperial
female patrons in this era. Rather, I hope to enrich the data that has been collected
for the early modern period with case studies of their Ottoman consoeurs, like
Turhan Sultan, who are not as well known as their European contemporaries, but
who were indeed very active patrons of architecture.
5
By comparing the conditions
surrounding these women`s individual acts oI building, I hope to work towards a
better understanding of how gender intersects with patronage, architecture, and self-
representation.
6
Turhan Sultan and her architectural patronage are of particular interest because
among the buildings she commissioned were two fortresses. These building types
rarely appear in the architectural repertoire of imperial women in any region of Europe
or the Mediterranean world during the early modern era. Yet Turhan Sultan`s frst
major act of patronage, and the focus of Chapter Four, Defending the Dardanelles,
was the construction oI Seddlbahir and Kumkale, on either side oI the Dardanelles.
With these two military structures the Ottoman queen mother could assume and
advertise her position as the protector of the empire, a role previously reserved
Ior the sultan. The presentation here oI the frst plans and detailed historical and
architectural documentation oI Turhan Sultan`s two works oI military architecture
on the Dardanelles forms an important part of this book.
As Seddlbahir was under Turkish military jurisdiction until 1997, and Kumkale
continues to operate as a naval base making it inaccessible to the public, neither of
the valide`s Iortresses had been accurately surveyed when I began my research oI
Turhan Sultan`s patronage. The results oI a fve-year survey project, initiated in 1997,
5 It would also be very useful to compare the architectural patronage of Ottoman
imperial women with their contemporaries in Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Initially it was
my intention to do so in the third chapter of this book, but the research on female patronage
in these regions and time periods is still very limited. UseIul articles on SaIavid and Mughal
imperial women`s patronage have been undertaken by Babayan, Blake, Kozlowski and a
monograph on Nur Jahan by Findly (see the bibliography Ior Iull reIerences) but the paucity
of research on this subject does not yet allow for a meaningful comparative analysis.
6 Cynthia Lawrence (ed.), Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors
and Connoisseurs (University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 413.
Ottoman Women Builders 6
which documented the existing remains of these sites along with the related archival
material, increased in a signifcant way the data that exists Ior the study oI military
architecture in the Ottoman Empire. As more of this type of data accumulates, the
traditional assumption that the Ottomans were either opposed to or unable to innovate
or integrate the technologies of artillery and military architecture after the sixteenth
century will need to be reassessed.
7
There have been relatively few Ottoman military
structures which have been accurately surveyed and whose architectural history has
been investigated in any detail. These types of structures have been overshadowed
by the larger urban complexes of the Ottoman Classical Age and have yet to
capture the interest of the majority of Ottoman architectural historians. The imperial
mosque complexes built by Sinan, the famed court architect of the sixteenth century,
and more recently the Ottoman domestic and palace architecture of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, are the Iocus oI most architectural historians` research on
Ottoman buildings. Compared to the numerous studies and architectural surveys
conducted of fortresses throughout Europe, interest in Ottoman military architecture
is in its infancy. Comparative stylistic analyses of Ottoman fortresses in the early
modern era are, thereIore, still quite diIfcult to make, particularly Ior the seventeenth-
century structures where there is even less documentation.
8
7 Gabor Agoston`s Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) is the most recent appraisal oI this issue.
8 Some notable exceptions to this are the meticulous study of the late seventeenth/
eighteenth-century Ottoman Black Sea fortress at zi, by Caroline Finkel and Victor
Ostapchuk, Outpost of Empire: An Appraisal of Ottoman Building Registers as Sources
for the Archeology and Construction History of the Ottoman Black Sea Fortress of zi,
Muqarnas 22 (2005), 150188, and the doctoral thesis by Burcu zgven, 'Barut ve Tabya:
Rnesans Mimarisi Baglaminda Fatih Sultan Mehmed Kaleleri (PhD dissertation, Istanbul
Teknik niversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstits, 1997), which examines fIteenth-century
Iortifcation designs, particularly those constructed by Mehmed II, and compares these with
European examples Irom the same era. Some oI the fIteenth-century Iortresses built or
repaired by Mehmed II on the Bosphorus, and the Dardanelles Rumeli Hisari, Anadolu
Hisari and Yedikule, Kilitbahir and anakkale were surveyed in the 1930s and again in the
1950s. The results oI these surveys can be Iound in Albert Gabriel, Chateaux turcs du Bosphore
(Paris: E. de Boccard, 1943); Sidney Toy, The Castles of the Bosphorus, Archaeologia or
Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Society of Antiquaries of London, Second Series,
vol. 80, OxIord 1930, 215228; Hans Hogg, Turkenburgen an Bosporus und Hellespont
(Dresden: Focken & Ottmann, 1932); Ismail Utkular, anakkale Boga:inaa Fatih Kaleleri
(Istanbul: Pulhan Matbaasi, 1953). For more recent survey or archival work that has been
conducted on Ottoman Iortifcations, see A. Z. Hertz, 'Ada Kale: The Key to the Danube,
16881690, Archivum Ottomanicum 3 (1971), 170184; A. Z. Hertz , 'Armament and
Supply Inventory oI Ottoman Ada Kale, 1753, Archivum Ottomanicum 4 (1972), 95172.
