Drama in the Harem: The Magnificent Century

So I'm going to stop apoogizing for never writing muhaha. Sorry everyone.

So my dear friend Martin sent me an email the other day with this youtube video attached:




It's the first episode of the Turkish series Muhteşem Yüzyıl (in English, The Magnificent Century) with ENGLISH SUBTITLES! 


((This link will send you back to youtube where you can watch it. It's the only link of the show for a whole episode with English))

Basically the show is about the rule of Süleyman I (also known as Süleyman the Magnificent) over the Ottoman Empire and the extremely catty situation in his harem. For those who don't know much about Ottoman history the brief story is that Sultans of the Ottoman Empire had a harem where the women of his house lived. The term harem actually just refers the women's section of the house so the mother of the Sultan (known as Valide Sultan, or Queen Mother) or any of his sisters were also part of the harem, they were just at the top of the harem pyramid. The pyramid then trickles down to the top four women the Sultan would want to sleep with on a regular basis and have children with. At the bottom were slave girls who were often sent to the Sultan from non-Muslim lands since it's illegal in Islam to enslave other Muslims. These slave girls would take care of the favorites, dance and play music for entertainment, or just clean up the harem area. The Sultan could sleep with anyone he wanted and the status of these women went up based on the Sultan's favor with the women and if they bared him sons. I'm sure you can see now how this makes a great TV drama. 

The Magnificent Century follows the story of Süleyman I and the ups and downs of his harem. Basically the story of jealous women all making suspicious looks across the room at each other every time the Sultan even gets near them. To be fair, if the Sultan liked any one of them enough, they'd become the most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire because their sons become the Sultan. However, it's not always so easy. Once a woman becomes the favorite and has kids with the Sultan, she then has to maintain the interest of the Sultan and make sure none of the new women gain a high position.

I mean imagine that one time someone led you on and took you on great dates and then didn't call you back. Wasn't that sad? Yeah, imagine that, but then you loose all your money and your children are murdered because they're threats to the hereditary line of the Ottoman Empire.

 The cool part is that Süleyman's harem does have a good historically true story. (Warning Spoilers, but also it's history so everyone in Turkey already knows how this one ends) Süleyman becomes the Sultan at age 26 and already has a favorite harem woman (who already has a child) in the city he's ruling. Süleyman becomes the Sultan and his favorite and her son, and heir to the Ottoman Empire, move to Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. Somewhere along the way Hürrem, a slave captured and sold to the palace from the outlying Ottoman territories (probably Poland or Ukraine), becomes Süleyman's new favorite and ends up being freed from slavery and becomes the first woman to officially marry the Sultan. Seriously. This really happened. In real life. In the 1500's.

The TV show is a total dramatization of the events of Süleyman and Hürrem and the millions of mini dramas that were all probably completely embellished and imagined up just for this show. My Turkish friend rolled her eyes when I told her I watched and loved it. She made the very good point that the benevolent, forgiving, handsome, and generally perfect  representation of Süleyman is just another part of Turkish nationalism pretending the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire were perfect rulers. ((Oh the US ever does that... a cough, a cough, that movie LINCOLN)) Actually there's a lot of current discussion in politics about the role of Turkey and its attempt to reestablish its influence in the region and many comparisons to the Ottoman Empire are being made. This sort of rhetoric is said by international communities and by some Turkish leaders, although perhaps not quite so explicit. Even The Magnificent Century and it's glorification of the Ottoman times is part of the current trend within Turkey to discuss the country as strong and powerful.

Besides the inaccuracies and inflated attempts at revisionist history, the costumes and the sets are worth a watch. I went to Topkapı Palace last year and it was AMAZING. I actually went through the harem and saw the bedroom of the Sultan. It was sooo cool. What's even cooler is that The Magnificent Century's sets are so similar to the actual palace that I can actually recognize where they are in some scenes because I've been there too!

Here's the Sultan's bedroom with two beds and that thing in the middle is the fireplace. 

This is where the Queen Mother, the mother of the Sultan lived. Also with some lovely dressed up mannequins.

 

Beautiful room, I think for one non-first born sons of the Sultan.

Here's me standing in a hallway in the harem.

Here is where all the women hung out staring at each other and make lots of judgments.

What I find really AWESOME is the blood line of the Sultans. During the start of the Ottoman Empire most of the Sultans married royalty from the surrounding kingdoms or empires, but as the Ottoman Empire aged, the Sultans started exclusively having children and continuing the Sultan line with women from the harem. So women would be brought into the harem as slaves from non-Muslim areas in the Ottoman Empire (who were then taught Islam) or as gifts from willing (or not so willing, mostly just demanded from their parents to sacrifice themselves) poor Muslim women in the Muslim parts of the Ottoman Empire. The women who ended up in the concubine section of the harem were taught religion, story telling, and "love." Eventually one of them would become the mother of the next Sultan. So we can conclude here that most of the Sultans from the Ottoman Empire were actually the products of poor or slave women. What?!?? Isn't that AWESOME?? The most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire was the child of a slave or poor person!The Western world was so obsessed with blood lines that both genders had to be wealthy, but the Ottoman rationality was that slave/concubine women weren't really people (because they're slaves) so therefore their children don't count as legitimate unless the Sultan wants them to be legitimate. I mean talk about rags to riches stories!

So if anyone wants to watch The Magnificent Century the first episode is online (and on this page) so enjoy! And if not, at least watch for five minutes from 0:19:30 to see some cool outfits and Topkapı Palace scenery. 

Sources
So I've had some confusion about if the Sultan really only had heirs with the women from the harem and I've looked in a lot of different places online. Most websites just talk about the women once they're in the harem, but not where they came from. This website, was one of the only websites that talked about this issue so if you're interested check it out and the stuff about lineage is on page 4. Here's another website that was nice, but didn't talk about the heir issues.