Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Kenny Lamer and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And people have
Speaker 1: long been fascinated by the sultans of the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: by this enormous power they wielded across continents and across
Speaker 1: the centuries, by their extravagant wealth and elaborate building projects,
Speaker 1: and by their fratricide. They're pretty well known for that
Speaker 1: this is one of those one of which one of
Speaker 1: those things does not fit. And of course by their
Speaker 1: dramatic ascendency and their equally dramatic decline. But come on,
Speaker 1: Sultans of the Ottoman Empire are probably best known for
Speaker 1: their harems. Exactly. We put it in the title. We
Speaker 1: thought that you might listen to it because it had harem,
Speaker 1: and the title were so true. We know what you like. Um. So,
Speaker 1: people have this very romantic idea about what a harem is.
Speaker 1: It's mazes of concubines and slaves, and they're all guarded
Speaker 1: by eunuchs, so many women, so many kids. It seems
Speaker 1: just like the most mysterious, most Eastern Ottoman thing you
Speaker 1: can imagine finnishized part. Yes, but if you romanticize Harem
Speaker 1: life too much, it's easy to forget that Harems were
Speaker 1: simply living quarters, schools, hospitals. They were filled not just
Speaker 1: with the sultan's concubines, but with his female relatives, his children,
Speaker 1: and they're all presided over by his own mother. It's
Speaker 1: a little city, and it's the sultan's entire domestic sphere.
Speaker 1: It's not just batting with people and sexy gus, it's
Speaker 1: not just sexy room dime. It's the Sultan's house. That's
Speaker 1: my new favorite phrase for There could be hundreds or
Speaker 1: thousands of people in the harem, and some of them, unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: had a lot of influence in affairs of state. The
Speaker 1: chief black or white eunuch fortunates who slept with the sultan,
Speaker 1: the valid Sultan, his mother, who was often just as
Speaker 1: important as the Grand Vizier and considerably more trustworthy. But
Speaker 1: in the mid sixteenth century, the influence of the harem grew.
Speaker 1: A series of Harem women, concubine sisters, aunts and mothers
Speaker 1: exerted a tremendous amount of influence on a series of sultan's,
Speaker 1: leading some historians to call this one fifty year stretch
Speaker 1: the reign of women. Yeah, and this is a very
Speaker 1: popular listener suggestion, along with harems and along with a
Speaker 1: lot of these specific women who reigned quote during this period.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to talk about the woman who
Speaker 1: said to have started this whole era. She was a
Speaker 1: captured slave best known as rock Selana. Rock Salana is
Speaker 1: the ultimate rags to riches story and her Polish countrymen
Speaker 1: loved her for it. The Ottomans hated her for it.
Speaker 1: That here are her beginnings, complete with their very obscure origin.
Speaker 1: So the girl was possibly named Alexandra or Anasta Zielisovska
Speaker 1: who was born around fifteen oh four near Le Wolf
Speaker 1: in the western Ukraine, which is pulling at the time.
Speaker 1: She was possibly the daughter of an Orthodox priest and
Speaker 1: an unknown woman. And because the Tartars were pretty much
Speaker 1: constantly rating Poland at this time, this little girl with
Speaker 1: her reddish blonde hair was snatched up and sold into slavery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and somehow she made it all the way to Constantinople,
Speaker 1: where she ended up in the harem of the Sultan
Speaker 1: or possibly the soon to be Sultan Suleiman. She was
Speaker 1: about fifteen years old, and we should talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Suleiman. He he's magnificent. He is oh that's
Speaker 1: his his nickname, Suleiman the Magnificent. He came to power
Speaker 1: in fifteen twenty and he's known for greatly expanding the
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire. He nearly captured Vienna, So that gives you
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea of how far this guy's power stretched.
Speaker 1: And he's an interesting guy too. He's intelligent, he's kind,
Speaker 1: he seems very gentle, yet he also has a brutal
Speaker 1: reputation as well. He loved poetry. His pen name was
Speaker 1: Moohie b Uh. He put through a lot of legal reforms.
Speaker 1: He tried to simplify the law. He tried to end
Speaker 1: discrimination against Christian subjects and lightened up sentences on criminals.