Enrico A. van Teijlingen, 'The Fortress oI Aya Mavra (Santa Maura) in Ottoman times (1479
1684): A Preliminary Survey of its Building History, in Art Turc/Turkish Art: 10e Congrs
International dart Turc, Genve (Geneve: Fondation Max van Berchem, 1999), 718724;
Jean-Louis Bacqu-Grammont, 'Un plan Ottoman indit de Van au XVII siecle, Osmanli
Aratirmalari Dergisi/Journal of Ottoman Stuaies 2 (1981), 99122; Rhoads Murphey,
Introduction: Royal Ottoman Women as Architectural Patrons 7
Recent scholarship on the level of development in European versus Ottoman
military technology has demonstrated that the Ottomans, at least until the mid-
eighteenth century, were considered by Europeans to be formidable adversaries
whose knowledge and ability to engage in siege warfare and defense tactics were
comparable to other powers throughout the Mediterranean and the European
frontiers of Hungary.
9
In the seventeenth century the Ottoman attempts to destroy
Venetian seapower in the Aegean were largely successful, particularly after the
former were able to capture Crete, the major towns of which, except for Candia,
modern-day Heraklion, gradually succumbed to the sultan`s navy by 1646.
10
Venice`s
subsequent tactic of blockading the Dardanelles did debilitate the Ottoman naval
forces temporarily, but eventually the former were repelled and the straits made
more secure through the construction oI Seddlbahir and Kumkale during the early
days oI Turhan Sultan`s tenure as valide.
11
Turhan Sultan`s second building project, and the subject oI the fIth chapter, is
the Yeni Valide mosque complex oI Eminn, Istanbul. The New Mother`s mosque
complex was a large socio-religious building project located in a central market
quarter oI Istanbul which required a massive expropriation oI property Irom the
Jewish community that had existed there since the late Byzantine era. Fueled by
the conservative Islamic Kadizadeli movement oI the mid-seventeenth century,
which railed against non-Muslim minorities and orthodox sufs, Turhan was able to
harness the political rhetoric oI the time and amass suIfcient wealth and legitimacy
to transform this quarter of the city, through her architectural patronage, into a
predominantly Muslim neighborhood. With the Egyptian Bazaar, an immense han or
market building she erected adjacent to her mosque, Turhan Sultan not only arranged
Construction of a Fortress at Mosul, in Social and Economic History of Turkey 10711920,
ed. Halil Inalcik and O. Okyar (Ankara, 1980), 16378.
9 Rhoads Murphey writes, Overall the Ottomans kept pace with advances in military
technology throughout the period 1500 to 1700 and in some areas (such as sapping and mining)
emerged as standard-setters in their own right. While the debate over the relative position in
advancing technology oI the Ottomans and their European counterparts circa 1700 continues,
the current concensus is that no serious divergence of methods and standards applied until after
1680. Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 15. See also Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Resurgence in
the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean, Mediterranean Historical Review 8 (1993), 186
200, where he argues that even in the sphere oI naval technology, long considered an area
of Ottoman weakness after their defeat at Lepanto in 1571, the Ottomans were both well-
informed about and able to keep pace with, evolving practice.
10 Kenneth Meyer Setton, Venice, Austria and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century,
Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 192 (Philadelphia PA: American
Philosophical Society, 1991); C. Duffy, Seige Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern
World 14941660 (New York and London, Routledge, 1979), 197.
11 DuIIy`s description oI the construction oI both Seddlbahir and Kumkale in Siege
Warfare, p. 197, is misleading, frst because he claims that the Iortress oI Kilitbahir was
constructed in 1659 by the Grand Vizier Mehmed Kprl, and that the two new Iortresses
were both on the European side of the Straits.
