Life in the Imperial Harem at Topkapı Palace

The imperial harem of Topkapı Palace was the household of the women and children of the Ottoman dynasty, and an elaborate institution that has few parallels in the early modern world. From the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 to the exile of the dynasty in March 1924, the harem was a parallel court in which the valide sultan, the principal consort, the concubines, the children, and the female relatives of the sultan lived, governed, and conspired. This article describes the rooms of the harem, the role of the eunuchs, the daily routine of the women, the education of the cariye and the princes, the political power of the most powerful women of the dynasty, and the end of the institution. The structural survey is in the Ottoman family article; the broader context in Ottoman society and culture.

Key dates

1453 — Mehmed II takes the old Byzantine palace; the harem is established in its later quarters.
c. 1502/06–1558 — Hürrem Sultan, haseki of Süleyman I.
1522–1578 — Mihrimah Sultan, daughter of Süleyman and Hürrem.
c. 1525–1583 — Nurbanu Sultan, haseki of Selim II and valide sultan of Murad III.
c. 1550–1618 — Safiye Sultan, haseki of Murad III and valide sultan of Mehmed III.
c. 1589–1651 — Kösem Sultan, haseki of Ahmed I and valide sultan of Murad IV and Ibrahim; assassinated 1651.
1627–1683 — Turhan Sultan, haseki of Ibrahim I and valide sultan of Mehmed IV; regent 1651–1656.
1918–1922 — The last years of the dynasty at Topkapı.
3 March 1924 — Caliphate abolished; the Ottoman dynasty goes into exile; the harem ceases to exist.

The quarters

The harem occupied a separate walled quarter in the heart of the Topkapı Palace complex, accessible through the heavily guarded Gate of the Imperial Harem. It was a self-contained world, with its own courtyards, apartments, school, hamam, mosque, hospital, and staff of hundreds of eunuchs, attendants, and servants.

The plan was a long, narrow, multi-courtyard complex of rooms running along the western side of the palace. The principal rooms included the Courtyard of the Eunuchs, the Hall with the Fountain, the Courtyard of the Valide Sultan, the Hall of the Valide Sultan, the Imperial Hall, the Hall of Murat III, the Privy Chamber of Murat III, the Twin Kiosk, the Apartment of the Chief Consort, the Apartment of the Sultana, and the Courtyard of the Favorites. The architecture of the harem is treated in the broader article on Ottoman architecture.

The eunuchs

The harem was guarded by two distinct corps of eunuchs. The white eunuchs — eunuchs of Balkan and Anatolian origin, generally castrated as boys in the empire’s own Christian communities — served the selamlık (the men’s third courtyard) and the public-facing offices of the palace. The black eunuchs — enslaved men recruited from East and Central Africa and castrated before reaching the empire — served the harem itself. They were organized in a strict hierarchy under the Kızlar Ağası (the chief black eunuch), also known as the darüssaade ağası (“chief of the door of felicity”). The Kızlar Ağası was one of the highest officers of the empire: he sat in the divan alongside the grand vizier, conducted diplomacy with foreign envoys in his own audience hall, and transmitted the sultan’s commands into the harem. The Babüssaade (Gate of Felicity) marked the boundary between the second and third courtyards and was the threshold across which the black eunuchs of the harem passed into the public life of the palace.

The cariye and the women of the harem

The cariye were the enslaved women of the harem, recruited chiefly from the Christian populations of the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Anatolia through a regulated system of selection that was abolished only in the early 20th century. The least accomplished were assigned to the kitchen, the laundry, and the wardrobe; the more talented entered a formal course of education in the şehzadegân school of the harem, where they were trained in the Qur’an, Arabic and Persian, Ottoman history, calligraphy, music, embroidery, and the etiquette of the court. The most accomplished of the cariye could rise over years to the rank of kalfa (senior attendant), then gözde (favorite), then ikbal (secondary consort), and at the top, haseki (chief consort) or, in the case of a mother of a reigning sultan, valide sultan.

Leslie Peirce’s argument in The Imperial Harem (1993), that the harem was a household of status and lineage rather than a seraglio of sex, has, in my view, the best of the recent revisionist cases. The harem was, in this sense, a place of social mobility as much as a place of confinement; the most powerful women of the empire began their careers as cariye and ended as valide sultan.

The most powerful women of the dynasty

The political power of the women of the harem reached its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the so-called Sultanate of Women (Kadınlar Saltanatı) made the names of the reigning sultans — Ahmed I, Mustafa I, Osman II, Murad IV, Ibrahim, Mehmed IV — effectively the names of their mothers and grandmothers. The most powerful of the women of the harem were:

Hürrem Sultan (c. 1502/06 – 1558), the haseki of Süleyman I and the first legal wife of an Ottoman sultan since the 14th century. Hürrem is best understood as the political master of the Süleymaniye harem for nearly three decades. She was the mother of Selim II, of Mihrimah, of Bayezid, of Cihangir, and of Şehzade Mehmed (the prince of the Şehzade Mosque); her correspondence with Süleyman is preserved in the Topkapı archives. Hürrem was not a valide sultan — she died in 1558, eight years before Süleyman, and never held the title — and the lists that place her among the valide sultans are a common error.
Mihrimah Sultan (1522 – 1578), daughter of Süleyman and Hürrem, the wealthiest woman of the 16th century. She built the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque in Üsküdar (1543–48) and the Rüstem Pasha Mosque in Istanbul (the latter to her husband’s memory). Her political influence continued after her mother’s death, and her letters to the imperial council in the 1560s and 1570s are preserved in the Ottoman archives.
Nurbanu Sultan (c. 1525 – 1583), haseki of Selim II and valide sultan of Murad III, of probable Venetian or Jewish origin. Nurbanu was the most powerful woman of the late 16th century and is credited in the Venetian Relazioni with effectively directing Ottoman policy in the 1570s.
Safiye Sultan (c. 1550 – 1618), haseki of Murad III and valide sultan of Mehmed III, of probable Albanian origin. The Venetian bailo Agostino Nani, in his reports of the 1590s, described her as the de facto ruler of the empire, and her letters to Queen Elizabeth I of England are preserved in the British National Archives — a remarkable instance of Ottoman harem politics reaching into European diplomacy.
Kösem Sultan (c. 1589 – 1651), haseki of Ahmed I and valide sultan of Murad IV and Ibrahim. Kösem was the most powerful political figure of the mid-17th century, regent for much of two reigns, and the wealthiest woman of her century before her assassination in 1651. Madeline Zilfi has argued, in Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire (2010), that Kösem’s career is the clearest demonstration of how a cariye could reach the apex of the imperial system.
Turhan Sultan (1627 – 1683), haseki of Ibrahim I and valide sultan of Mehmed IV, regent 1651–1656. Turhan is the first of the valide sultans for whom there is a substantial contemporary European portrait, and the English and French ambassadors in Istanbul in the 1650s described her as effectively directing the grand vizier Köprülü Mehmed Pasha.

“The Queen of the Ottomans, who is called the Sultana Valide, has the disposal of all offices and commands. The Great Turk himself, when he is in his palace, is as a slave in the harem of his mother.” — Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Turkish Letters (1589), on the power of the valide sultan

A day in the harem

The day in the harem began before dawn, with the call to the sabah prayer. The women washed, dressed, and made their way to the harem’s mosque for the prayer. After the prayer, they returned to their apartments for a light breakfast of bread, cheese, honey, and Ottoman coffee. The valide sultan received the principal officers of the harem and heard the reports of the household.

The mid-morning was devoted to the work of the household: the kitchen prepared the midday meal, the school staff taught the children, the senior women received visitors and managed the accounts. The midday meal — the taam — was the principal meal of the day, served on a low, round table and described in the article on Ottoman cuisine.

The afternoon was a period of rest, and the women of the harem visited the hammam for a bath, received visitors, or went to the gardens. The sultan, when in residence, often visited the harem in the late afternoon, and the hünkâr sofası was a period of formal reception. The evening meal was a lighter meal, often taken in the apartments of the senior women, and the harem settled into the night after the yatsı prayer.

The education of the princes and princesses

The children of the dynasty were educated in the harem until the age of circumcision, when the boys were sent to the Enderun, the palace school, and the girls were married or remained in the harem. The boys were taught the Qur’an, Arabic and Persian, Ottoman history, calligraphy, music, horsemanship, and the etiquette of the court. The girls were taught the Qur’an, history, calligraphy, music, embroidery, and household management.

The prince was the most important child in the harem. He was generally kept in the harem until the age of circumcision, between nine and fourteen, and he was then sent to a provincial governorship, the sancak, to learn the business of government. The provinces to which the princes were sent — Manisa, Amasya, Trabzon, Konya, Kefe, Bursa — were the training grounds of the dynasty. The artistic and intellectual culture of the palace is treated in the article on Ottoman art and music.

The end of the harem

The dynastic harem at Topkapı continued to function through the First World War and was finally dissolved only with the exile of the Ottoman dynasty in March 1924, when the caliphate itself was abolished. The Harem of Topkapı is now a museum, open to the public. The structural context of the harem and the Ottoman family is treated in a separate article in this silo.

Frequently asked questions

What was a harem? Literally, “forbidden” or “sacred” (from the Arabic harām). In Ottoman usage, the harem was the women’s quarter of a household, and the imperial harem of Topkapı was the women’s quarter of the dynastic household. It was not, in Ottoman usage, a place of sexual slavery; it was a place of family, of status, of domestic production, and — for the most powerful of its inhabitants — of political power.

Who was the most powerful woman in the Ottoman harem? The valide sultan — the mother of the reigning sultan. The office was at its peak in the 17th century, when a succession of powerful valide sultans — Kösem Sultan above all, then Turhan, then Hatice Muazzez — effectively governed the empire. The valide sultan had her own revenue, her own seal, and her own client network; her chief officer, the Kızlar Ağası (the chief black eunuch), sat in the imperial council alongside the grand vizier.

When was the harem dissolved? The dynastic harem at Topkapı continued to function through the First World War and was finally dissolved in March 1924, when the Ottoman dynasty went into exile and the caliphate was abolished. The 1909 deposition of Abdülhamid II, sometimes cited in older works, did not end the harem; the institution continued at Topkapı for another fifteen years.