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Loading... Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbulby John Freely
   None No current Talk conversations about this book. 1   Cynara | Aug 15, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
This volume takes us behind the doors of Topkapi Sarayi and the other palaces of the Ottoman sultans who for more than six centuries ruled one of the world's most powerful empires. The heart of the palace was the Harem, the women's quarters, ruled by the Valide, or Queen Mother. Here the Sultan took his ease surrounded by his wives and concubines with their guardian black eunuchs, amused by his favourite pages, dwarfs and mutes, his younger brothers either slaughtered upon his accession or confined to the prison of the Cage. Earlier sultans like Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleyman the Magnificent lied in Topkapi Sarayi only between their campaigns of conquest, but their weak and dissolute successors such as Selim the Sot and Ibrahim the Mad spent their reigns entirely in the Harem, where some of them died of over-indulgence or were brutally murdered. such were the private lives of the Ottoman sultans in the pleasure dome known as the House of Felicity. No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English (7)
7
The subject matter is very interesting, but first Freely spends the first couple of chapters precisely locating every last room and courtyard in the Osmanli's palace. After that, a cavalcade of generations, well-meaning, pious, ambitious, and degenerate follow. I couldn't keep Mahmud II straight from Achmet IV half the time, let alone their favourites, mothers, brothers, sons, and officials. It's a pity, because Freely's prose style is competant, and a more general treatment of the family organised by theme instead of by time period would actually have been easier to follow.
As it is, many sultans are reduced to an accession to the throne, an event or two, and an ignominious abdication or murder. A handful of relatives and connections are named, and we're on to the next.
Some do stand out; the chapter on Suliman the Magnificient is memorable, if only for his eccentric attachment to Roxelana.
I'm glad I read it for some details of daily life the Ottoman court and its workings, but on the whole, I feel like I haven't retained much of the information. (