Ottoman Women Builders 8
for additional funds to be allocated for the upkeep of her complex, but helped to
shiIt the locus oI wealth that was generated by the customs oIfces in this district
from non-Muslim to Muslim merchants. Building in the Capital: The Yeni Valide
Mosque Complex oI Eminn (Chapter Five) explores Turhan Sultan`s motivations
for and the processes through which she created this large Ottoman architectural
foundation.
Ottoman Women Builders draws upon the resources and methodologies of three
felds oI history: Ottoman history, architectural history, and the history oI gender in
early modern Europe. While there are questions and concerns shared by scholars
engaged in all of these areas, there are discourses that are, of course, unique to each.
Part of the challenge and the excitement of bringing these three disciplines together
in a monograph about an Ottoman woman like Turhan Sultan has been to see how
the concerns and the queries oI one feld can elucidate those in others. The varied
ways in which gender shapes the periodization of historical events, representation,
and patronage have been a central concern to historians and art historians of early
modern Europe Ior at least two decades. Numerous case studies oI European women`s
patronage in the early modern era exist and the theoretical approaches used by these
scholars are useful when examining similar phenomena in the Ottoman context.
While it would be inappropriate to extract and impose the same methodological
framework upon a culture as different as that of the Ottomans, it is important to see
where and why there may be convergence and divergence in the types of patronage
activities undertaken by imperial women in the early modern era of Europe, and
during the same time period in the Ottoman Empire.
As an example, the problem inherent in gendering private and public spheres of life
has been a topic of much debate for many early modernists working on architectural
patronage by women throughout Europe.
12
The traditional approach, which frst
dichotomizes public and private spheres and then assigns the former to the male
and the latter to the female, has been found to be an inappropriate framework for the
analysis oI Iemale patronage in early modern Europe, yet this model continues to fnd
acceptance among many architectural historians of the Ottoman Empire, particularly
for interpreting the use of space in domestic architecture. For Ottomanists working
on issues oI space, gender and architecture, studies oI specifc groups oI women
patrons in Europe such as nuns can provide an interesting comparative example.
Nuns, sequestered and therefore less visible, had traditionally been considered devoid
of the kind of power that was accessible to their imperial more mobile and visible
counterparts. But recent research has demonstrated that these cloistered women could
obtain and exercise signifcant control both within and outside the 'conventual space
they inhabited and often had themselves created and endowed.
13
12 The literature on this issue is extensive. Dorothy O. Helly and Susan M. Reverby
(eds), Genaerea Domains. Rethinking Public ana Private in Womens History (Ithaca NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992) provides a good introduction to this debate.
13 See M. W. Ferguson, M. Quilligan, N. J. Vickers (eds), Rewriting the Renaissance:
The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Moaern Europe (Chicago: University oI Chicago
Introduction: Royal Ottoman Women as Architectural Patrons 9
The assessment of patronage according to the stages of the female life cycle
has also begun to serve as a methodological benchmark in gender studies.
14
In the
Ottoman world access to spaces, Irom the inner sanctums oI the Topkapi Palace to
the Istanbul streets, was determined not only by gender but by social status, wealth
and the nature of the occasion or ceremonial. A simple dichotomization of this
space into male/female or public/private is far too simplistic to explain the complex
dynamics that engendered space in the Ottoman Empire of the early modern era.
15

Looking to the rich language the Ottomans used to describe different types and uses
of space, Peirce has demonstrated the inadequacy of this reductivist paradigm of
private versus public for the Ottoman case. Ottoman society of the sixteenth and
seventeenth century was dichotomized into spheres characterized less by notions
of public/commonwealth/male and private/domestic/female than by distinctions
between the privileged and the common, the sacred and the proIane distinctions
that cut across the dichotomy of gender.
16
Royal women, like royal men, could and
did restrict access to themselves and the space surrounding them and they were, in
turn, restricted from physically occupying certain types of spaces at certain times.
Likewise, both male and female members of the Ottoman court could exercise
control over different types of spaces by manipulating both the built environment
through architectural projects and by exercising the privileges of the royal gaze,
a privilege that was recognized and implemented in the design and layout of
Ottoman structures, Irom the more secluded harem quarters oI the Topkapi palace
to Turhan Sultan`s great Yeni Valide mosque complex oI Eminn. Recognized as
an infuential design component in Italianate Renaissance architecture, the power
and the complex dynamics of the royal gaze has been discovered more recently as
an important factor in how Islamic patrons of architecture exercised control over
and perhaps engendered space.
