The Chief Harem Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire: Servant of the Sultan, Servant of the Prophet (original) (raw)

Dialogue Beyond Margins ~ Patronage of Chief Eunuchs in the late 16 th Century Ottoman Court

The present study mainly focuses on the emergence of the chief eunuchs (hadım aghalar) as prevailing actors in the imperial household and as confidants of women of the imperial family, by exploring the manner in which they assumed imperial grandeur at the end of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. Like the viziers and other military milieu in the court, the chief eunuchs’ patronage activity in art and architecture was a conscious and strategically planned effort in legitimizing their status. The charitable architectural endowments of the chief eunuchs conveyed their ascent in the political ladder as they became increasingly visible as patrons in the late-sixteenth century. While observing that this period was the first time that the eunuch aghas had obtained such great political substance due to their close personal relationship with the rulers, I furthermore speculate whether the structures that they built expressed a unique architectural idiom that resonated with the identity of their patrons. In the late sixteenth century the patronage of the chief eunuchs expanded beyond the conventional realm, as they systematically became engaged in literary quests. Hence, through a symbolic network of patronage of the arts, the eunuchs found a channel through which they could leave a legacy through the art of the letter. The benefaction of such secular urban monuments as fountains and sebils was paralleled by a deep interest in literary arts for this new group of patrons. If one were to compare the patronage activity of Gazanfer Agha to that of Mehmed Agha in both arts and architecture, one would quickly notice that Gazanfer Agha’s deeds were not solely motivated by political aspirations. He was indeed an intellectual of his time, supporting poets and scholars with vigorous curiosity. In this period, the sebil was not a commonly commissioned architectural monument. However, it was the beginnings of a new interpretation, a more temporal and intimate type of pious endowment. The essence of the eunuch being a patron of a structure that gave life through water might in fact be an allusion to his godlike existence. Thus, symbolically, the fountain and the sebil become objects through which the eunuch was able to achieve procreation. The eunuch’s lastingness in the mundane world is depicted through his endowment of the sebil, which was neither an entirely religious nor secular structure. The fountain/sebil endowments atoned for the eunuch’s ineffectuality in giving life.

Eunuchs and the State in the Mamlūk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire: A Comparison

In Ottoman War and Peace: Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan, eds. Frank Castiglione, Ethan L. Menchinger, and Veysel Şimşek (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 315-26. [The article has been published, but Brill's policies prohibit posting the offprints online. Therefore, I have indicated page numbers in brackets in the manuscript.]