Women in the Premodern Ottoman Empire

8/22/2019 Women in the Premodern Ottoman Empire

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Harem in Topkapi Serail. A contemporary reproduction ofthe harem of the sultans, with wax figures in traditionalcostumes, Istanbul, Turkey, 1994. akg-images

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Ottomans The category of Ottoman women masks a complex and varied history. It spans the longhistory of the Ottoman Empire, from the fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries, and includes a

diverse geographical and cultural spectrum, including women of Anatolia, Greece, the Balkan Peninsula,North Africa, and West Asia proper, as well as Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women. The study ofOttoman women is relatively new; before the late 1970s little had been written. During the last twenty-five years, however, perhaps no topic in Middle Eastern studies has attracted more scholarly attention.Much of this work has challenged the traditional view of Ottoman and Muslim women, based onnormative theological and political literature, as marginalized and powerless. Drawing on an array ofdiverse sourcesincluding court records, political documents, and financial recordsscholars haveshown that Ottoman women had available to them what Madeline Zilfi has termed a wide field of action despite an inherited gender system that prescribed women's subordination to men.

Women in theWomen in the Premodern Ottoman Empire.Premodern Ottoman Empire.The Ottoman Empire emerged in the fourteenth century amid the numerous Turkic tribes vying for

hegemony in the Near East. As the Ottomans rose to power, the role and position of women withinsociety evolved as well. In tribal times, women played a relatively public role in the affairs of the tribe.

Following the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 , the Ottoman sultans came to see themselves as thedefenders of the faith, and they gradually embraced the practices of classical Islam. Among these werethe veiling and cloistering of women, though these were a product of social convention rather than

Islamic law.

One of the most enduring images of Ottoman women's segregation is the harem. The exotic anderoticized image of the harem is a Western obsession that overlooks the much more complexfunctioning of this important institution. Leslie Peirce, in The Imperial Harem ( 1993 ), one of the mostimportant works on gender in the premodern period, has challenged the traditional image of Ottomanwoman as cloistered and therefore powerless. She shows that as the sultans retreated into their haremsin the late sixteenth century, their mothers (the valide sultans) and other royal women becameincreasingly powerful and influential. Contemporary commentators (and subsequent historians) decriedthis influence as a destabilizing innovation and called this period the sultanate of the Women. Thereality, Peirce shows, is a great deal more complex. Women of the harem used their wealth to patronizeimportant public building projects and charitable works. Because of their proximity to and influence on
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the sultans, they also played an active role in important political matters. For example, Nurbanu, favoriteof Selim II, was key in bringing about the peace that concluded the War of the Holy League in 1573 .Instead of rendering them powerless, their cloistered status in the harem enabled royal women toexercise great influence on the political life of the early-modern Ottoman state.

During this period, segregation of women was most common among the imperial elite and upper-classfamilies. Women of the lower classes were generally freer to circulate, in part because of theirinvolvement in economic activities. Circumstances varied significantly, however, according to time andplace. During times of festivity, for example, restrictions on women appearing in public were often muchrelaxed. Conversely, concerns about public morality occasionally produced a backlash that led toincreased segregation.

If royal women wielded influence from behind the walls of the harem, their power found publicexpression through their patronage of important architectural projects. In the mid-sixteenth century,Hrrem Sultan (known in Europe as Roxelana), the powerful wife of Sleyman the Magnificent, initiatedthe construction of the Haseki Hrrem Klliye in Istanbul, a complex that included a mosque, severalschools, a soup kitchen, a women's hospital, and a bathhouse. The Mihrimah mosque in Edirne(Adrianople), Thrace, begun in 1555 under the patronage of Hrrem Sultan's daughter, was designedand executed by the greatest Ottoman architect of the early-modern era, Sinan. The Yeni ValideMosque in Istanbul, begun in 1598 by Safiye Sultan, is another dazzling example of royal women'sarchitectural patronage.

Ottoman women also created numerous awqaf(plural of waqf; pious, charitable institutions), which

might include schools, hospitals, caravansaries, baths, fountains, soup kitchens, hostels, and mosques.Royal women were especially active in establishing charitable foundations throughout the empire,financed by their own ample personal resources. Significant numbers of less exalted women institutedsmallerawqafas well. Indeed, between 20 and 30 percent of all charitable foundations during theeighteenth century were established by Ottoman women.

As their charitable activities suggest, women also played a significant role in the Ottoman economy.Women were important landholders; some even held timars (military fiefs). They could inherit andapportion property, and they often played an active role in managing their own wealth. Womenborrowed and lent money, served as tax farmers (private tax collectors), and entered into a variety ofbusiness partnerships. Throughout the empire, urban and rural women were widely involved in certaincrafts, particularly textiles. Silk winding and cotton spinning were considered women's work and wereoften carried out part time in the home. In Mosul, cotton-thread making was monopolized by women to

the point that cotton-weaving guilds (to which women rarely belonged) sought state intervention.Women also sold prepared foods, were small scale traders, operated public baths, brokered slavetrades, and were musical entertainers. In the countryside, women engaged in agriculture and animalhusbandry, often while men were away on extended military campaigns.