17
As Hill has written,
Press, 1986). Also Craig A. Monson (ed.), The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion and the Arts in
Early Modern Europe (Ann Arbor MI: University oI Michigan Press, 1992); Marilyn R. Dunn
Spiritual Philanthropists: Women as Convent Patrons in Seicento Rome, in Women and
Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors, and Connoisseurs, ed. Cynthia Lawrence
(University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
14 Introduction, in Time, Space and Womens Lives in Early Modern Europe, eds
Thomas Kuehn, Anne Jacobson Schutte and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirskville MO: Truman
State University Press, 2001), viii.
15 Occasions such as carnivals or other ceremonials could affect and even invert
notions oI appropriate gender roles vis-a-vis access to space. See Derin Terzioglu, 'The
Imperial Circumcision Festival of 1582: An Interpretation, Muqarnas (12) (1995), 8499,
Ior discussion oI women`s roles in the circumcision Iestivals staged by the Ottoman sultan
Murad III in 1582; also L. Thys-Senocak, 'The Gendered City, in City in the Islamic World,
ed. R. Holod et al. (Iorthcoming, 2007, Leiden, Brill).
16 Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire
(New York and OxIord: OxIord University Press, 1993), 8.
17 Research on the power of the gaze has been conducted in numerous art historical
contexts, from the early Renaissance architecture of Brunelleschi, to the Elizabethan country
Ottoman Women Builders 10
Architecture is a tangible classifying system continuously inculcating and reinforcing
the taxonomic principles underlying all the arbitrary provisions of a culture. This is
particularly evident in early modern architectural practice, with its emphasis on social
hierarchy as spatially performed through etiquette, processional ritual, and the conjuring
oI vistas and enflades to evoke the distance conIerred by power.
18
Within the Ottoman architectural complex, creating spaces where expansive vistas
or specifc views could be obtained by the royal patron was a Irequent practice.
A desire to create a place where the gaze and the view could be manipulated
constituted one oI the key design components at Turhan Sultan`s Eminn
complex. The panoptic possibilities offered by the hnkar kasri, or royal pavilion,
that adjoined the Yeni Valide mosque suggest that imperial women did not simply
appropriate male iconography when constructing their works, but were equally as
interested in the manipulation of the royal gaze as their male counterparts. Further,
they used it to provide visual access for themselves when their physical mobility
was restricted.
Interest in gender studies is a more recent development among Ottoman
historians who work on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when compared to
their counterparts in this feld who study early modern Europe. The Iormer discipline
has evolved along a different historiographic path.
19
Like Boccaccio`s De Claris
house, to the orientalist paintings oI Grme and Ingres. As this topic is too vast to deal with
here, I am limiting myselI to the Ottoman architect, patron, and subject`s understanding oI
the potential to manipulate space through the gaze. A useful work and bibliography for the
role of the gaze in the architecture and urban planning of the early Renaissance is Marvin
Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye. Urbanism, Art ana Power in Early Moaern Florence
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). I thank Heghnar Watenpaugh Ior inIorming
me about Alice Friedman`s 'Architecture, Authority and the Female Gaze: Planning and
Representation in the Early Modern Country House, Assemblage 18 (August 1992), 4161.
For the role of optics in the Islamic world the work of A. I. Sabra is useful: see A. I. Sabra, The
Optics of Ibn al-Haytham. Books IIII on Direct Jision, trans. A. I. Sabra, 2 vols (London:
Warburg Institute, 1989). For work on the issue oI the imperial gaze in the Ottoman Topkapi
palace as well as other imperial settings in the early modern Islamic world see Glru Necipoglu-
KaIadar, 'Framing the Gaze in Ottoman, SaIavid and Mughal Palaces, Ars Orientalis 23
(1993), 303304; and D. Fairchild Ruggles, 'The Eye oI the Sovereignty: Poetry and Vision
in the Alhambra`s Lindaraja Mirador, Gesta 36 (1997): 18089; and D. Fairchild Ruggles,
Gardens, Landscapes and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (University Park PA: Penn
State Press, 2000).
18 Helen Hills (ed.), Architecture and The Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe
(Aldershot and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2003), 10. I thank Dr. Hills Ior sharing with me the
introduction to this book before it was published.