Speaker 1: But he also had plenty of prisoners executed and killed,
Speaker 1: lots of family members, lots even for assultan standards which
Speaker 1: are very be the same as your Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: started the tradition of saying nothing when foreign ambassadors presented themselves, which,
Speaker 1: oh boy, I don't think I could be a foreign ambassador.
Speaker 1: That would be hard to deal with it. I can
Speaker 1: see Jack Donneghye the modern Sultan. So um, here's what
Speaker 1: the Venetian envoy says of Suliman. He's quote by nature, melancholy,
Speaker 1: much addicted to women, liberal, proud, hasty, and yet sometimes
Speaker 1: very gentle. So going into this podcast with that description
Speaker 1: of the man, if you're going to give him a present,
Speaker 1: what might you bring him? Perhaps are sweet redheaded rock Salona,
Speaker 1: She might make a lovely gift. And she did, indeed,
Speaker 1: And even though she would have entered the harem and
Speaker 1: its lowest ranks, there was a really strict hierarchy than
Speaker 1: the harem, if you want to talk a little more
Speaker 1: about that. As we mentioned earlier, the sultan's mother would
Speaker 1: be the reigning woman of the savoy, and then she'd
Speaker 1: be followed by the mother of his eldest son, and
Speaker 1: she would be followed by his other sexual partners, followed
Speaker 1: by women who he may later choose a and then
Speaker 1: just other ladies too. So she would have come into
Speaker 1: this whole scheme the very bottom, but she may have
Speaker 1: become a favorite of the Sultan's mother for her intelligence
Speaker 1: and her humor. So she managed to rise in the
Speaker 1: ranks a little bit more quickly than some and she
Speaker 1: would have lived in a dorm of sorts and learned Persian, Arabic, Turkish, poetry, calligraphy, selling, dancing, singing, music, storytelling.
Speaker 1: It's not again just sitting around and waiting to enjoy
Speaker 1: the Sultan's favor. They were doing things with their free time,
Speaker 1: and they were chosen a lot of times for their
Speaker 1: intelligence and for their charm, your ability to make conversation
Speaker 1: and you know, be amusing exactly. And actually, according to
Speaker 1: Venetian reports, Roxalona isn't even particularly beautiful. She's elegant, but
Speaker 1: she's smart, and she's fun and she's nice to talk to.
Speaker 1: She must also have caught the Sultan's eye pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: because by one she had her first son by him, Mahmed,
Speaker 1: And she also had a new name of her own,
Speaker 1: her Um or joyful one, which she took upon converting
Speaker 1: to Islam. And it sounds like a happy family. She
Speaker 1: has this name meaning joyful one, she has her son
Speaker 1: by the sultan um maybe sort of distancing herself from
Speaker 1: that obviously traumatic capture and I'm in slavery. It's not
Speaker 1: really the most happy family. So we're going to digress
Speaker 1: for a minute and talk about Ottoman reticide, which we
Speaker 1: mentioned at the beginning. It's an unfortunate consequence of Harem life,
Speaker 1: and it's the reverse problem of a lot of the
Speaker 1: European dynasties where they don't have an air there too.
Speaker 1: Inbred Um. Here we have far too many, too many sons,
Speaker 1: and so when a lot of sultan's came to power,
Speaker 1: the first thing they did was have all of their
Speaker 1: half brothers and nephews strangled. You didn't want to spill
Speaker 1: the royal blood, so you'd have them strangled by like
Speaker 1: a silk cord or something un elegant. Elegant, but you're
Speaker 1: still being strangled, which is probably not a very elegant death. Uh.
Speaker 1: They did this because they didn't want competing claims to
Speaker 1: the throne. We know what happens when you have a
Speaker 1: lot of men who are all trying to claim their steak,
Speaker 1: you end up with war. This was a way to
Speaker 1: try to avoid that. Hair and women weren't even allowed
Speaker 1: to have two sons by the sultan, so the idea
Speaker 1: was one concubine mother, one son, and then you better
Speaker 1: hope you had some girls. So consequently, Harrah mothers were
Speaker 1: very invested in their sons in case in point, Mahmed
Speaker 1: is not Soliman's oldest son, a kid named Mustafa is
Speaker 1: and Sarah and I are holding back every urge to
Speaker 1: go all lion king and saying stuff for the rest
Speaker 1: of this podcast. That will be the only time. That's
Speaker 1: the only time. And I got to do it, Sorry,
Speaker 1: Sarah and his mother, the former favorite Ghoula Bahar, is
Speaker 1: not pleased with this upstart Rock Salana, so she attacks
Speaker 1: Rock Salonna. She scratches her face and you know, attempts
Speaker 1: to scar and disfigure her, and she calls her sold meat.