Ottoman women were considered subjects of the empire upon reaching puberty, and Islamic law andtradition granted them specific legal rights. They had the right to control property, and neither fathersnor husbands could make use of this property without their consent. They had the right to registercomplaints and to claim their rights before the local qadi(Islamic judge). Women of all social levels, inthe countryside and in the cities, regularly used the Ottoman court system to defend their interests, andscholars have found that in most instances judges upheld women's legal and property rights. Indeed,non-Muslim Ottoman women frequently took recourse to qadicourts because they were perceived asmore favorable in treating issues of concern to women. From early in the seventeenth century, women

(and men) could petition the imperial divan directly.

Marriage and family were, of course, an integral element of the lives of most early-modern Ottomanwomen. Islamic law institutionalized an imbalanced relationship that favored men in numerous ways:Muslim men could marry non-Muslim women, but not the reverse. Men were permitted up to four wivesand were granted absolute authority over them. Sharia law permitted men to divorce with relative ease,while women's ability to initiate divorce was more restricted and carried a financial penalty. Recentresearch on marriage, however, has attempted to move beyond legal theory and instead to examineactual social practice, which indicates a more favorable situation for Ottoman women.para/>Marriageswere arranged by parents and families, but women had the right to refuse a match, and prenuptialagreements were not uncommon. Throughout the Ottoman period, polygyny was rare: probably wellover 95 percent of all men had only one wife, though this varied according to time and place. Members


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of the juridical and religious elite, as well as some high divan officials, were more often polygynous, butmerchant, artisan, and peasant men rarely married more than one woman. In the case of divorce,studies of court records indicate that in practice, Ottoman women had more flexibility in endingunwanted marriages than the legal codes would suggest. Separations and annulments were possible,and divorces initiated by women in eighteenth-century Istanbul became common enough that theyattracted concerned comment by social observers. Women's motivations for divorce included abuse,abandonment, and failure to provide adequate financial support. For non-Muslim Ottoman womenwhose traditions did not normally permit divorce, conversion to Islam was a common way to beliberated from an unwanted spouse.

The changing view of women's history in the early-modern Ottoman Empire suggests that women's

experiences and possibilities were more complex and varied. There is now compelling evidence thatcontroverts the Orientalist image of Ottoman woman as submissive and powerless victims. One couldargue that Ottoman women's status was at least equal to that of European women. Indeed, LadyElizabeth Craven , who traveled in the region, reported in her Journey through the Crimea toConstantinople ( 1789 ), I think I never saw a country where women may enjoy so much freedom fromall reproach, as in Turkey. The Turks in their conduct towards our sex are an example to all othernations.

Ottoman Women in the Nineteenth and TwentiethOttoman Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.Centuries.There is a tendency to view Ottoman and Muslim women's history in a synchronic fashion that seestheir experiences over time as undergoing little change. This ignores the significant changes thatOttoman women experienced in the final century of the empire. The Tanzimat era ( 1839 1876 )

marked the beginning of a shift toward a more modern state, which ushered in a range of reforms inthe penal code, property and personal rights, the tax structure, and education. These reforms, as wellas changes associated with the evolving Ottoman economy, had important and far-reaching implicationsfor Ottoman women.

During the nineteenth century as traditional crafts were affected by new manufacturing methods and asnew industries arose, women's economic roles expanded and changed. This is evident in the productionof rugs, a craft traditionally dominated by women. As demand grew in the late nineteenth century,increasing numbers of Turkish, Greek, and Armenian women worked full-time in the industry. In 1880 ,workers in Usak numbered 3,000 women and 500 girls; by 1900 their total had increased to 6,000. Inthe final years of the century, rug production shifted from home workshops to large factories employingthousands of women, including girls as young as four years of age. Workdays were long: eleven hoursfor all but the youngest girls. Some women walked to work, others lived in dormitories furnished by the

factory. The changing nature of rug manufacture led to unrest, and in 1908 mobs of women attacked thenew factories to protest the shift from home to factory production.

Muslim and non-Muslim Ottoman women also worked in the shoe, silk, and cigarette industries. Menand women worked side by side in many factories, even though the textile, rug, and cigarette industrieswere classified as women's work. The large numbers of women and girls working in Ottoman factoriesdrove wages down and helped make these industries more competitive with European producers. OneEuropean report described women's labor as cheaper than water, usually costing less than half that ofmale workers.

Tanzimat reforms created increased educational opportunities for some Ottoman women. The first stateschool for girls opened in 1858 , and others followed over the next few decades. An 1869 decree madeprimary education compulsory for both boys and girls aged six to ten, though its implementation waslimited. In 1870 the Teacher Training College for Girls opened, which prepared women as teachers forgirls' schools; over the next forty years it would graduate over seven hundred instructors. Prior to thistime girls received instruction in their homes or in classes held in the homes of educated women.Missionary schools and the schools of the empire's non-Muslim minority communities were alsoimportant sources of education for women.