19 I want to reiterate here that I am not discussing scholarship on the late eighteenth,
nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the Ottoman empire, for which there has been much
more attention both in terms of the number of works and theoretical richness. Most notable
among recent studies of imperial Ottoman women during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries has been the ground-breaking work by Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem; Amy
Introduction: Royal Ottoman Women as Architectural Patrons 11
Mulierbus or Christine de Pizan`s The City of the Women, the Ottoman world also had
its compendium of women worthies.
20
In the eighteenth century the Meahirin-
nis included Ottoman and other women in the Islamic past and royal mothers such
as Turhan Sultan were among the most celebrated.
21
However, the study of imperial
Ottoman women was shaped in a more signifcant way by Ahmed Refk, an early
twentieth-century Ottoman historian, who periodized this early modern era as the
Kaainlar Saltanati, the Sultanate of the Women, and wrote a book with the same
title.
22
Set within the paradigm of imperial decline that has long shaped the historical
interpretations oI the Ottoman Empire aIter the sixteenth century, Refk attributed
many oI the Ottoman court`s misIortunes to the backstage machinations oI its royal
wives and mothers who, he claimed, had exercised authority Irom the confnes oI the
harem. According to him it was the illegitimate manipulation of power and wealth
by selI-serving imperial women which contributed to the empire`s loss oI political
and economic supremacy aIter the so-called Classical Age. In the 1950s, a Iew
decades following the appearance of the Kaainlar Saltanati, a handful of Ottoman
historians who were interested in the lives of imperial Ottoman women published
correspondence between female members of the court and family members or court
oIfcials, and letters exchanged between Ottoman women and their royal consoeurs
in Europe, but the highly sexist Iramework in which these women`s lives were
interpreted was not questioned until quite recently.
23
Singer, Constructing Ottoman Benehcence. An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (Albany
NY: SUNY Press, 2002); Madeline Zilf (ed.), Women in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden: Brill,
1997). See also Women in Anatolia: 9000 Years of the Anatolian Woman (exhibition catalog),
(Istanbul: Turkish Republic`s Ministry oI Culture, 1993); Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Women`s Culture
in Subfects of the Sultan. Culture ana Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London and New
York: I. B. Tauris, 2000); Suraiya Faroqhi, Stories of Ottoman Men and Women: Establishing
Status, Establishing Control (Istanbul: Eren Press, 2002).
20 For the use of this term see Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Gender in History (Oxford,
Blackwell, 2001), 1; Margaret L. Meriwether and Judith E. Tucker (eds), Social History and
Gender in the Modern Middle East (Boulder CO, Westview Press, 1999), 34.
21 See Mehmed Zihni EIendi`s work on Iamous women entitled Meahirin-nisa, 2
vols (Istanbul, H.129495). See also R. Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections:
From Ibn Sad to Whos Who (Boulder CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994).
22 See Ahmet (Refk) Altinay, Kaainlar Saltanati, vols 14 (Istanbul: Kitaphane-i
Hilmi, 191323); Ior the recent transliterated edition see Ahmed (Refk) Altinay, Kaainlar
Saltanati (Istanbul: Yurt Yayinlari, 2000).
23 M. agatay Uluay and his early work on imperial women`s correspondence is
particularly valuable. See M. agatay Uluay, Osmanli Sultanlarina Ak Mektuplari, Tarih
Dnyasi Mecmuasi Yayinlaridan series 2, (Istanbul: Saka Matbaasi, 1950); M. agatay
Uluay, Haremden Mektuplar, Harem vol. 1 (Istanbul 1956); M. agatay Uluay, Harem II
(Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, 1971). For an example oI letters exchanged between
royal Ottoman women and European court women see Susan Skilliter, Three letters from the
Ottoman Sultana` Safye to Queen Elizabeth I, in Documents from Islamic Chancelleries I
(Oriental Studies II), ed. Samuel M. Stern (OxIord: Cassirer, 1965), 120234.
Ottoman Women Builders 12
The decline paradigm that once shaped the entire feld oI Ottoman history
has now lost its legitimacy and most of its supporters, but revisionist scholarship
concerning the political and economic roles of imperial Ottoman women has
proceeded at a slower pace and is still relatively uncharted. The need to consider
gender in the formation of the built environment in the Ottoman Empire has also
been recognized only recently and now a small but growing group of Ottoman
historians and architectural historians have been exploring the conjunctures between
gender, imperial patronage and the Ottoman architectural enterprise.
