The Sultanate of Women () was a period when wives and mothers of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire exerted extraordinary political influence.
This phenomenon took place from roughly 1533 to 1656, beginning in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent with his marriage to Hürrem Sultan and ending with the regency of Turhan Sultan. These women were either the wives of the Sultan, referred to as haseki sultans, or the mothers of the Sultan, known as valide sultans. Many of them were of slave origin, as was expected during the sultanate since the traditional idea of marriage was considered inappropriate for the sultan, who was not expected to have any personal allegiances beyond his governmental role.
During this time, haseki and valide sultans held political and social power, which allowed them to influence the daily running of the empire and undertake philanthropic works as well as to request the construction of buildings such as the large Haseki Sultan Mosque complex and the prominent Valide Sultan Mosque, also known as the Yeni Mosque (Yeni Cami), at Eminönü.
Historical precedents
This period was novel for the Ottoman Empire but not without precedent since the Seljuk rulers, the predecessors to the Ottomans, often let noble women play an active role in public policy and affairs, despite the resistance of other male officials.
During the fourteenth century, the agency of women in government began to shrink. This was the age of Ottoman expansion where most sultans elected to "lead from the horse", moving around with a court of advisors, viziers, and religious leaders as the army conquered new lands. Ottoman policy from the fifteenth century onwards was to send young princes and their mothers to provincial governorships in Trabzon, Manisa and Amasya in Anatolia. This had the effect of keeping all the women with connections to the higher levels of government away from anywhere where they could hold meaningful power. The practice of fratricide—in which an ascendant sultan would execute all his brothers to secure his throne—made the wives and mothers of princes even more dependent on their men.
Early years
The situation began to change at the beginning of the 16th century with the concurrence of two significant events: the end of Ottoman expansion, and the absorption of the Ottoman Imperial Harem into the palace proper. During the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, it became clear that the expansion of the empire had reached its limit, with borders stretching thousands of miles in nearly every direction. The sultan could no longer afford to go on extended military campaigns, especially after the failure of the Siege of Vienna.
In addition, Süleyman's reign marked the absorption of the imperial harem into the palace and political sphere as he became the first sultan to be officially married to a woman named Roxelana, later known as Hürrem Sultan. Before the Sultanate of Women, the sultan did not marry but kept a harem of concubines who produced his heirs, with each concubine producing just one son then following him to the province they were assigned to lead instead of remaining in Istanbul.
Roxelana, the Hürrem Sultan
The first haseki sultan was Roxelana, wife of Süleyman the Magnificent, who became known as Hürrem Sultan after her conversion to Islam. Roxelana was mistakenly assumed to be of Russian descent, probably because of a mistranslation of her name, and European visitors treated her as Russian. Her ancestry was actually Ruthenian. Her Turkish name Hürrem meant "Laughing One", or "Joyful" in testament to her character.
Scholars are unsure when she arrived the imperial harem, since there is no data in the record of concubines, although documents recording the birth of her first son acknowledge her presence in 1521. Her significance was established with her marriage to Süleyman after the death of his mother, when she became the first actual wife of a sultan in more than two hundred years. Since all concubines were technically slaves, Roxelana also became the first concubine to be freed from slavery. The new title of Haseki Sultan (Empress Consort) created for her continued to be given to wives of later sultans.
Hürrem engaged in philanthropy, particularly in the building of communal spaces where subjects could spend time. The most prominent of these was the Haseki Sultan Complex in Istanbul, built in the 1530s, which included a women's medical centre, a school, a mosque, and a soup kitchen for feeding the poor. She died in 1558 in Istanbul, after the deaths of her eldest and youngest sons. Nearly five hundred years after her death, the claim of Russian heritage was removed from her tomb in January 2019.