Speaker 1: And so in Suliman summons Rock Salona. She refuses him,
Speaker 1: which is a very bold thing to do. Um. She
Speaker 1: could have been cast aside or punished for it. But
Speaker 1: she says that she's too disfigured to appear before him.
Speaker 1: And she she pulls off that quote again, she's sold
Speaker 1: sold me. She can't come. Um. He makes her come anyway,
Speaker 1: and then he asks Gulabahar if it's true that she
Speaker 1: attacked rock Selanna, and she says, yes, it is true,
Speaker 1: and she deserved it. It backfires big time on Gulabahar
Speaker 1: because it's not long before Mustafa is sent off to
Speaker 1: act as a governor in a far away province, and
Speaker 1: following the tradition of accompanying your son, Ghulabahar is packing
Speaker 1: her bags to follow him. So she's not in the
Speaker 1: capital anymore, she's not with the Sultan. She's away from
Speaker 1: where everything is going down, and rock Salana becomes the
Speaker 1: apple of the Sultan's i. They have a daughter together, Marima,
Speaker 1: who he adores, and three more sons, Salim, Beyazite and
Speaker 1: Jay Hunger who has a hunchback. So this big family
Speaker 1: is a big deal. He's letting her break that one mother,
Speaker 1: one son rule, which people don't like. That's a little
Speaker 1: scary as far as the power balance goes, definitely, people
Speaker 1: really don't like it. She's getting way too much power,
Speaker 1: it seems, and has way too big of a hold
Speaker 1: over the Sultan. But then things get even more outrageous
Speaker 1: because Suleiman becomes nearly monogamas, which is oranges say it's
Speaker 1: he starts marrying off his slaves, marrying off his concubines,
Speaker 1: which is something you could I didn't always realize that
Speaker 1: that was the case. That the hare in life. If
Speaker 1: you didn't have a son by the sultan, you could
Speaker 1: make a pretty good marriage deal. After around fifteen thirty,
Speaker 1: Suleman marries Rock Salona, and Sir George Young of England
Speaker 1: reported that there was a grand celebration, houses strong with garlands,
Speaker 1: There were tournaments, there were feasts, giraffes on parade. No
Speaker 1: Ottoman sultan had been married for more than two centuries.
Speaker 1: The rest preferred to keep slaves and concubines. So you
Speaker 1: can imagine how big of an affair this was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to imagine too. It was probably a begrudging
Speaker 1: celebration on a f fast part, but it's clear how
Speaker 1: much sle him On is in love with his wife.
Speaker 1: In one poem, he describes Roxelanna as my sheer, delight,
Speaker 1: my revelry, my feast, my torch, my sunshine, my son
Speaker 1: in heaven, my orange, my pomegranate, the flaming candle that
Speaker 1: lights up my pavilion. When's the last time you got
Speaker 1: compared to a citrus fruit or a pomegranate? And I
Speaker 1: mean that's probably the best part. But Roxelana wasn't just
Speaker 1: a lovely pomegranate so much more. She became his most
Speaker 1: trusted adviser, and after his mother died in four the
Speaker 1: top woman in the Empire, and she works really hard
Speaker 1: to master her Turkish so that she can communicate with
Speaker 1: the Sultan while he's away on his campaign. Now, she
Speaker 1: she works to make herself extremely valuable and stay in
Speaker 1: the loop. They write these love letters to each other
Speaker 1: while he's away, and they're filled with lots of tender sentiments,
Speaker 1: but also a lot of news about what's going on.
Speaker 1: She's clearly his eyes in the capital. She keeps spies
Speaker 1: too in form her about what's going on, about any
Speaker 1: plots against the Sultan, and to just keep her in
Speaker 1: the loop about foreign affairs as well. Yeah, so she
Speaker 1: can be the one who delivers the news there's this
Speaker 1: coup against you. And she carefully guards who her husband
Speaker 1: gets close to, because of course those are possible rivals.