24
The imperial
architecture of the Ottoman world has most frequently been interpreted as an
evolutionary progression and subsequent manifestation of the centralizing economic
and political policies of the sultan or his viziers. Alternatively, research has focused
upon the creativity of a few select architects such as Mimar Sinan.
25
Royal women
patrons of architecture have entered only occasionally into the scholarly debates on
Ottoman architecture.
26
This comparative dearth of scholarly research on imperial
Ottoman women and their architectural patronage is not due to the lack of appropriate
subjects to study or archives to consult.
27
In the two centuries examined here there
are at least nine royal Ottoman women who were architectural patrons of substantial
24 See Ior example the articles by Tlay Artan on this topic, 'Periods and Problems oI
Ottoman Women`s Patronage on the Via Egnatia, in The Jia Egnatia Unaer Ottoman Rule
(13801699), ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou (Rethymnon, 1996), 1943; Tlay Artan, 'From
Charismatic Leadership to Collective Rule: Introducing Materials on the Wealth and Power
of Ottoman Princesses in the Eighteenth Century, Toplum ve Ekonomi 4 (1993), 5394;
Tlay Artan, 'The Kadirga Palace: An Architectural Reconstruction, Muqarnas 10 (1993),
201211.
25 See Ior example Aptullah Kuran, Sinan: The Grand Old Master of Ottoman
Architecture (Istanbul and Washington, 1987); Dogan Kuban, 'The Style oI Sinan`s Domed
Structures, Muqarnas 4 (1987): 7292.
26 For an introduction to the subject of Ottoman women and patronage and a good
bibliography see Cemal KaIadar`s contribution in the exhibition catalog, 'Women in Seljuk
and Ottoman Society up to the Mid-19th Century, in 9000 Years of the Anatolian Woman,
192201; Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, 'Art and Architecture, Encyclopedia of Women
and Islamic Cultures: Methodologies, Paradigms amd Sources, vol. I, ed. Suad Joseph
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 315320. See also earlier articles by lk Bates, 'Women as Patrons
of Architecture in Turkey, in Women in the Muslim World, ed. L. Beck and N. Keddie
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 24560; and Esin Atil, 'Islamic Women
as Rulers and Patrons, Asian Art 6 (Spring 1993), 312, are based less on archival sources
but provide good introductions to the subject.
27 No book-length study oI the imperial Ottoman women HaIsa Sultan, Hrrem,
Nurbanu, Safye, Ksem or Mihrimah exists although most oI these women were signifcant
patrons of architecture and were involved in the political and cultural activities of the Empire.
Ahmed Refk`s novel Turhan Valide, published in 1931 in Istanbul by Kanaat Ktphanesi,
while based on the writings oI some Ottoman chroniclers, is largely a work oI fction. See
the Iascinating study oI Nurbanu`s architectural patronage by Pinar Kayaalp-Aktan, 'The
Atik Valide Mosque Complex: A Testament oI Nurbanu`s Prestige, Power and Piety (PhD
dissertation, Harvard University, 2006).
Introduction: Royal Ottoman Women as Architectural Patrons 13
building projects, many oI these located in Istanbul, the center oI the empire. Yet
apart from this present work, no full-length academic monograph has been devoted
to any of these women and their architectural patronage.
28
Ottomanists interested in gender issues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
have not participated to the same degree as Europeanists did in the women worthies
phase oI the early women`s history movement.
29
Current interest in gender in the
Ottoman feld has led to an approach which prioritizes the research oI the social
and economic history of non- or lesser elites in the empire over its imperial female
fgures.
30
A range of archival evidence, from court records of divorces, to wills, to
endowment deeds, has been tapped for new and highly rewarding insights into the
lives oI lesser elite women and men who lived both in Istanbul and in the Ottoman
provinces.
