1. Introduction to the Chief Harem Eunuch; 2. The African Connection; 3. Arrangement in black and white: eunuchs in the Ottoman Palace; 4. The creation of the office of Chief Harem Eunuch and the career of Habeshi Mehmed Agha; 5. The crisis years of the seventeenth century; 6. Yusuf Agha and the Köprülü reforms; 7. A new paradigm: El-Hajj Beshir Agha and his successors; 8. Exile and the Kingdom: the Chief Harem Eunuch and Egypt; 9. The Chief Harem Eunuch and Ottoman religious and intellectual life; 10. Reformed out of existence: the dénouement of the Chief Harem Eunuch; 11. Memorializing the Chief Harem Eunuch; 12. Conclusion.
A study of the chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the sultan's harem in Istanbul under the Ottoman Empire.
Jane Hathaway is Professor of History at Ohio State University and one of the world's leading authorities on the Ottoman Empire and on eunuchs in Islamic societies. She is the author of five books, including The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule (2008), which won the Turkish Studies Association's M. Fuat Köprülü Book Prize. She also authored the article 'Eunuchs' for the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, a seminal reference work. Her research has been funded by prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study.
'Building on an impressive body of work on Ottoman Egypt and the
Arab lands, and on the formidable early eighteenth-century Chief
Harem Eunuch el-Hajj Beşir Agha, Jane Hathaway focuses here on the
careers of these eunuchs and how the office evolved over time. She
deftly brings her subjects out of the shadows to reveal the
geographic and functional reach of their interests, which
oscillated between the poles of Istanbul and Cairo, but also
extended from guardianship of the Prophet's tomb to protection of
the grain trade on the Danube. Hathaway has written a work with a
strong narrative thread that is at once scholarly and accessible.
Her careful research allows the Chief Harem Eunuchs to take their
place in the constellation of Ottoman power and demonstrates that,
as she writes,'the imperial household could not function without
eunuchs, and vice versa'.' Caroline Finkel, author of Osman's
Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire
'Long accustomed to despise palace intrigues and the people that
used to spin them in the past, we usually prefer to forget the
enormous role that 'the backstairs of power' play in our own time.
Now Jane Hathaway's wide-ranging and fascinating account shows how
eunuchs from East Africa came into the Ottoman palace and how
sultans and courtiers elevated or destroyed them for reasons of
their own. This study portrays these men as real people, trying to
make a place for themselves in an unfamiliar world, to which they
had not come of their own volition. Hathaway shows how by clever
alliance-building, piety and charity these men attempted to
overcome the opprobrium that in Ottoman society (as elsewhere),
clung to them as people not fully men and yet not women.' Suraiya
Faroqhi, University of Munich
'The first book-length account of the black eunuchs of the Ottoman
sultanate, Hathaway's study deftly weaves the Istanbul and Egyptian
power bases of the Chief Harem Eunuch's office into a riveting
story of rise through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and
then irrelevance in the reform era of the nineteenth. Individual
figures come vibrantly alive, some rivaling the grand vizier in
influence. Particularly novel is a chapter on memorializing of the
Harem eunuchs through painted images, tombs, and gravestones.'
Leslie P. Peirce, New York University
'Jane Hathaway's The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem is as full a
picture of African eunuchs in Mediterranean history as readers are
likely to find, or construct for themselves.' Madeline C. Zilfi,
Journal of the American Oriental Society
'Hathaway's book is extensively and deeply researched, focusing on
key figures to demonstrate how their careers were shaped by wider
political and social transformations.' Nur Sobers-Khan, Journal of
Early Modern History
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