Speaker 1: She exposes the forgery of the Sultan's best friend and
Speaker 1: Grand Vizier Ibraheim, and the Sultan has him executed, and
Speaker 1: she also acts as a chief diplomatical liaison to Europe.
Speaker 1: She's believed to be at least partly responsible for the
Speaker 1: Empire's relations with Poland, which for a time turned friendly.
Speaker 1: There were truces in fifteen twenty five and fifteen twenty
Speaker 1: eight and eternal peace treaties in fifteen thirty three, and
Speaker 1: then two of them if they're so eternal, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: probably don't. She corresponded with the Polish kings, and it's
Speaker 1: possible that she had some interest in slowing the slave
Speaker 1: trade in her country, although we can't say. We can't
Speaker 1: say that for sure. Yeah, according to Muslim World, between
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: two point five million Ukrainians were kidnapped and sold into
Speaker 1: slavery um and the Tartars apparently treated their captives very poorly,
Speaker 1: which I feel like that's something we should emphasize to
Speaker 1: this slave trade in the Ottoman Empire is huge, so
Speaker 1: it's not a it's not a nice side of things. Well,
Speaker 1: and most of them are not so little girls snatched
Speaker 1: up and sold into the Harem stories I mean sound
Speaker 1: that way just for the story's sake, but that's not
Speaker 1: quite how it worked. So yeah, she clearly would have
Speaker 1: had an interest in at least stopping that in her
Speaker 1: own homeland, and she even relocates when fire destroys the
Speaker 1: Harem and the old palace, Roxalana moves into the Sultan's
Speaker 1: house to copy right behind the throne room. And when
Speaker 1: he wants to build her a new palace, she returned
Speaker 1: to the old way. Yeah, you know, she deflects him.
Speaker 1: Let's I'll just stay here. Why don't we build a
Speaker 1: mosque instead, So she is literally at the center of power.
Speaker 1: Now she's played her cards well. Unsurprisingly, a lot of
Speaker 1: Ottomans are suspicious and jealous of Roxalana in this enormous
Speaker 1: control she exerts over the Sultan, and especially so when
Speaker 1: her sons began to come of age and they're sent
Speaker 1: off to governed provinces as they traditionally do, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't go with one of them. So normally, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier with Mustafa, yeah, mothers would accompany their sons
Speaker 1: and they would only return to the capital if their
Speaker 1: son became sultan, and they were returning in the capacity
Speaker 1: of mother of the sultan. And this was just sort
Speaker 1: of an old and convenient way to separate power between women.
Speaker 1: So you have the sultan's sexual favorite back in the capital,
Speaker 1: and then you had the mother of his heir and
Speaker 1: she's off somewhere else. But as the Sultan's wife, Roxalana
Speaker 1: stays living with Suleman and their son Jehungir and took copy.
Speaker 1: And she wants to stay close to the Sultan for
Speaker 1: a reason, very important reason. Salona knew that whatever her
Speaker 1: place was with Suliman, if his eldest son was allowed
Speaker 1: to succeed, her sons would be killed. And Mustafa wasn't
Speaker 1: only just the eldest son. He was he was a
Speaker 1: proper sultan. He was handsome, he was popular with the army,
Speaker 1: he was popular with the people. You know, it seemed
Speaker 1: like something that would stick. He seems like a sure
Speaker 1: bet he did. It seemed like he would definitely be sultan,
Speaker 1: making her son's tough luck for them. So she sticks
Speaker 1: by Suleiman in the capital, and she makes sure that
Speaker 1: he hears about every single plot in every possible coup.
Speaker 1: And she also has an ally in the Grand Vizier,
Speaker 1: who happens to conveniently be her daughter's husband, which was
Speaker 1: also a breach of tradition. The Sultan wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: have a grand vizier who was related to him. It's
Speaker 1: obviously a conflict of interest. Um So, eventually, with these
Speaker 1: two sort of planning ideas, and of course their daughter
Speaker 1: and other allies, eventually the Sultan starts to worry about
Speaker 1: his son, Mustafa's intentions. Hint, hint, what is this guy
Speaker 1: up to out in the provinces, And eventually he has
Speaker 1: his own son assassinated, so Mustafa is out of the way.