31
But the recent Ottomanists` emphasis upon practicing history, and
28 The nine women who come to mind immediately are Sah Sultan, HaIsa Sultan,
Haseki Hrrem, Mihrimah, Nurbanu, Safye, Ksem, Turhan, and Glns Emetullah, but
there were certainly others in the immediate Ottoman family and in the Ottoman court, such
as the wives of viziers, and female administrators who lived in and outside of the harem
who sponsored architectural projects. Most of the information we have on the women of the
Sultanate of the Women is found in short enclyclopedia entries. See, for example, Cavid
Baysun, 'Ksem Sultan, IA and EI (2); Mihrimah Sultan, IA; J. Deny, 'Walide Sultan,
EI; Tayyib M. Gkbilgen, 'Hrrem Sultan, IA; and Susan Skilliter, 'Khurrem, EI (2). A
recent article by G. Yermolenko, 'Roxelana: The Greatest Empress oI the East`, The Muslim
World 95 (April 2005), 231248, does not bring to light new Ottoman sources Ior the history
oI this important royal wiIe oI the sixteenth century but examines Polish and Ukrainian
literature written about Hrrem. See M. agatay Uluay, Paaiahlarin Kaainlar ve Ki:lar,
Trk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari 7, series 63 (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, 1980) Ior
brieI descriptions oI their building activities; see Hafz Hseyin al-Ayvansaray, Hadikat-
l-cevami, 2 vols (Istanbul, H1281/1864) and its English translation, H. H. Ayvansaray, The
Garaen of the Mosques. Hah: Hseyin al-Ayvansarayis Guiae to the Muslim Monuments of
Ottoman Istanbul, trans. H. Crane (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000).
29 Wiesner-Hanks, Gender in History, 1; Meriwether and Tucker, Social History and
Gender in the Modern Middle East, 34.
30 Among the earlier scholars with this approach were the Iollowing: Gabriel Baer,
'Women and WaqI, 927; Haim Gerber, 'Social and Economic Position oI Women in an
Ottoman City, Bursa, 16001700, International Journal of Miaale East Stuaies 12 (1980),
231244; Ronald Jennings, 'Women in Early Seventeenth Century Ottoman Judicial Records
The Sharia Court oI Anatolian Kayseri, Journal of the Economic ana Social History of the
Orient 18 (1975): 53114.
31 The work of Leslie Peirce, Beyond Harem Walls: Ottoman Royal Women and the
Exercise of Power in Genaerea Domains, eds Holly and Reverby, 4055, is particularly
helpIul in this respect as are: Dina Rizk Khoury, 'Drawing Boundaries and Defning Space
in Ottoman Iraq, in Women, the Family ana Divorce Laws in Islamic History ed. Amira
El Azhary Sonbol (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 173187; Yvonne Seng,
'Invisible Women: Residents oI Early Sixteenth Century Istanbul, in Women in the Medieval
Islamic World, ed. Hambly, 241268; Leslie Peirce, 'She is Trouble ... and I will Divorce
Her`: Orality, Honor, and Representation in the Ottoman Court oI Aintab` , in Women in the
Ottoman Women Builders 14
specifcally gender history 'Irom below, has leIt many unanswered questions about
the lives of the imperial women who lived at the Ottoman court.
In the light of more recent postmodern scholarship on representation, agency and
the defnition oI the selI, it is essential to ask how Ottoman women used architecture
as a means to represent themselves and become visible in their society. How we
can determine the extent oI Turhan Sultan`s agency in the building projects she
sponsored is a question addressed in the conclusion: The Pillar of the State. By
excavating through the narratives about her life in various Ottoman and European
chroniclers` writings, and the valide`s own correspondence, more pieces oI the
puzzle concerning the Ottoman architectural enterprise and Turhan Sultan`s role
within it can be understood. Equating the patron`s intention with the fnal product is
Iraught with methodological hazards in any feld and Ottoman architectural history
is no exception. The lack of certain types of archival sources such as building
plans, architectural treatises, and direct orders from the patron, which often exist
for building projects in early modern Europe, do make the questions raised here
concerning the link between the Ottoman patron and the project more of a challenge
to answer, but these are questions which must be asked.
32
This book addresses the
questions surrounding Turhan Sultan`s selI-representation and agency by utilizing a
variety oI sources archival, oral and material to examine the diIIerent defnitions
and receptions of the valide and the structures she founded. The records left by
Ottoman and European chroniclers of the early modern era and contemporary
Ottoman archival records (ranging from foundation deeds, to account registers, to
building repair documents, records of trade, and personal correspondence between
the valide and her palace administrators) have been brought together to assess the
many intentions and receptions oI Turhan Sultan`s building eIIorts. A wide array
of visual material, such as photographs and engravings of the valide`s projects are
gathered here from collections in Turkey, England, France and Italy to enrich this
work. The oral testimony oI the current residents oI Turhan Sultan`s Iortresses at
Seddlbahir and Kumkale shed light on the more recent history oI Turhan Sultan`s
buildings and reveal how her actions so many centuries ago are interpreted today by
current residents.
