Private World of Ottoman Women by Godfrey Goodwin

Author:Godfrey Goodwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780863567766
Publisher: Saqi

Grooms for Princesses

Princesses were married to Grand Vezirs almost automatically, otherwise they were married and remarried to senior officers of state. Dalloway claimed that a sultan told his daughter that he gave her a man for her pleasure and a dagger for her revenge. The husband had to repudiate any previous wives and any infidelity meant that he was stripped of wealth and strangled. This may have been more symbolic than real – a daughter of Selim III on a visit to the Morea gave her husband twenty-five beautiful maidens: they had no children. Another older example of leniency, at least,35 was that of Süleyman’s Grand Vezir, Lütfi Pasha, whose stringent and essential reforms made him many enemies. In 1542 he allegedly ordered the mutilation of a Moslem woman taken in debauchery. His wife, Şah Sultan, sister of Süleyman, heard of the sentence and was revolted.36 She bitterly reproached him and Lütfi Pasha was furious. He set about the princess as if she were a commoner but her screams alerted her eunuchs and they and the guards restrained him. The angry sultan did not execute Lütfi but ordered his divorce and sent him into exile on his estate at Dimetoka in disgrace. There is evidence37 that the princess was interfering in politics and intriguing with Lütfi’s opponents, including the Kapudan Paşa, Hayrettin Barbaros. Lütfi Pasha’s fall clearly marks the beginning of Ottoman economic decline. In exile, he wrote his remarkable history of the Ottoman sultans which is still a valuable source of information. Şah Sultan did not marry again. There was good reason to execute a man who had assaulted royalty yet there was no dagger and no confiscation of his estates. Perhaps the mutilated woman was an invention.

There were some princesses whose affection for their husbands saved their lives as when Fatma Sultan pleaded with her brother, Murat III, for the life of Siyavuş Pasha and was successful. He was to outlive her by twenty-one years. Due to Evliya Çelebi,38 more is known about Kaya Sultan and her husband, Melek Ahmet Pasha. In 1633 Evliya himself fired a rocket from a boat on the Bosporus to celebrate Kaya’s birth. In 1644 she was married to the Grand Vezir, Melek Ahmet Pasha, only to die during a terrible miscarriage fifteen years later.39 It is clear that she and her much older husband were very happy together and shared each other’s dreams. She was rich and munificent and her loyalty was such that there is a vivid account of her driving to the saray of Siyavuş Pasha and complaining to the Grand Vezir’s wife about a great injustice. The minister was immediately summoned and made his excuses. Kaya raged at him, calling him a tyrant, and then went in a fury to see the Valide. It is interesting that she had no difficulty in gaining admittance to the highest officer and lady in the state. It is hardly surprising that she was to die since the midwives had their arms into her up to their elbows in pursuit of the dead child.

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