Speaker 1: People were very, very unhappy about this assassination. They accused
Speaker 1: rock Salanna of being a witch and saying she charmed
Speaker 1: the Sultan with potions. But Salim is the air now,
Speaker 1: so she's pretty happy. Rock Salonna died in fifteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: and Suleiman buried her in his new mosque and ordered
Speaker 1: another built in her name, plus a school and a hospital,
Speaker 1: and his final years were appropriately dramatic. Sons, Slim and
Speaker 1: Beyazite fought over succession. The Sultan had Beazite killed for
Speaker 1: his intrigues with the Shaw of Persia. Should have learned
Speaker 1: from his elder half brother. He should have, but he didn't.
Speaker 1: His daughter Mirima replaced her mother as Suliman's most trusted adviser,
Speaker 1: a position she kept when her brother Selim became sultan.
Speaker 1: He's sometimes known as Salim the Sought because of his
Speaker 1: fondness for drinks. Well, and that's another important note to make.
Speaker 1: Sultan's were so concerned about what their sons had going on,
Speaker 1: you know, if they were seriously planning a coup or
Speaker 1: some sort of plot um that they would try to
Speaker 1: give them as much alcohol as possible, as many drugs
Speaker 1: as possible, as many women women as possible, and just
Speaker 1: sort of turn them into guys who aren't particularly threatening.
Speaker 1: Of course, that doesn't always bread the best ruler, and
Speaker 1: so we end up with this period in history where
Speaker 1: the women of the Harem end up exerting more control
Speaker 1: than they normally would have. Marima was instrumental in the
Speaker 1: decision to seize Malta, and she was influential through many rains.
Speaker 1: Her nephew Murad the Third had her buried with Suleiman,
Speaker 1: and she was followed by other powerful hair On women
Speaker 1: like saw Norbanus, Sophia kosim Um. But before we leave
Speaker 1: rock Salona completely behind, we'd like to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about her reputations the centuries. Yeah, and I found
Speaker 1: it kind of strange to research and to talk about
Speaker 1: someone who was so clearly, so influential in her immediate
Speaker 1: history and after all over Europe and Asia. Um. But
Speaker 1: she left behind so little information because after all, she
Speaker 1: lived in a Harem. The whole point of a harem
Speaker 1: is to keep it private and separate from public life,
Speaker 1: and reports of harem life are famously skewed. Ambassadors didn't
Speaker 1: always know what they were reporting and sort of would
Speaker 1: spin things however they solt fit. So what we do
Speaker 1: have is her correspondence with Suleiman's salary records, Suleiman's diaries
Speaker 1: and love letters, and rock Salona's letters to Sigismond the second,
Speaker 1: and they paint a picture of a couple very much
Speaker 1: invested in each other and a capable ruthless consort to
Speaker 1: match a capable ruthless ruler, as Sarah put it to
Speaker 1: me earlier. Yeah, but a lot of these documents weren't
Speaker 1: known until the nineteen or twentieth Counry, and by that
Speaker 1: point rox Salona had already gotten herself quite a reputation
Speaker 1: as this manipulator, maybe a witch, you never know. UM.
Speaker 1: English historian Richard Knolly's called her the greatest empress of
Speaker 1: the East, which sounds like a compliment, but he also
Speaker 1: portrayed her as this really wicked woman who controlled the
Speaker 1: good Sultan entirely. UM. Eastern European histories go a little
Speaker 1: more towards the Cinderella route, because after all, this is there, um,
Speaker 1: this is their countrywoman. She's a slave who rises to
Speaker 1: great power. But I mean, I think that you can
Speaker 1: have a little bit of both. I mean, it seems
Speaker 1: like she did exert quite amount of good, uh, but
Speaker 1: you'd have to be ruthless. She was working within the
Speaker 1: Harem structure, which is they based around ruthlessness essentially, and
Speaker 1: for her survival, for her family's survival. She was of
Speaker 1: course a slave to begin with, and she died the
Speaker 1: wife of a sultan, the first sultan's wife in two
Speaker 1: hundred years. So we say, well played, Roxelana. And if
Speaker 1: you have a different opinion, feel free to email us
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