33
Medieval Islamic World, ed. Hambly, 269301, and Fariba ZarinebaI-Shahr, 'Women and
the Public Eye in Eighteenth Century Istanbul, in Women in the Medieval Islamic World, ed.
Hambly, 301324.
32 This issue concerning the lacunae of source types that could provide more intimate
insight into the mindset oI the patron has been commented upon by Cemal KaIadar, 'SelI and
Others: The Diary oI a Dervish in Seventeenth Century Istanbul and First Person Narratives in
Ottoman Literature, Studia Islamica (69), 1996, 123150. It has been dealt with in a highly
creative way by Daniel GoIIman who has personalized the study oI Ottoman history through
his character Kubad, in The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe.
33 For the oral history project that was conducted at Seddlbahir and Kumkale see
I. Cerem Cenker and L. Thys-Senocak, 'Moving Beyond the Walls: Local and National
Memories of Turkish Fortresses, in Oral Histories/Public Memories, eds Paula Hamilton
and Linda Slopes (Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, Iorthcoming, 2007).
Introduction: Royal Ottoman Women as Architectural Patrons 15
With such a rich and varied array of archival evidence available for the study
oI Turhan Sultan`s patronage, I Irequently had to reposition the actual architectural
works, their layout, location, architectural features, epigraphic and decorative
programs, into the center of my inquiry. As a result both the process and the results
of my research were more rewarding. When building plans did not exist for Turhan
Sultan`s two Iortresses on the Dardanelles, they had to be surveyed and Iully
documented, a fve-year project which introduced me to Ottoman archaeology,
architectural and geodesic surveying, and the joys and challenges oI feld work.
34
My interest in the role oI the gaze in shaping the organization oI Turhan Sultan`s
Yeni Cami complex in Istanbul was sparked aIter spending hours looking at the
surrounding buildings of the complex while seated at the entrance to the royal
pavilion, waiting for an often tardy guard to open its gate. The necessity of using
such a variety of methodologies and sources when asking questions about intention,
agency, and representation has reaIfrmed my belieI that the more easily we move
across and beyond the boundaries of our respective disciplines, the more fruitful
the process of research will be, and the more interesting the results.
Ottoman Women Builders does not provide answers to all the questions posed
above, but focuses on one question in particular: How did imperial women
represent themselves, their power and piety, and make themselves visible to
their subjects and others through the patronage of architecture? Turhan Sultan,
unlike her early modern consoeurs in Europe, was restricted from displaying her
physical self to her subjects. Her presence, however, was made visible through the
works of architecture she commissioned. Through the choice of location, building
typology, epigraphy, ceremonial, and rhetoric surrounding her architectural
projects, Turhan Sultan exercised agency and represented her power, piety, and
legitimacy. Architecture and its accompanying ceremonial served as vehicles
through which Turhan Sultan became visible and maintained a presence among the
Ottoman subjects. The capacity of architecture to function in this way for women
patrons like Turhan Sultan is noted by Ruggles who writes ... buildings stand,
in the sense oI synecdoche, in place oI their donors, and enjoy a public profle
denied to the woman herself.
35
This book examines the concrete expressions of
legitimate power and piety the architectural works that were commissioned by
Turhan Sultan, and the role that this valide played in furthering the economic and
political policies of the Ottoman empire. It challenges the traditional interpretive
framework, which has been both sexist and based upon an outdated paradigm of
decline. Ultimately this case study oI Turhan Sultan and her agenda Ior architectural
patronage should be expanded to compare with patronage efforts conducted both
34 See project website for the archaeological excavation, architectural survey and
documentation oI the Ottoman Iortresses oI Seddlbahir and Kumkale and the current work being
conducted Ior the restoration oI the Iortress at Seddlbahir: www.seddulbahir-kumkale.org~.
35 D. Fairchild Ruggles, Vision and Power: An Introduction, in Women, Patronage
and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies, ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (Albany NY: SUNY
Press, 2000), 116.
Ottoman Women Builders 16
by other royal Ottoman and other women patrons who were her contemporaries,
predecessors and successors. We can then work towards a more comprehensive
understanding oI imperial women`s patronage in the Ottoman Empire and the
complex relationships that existed between the built environment and the gendered
identity of the architectural patron in the early modern world.