As small but growing numbers of women received educations, a variety of publications specificallytargeting them began to appear. In 1870 the first women's periodical was published as a weeklysupplement to a reformist newspaper, and others followed over the next few decades. Thesepublications were rarely radical, focusing instead on family-related issues, religion, needlework, andnoteworthy women, both Muslim and non-Muslim. The first published defense of Ottoman women's


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rights, Fatma Aliye's Nisvan-i Islam (Women of Islam), appeared in 1891 . Aliye was the daughter of theinfluential grand vizier and historian Ahmed Cevdet Pasa . She received an excellent education, and hernumerous works of literature open a fascinating window onto women's experiences in the final years ofthe empire.

The first Ottoman women's organization was founded in 1876 by the wife of an influential governmentofficial, with the objective of aiding wounded soldiers. Other organizations with similar charitableobjectives were founded over the next several years. Only after 1908 did organizations concerned withmore civil issues, such as women's education and suffrage, begin to appear. Minority Ottoman womenalso organized associations toward the end of the century, and some international women'sorganizations like the Young Women's Christian Association were active in the capital, though they

worked mostly with non-Muslim girls and women. In general, before the establishment of the TurkishRepublic, Ottoman women were minimally engaged with the broader international women's movement.

The late nineteenth century saw growing numbers of intellectuals and publications begin to debate theposition of women in Ottoman society. They critiqued traditional Ottoman attitudes and practices towardfamily and women and urged a shift toward more civilized, that is, Western, practices. The newwoman would help the nation succeed in the modern world; the traditional woman, in contrast, wastrapped in the antiquated traditions of the past and retarded progress. One of the common visual tropesof the early twentieth century was the image of an old hag, who symbolized traditional culture,contrasted with a young Westernized woman of the future.

In this period the Committee for Union and Progress, popularly known as the Young Turks, arose with

the objective of modernizing Ottoman society through Westernization. A central part of its programincluded raising the status of Ottoman women. The Young Turks revived the reformist trend of theTanzimat and declared, Women must be liberated from the shackles of tradition. Women's status andopportunities, at least in the cities, improved somewhat, and women took an increasing part in publicsocial activities. Their access to education improved, and for the first time a few women becamedoctors, lawyers, and even civil servants. Muslim women also appeared for the first time on stage,which prior to this time had been dominated by Armenian actresses. Public spaces such as restaurants,theaters, and lecture halls were opened to women, though owners were required to provide asegregated area to separate women from men. Women's expanded opportunities were alwaysvulnerable, however, as evidenced by the conservative reaction at the outset of Sultan Mehmed V'sreign in 1909 .

The Young Turks' reforms continued through the difficult years of World War I. In 1917 the family law

code was revised and marriage was declared a secular, rather than religious, union. Despite legalchanges, in many rural parts of the empire, traditional attitudes continued to hold sway. During this timethe government established the Society for the Employment of Muslim Women, whose objective was toalleviate wartime labor shortages by encouraging, occasionally even forcing, women to serve in theBattalions of Women Workers. This push produced results: in under six months 14,000 women inIstanbul had applied for employment through the society, driven in no small part by difficult economiccircumstances. The result was the introduction of women of all classes into areas previously dominatedby men and non-Muslim women, and a greater degree of liberation, at least among urban women.

The vestiges of the Ottoman Empire were swept away in the War of Turkish Independence ( 1919 1923 ). Women such as Halide Edib Adivar and Nakiye Elgun played a public role in the war. Indeed,Adivar served for a time as a corporal and then sergeant in the military, and would later become animportant literary figure and a member of parliament. The secular Turkish Republic, which was

established on 29 October 1923 , produced significant new political, social, and economic opportunitiesfor Turkish women.

[See alsoAdivar , Hal ide Edi bAdivar , Hal ide Edib; Codes ofCodes of Law and Laws,Law and Laws, subentrysubentryIslamic LawIslamic Law; Hrrem,Hrrem,

SultanSultan ; IslamIslam; and OrientalismOrientalism .]

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Davis, Fanny . The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
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Press, 1986 . An early work that still provides valuable insights into elite Ottoman women's lives.

Duben, Alan , and Cem Behar . Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family, and Fertility, 18801940.

Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991 . A detailed study of family life in the last years of

the Ottoman Empire.

Faroqhi, Suraiya . Stories of Ottoman Men and Women. Istanbul, Turkey: Eren, 2002 .

Jennings, Ronald C. Women in Early 17th Century Ottoman Judicial Records: The Sharia Court of

Anatolian Kayseri. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 18 ( 1975 ): pp.53114.

An important early essay that challenged numerous assumptions about Ottoman women's lives.

Joseph, Suad , ed. Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. 4 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands:

Brill, 2003 . An up- to-date collection that contains a number of essays on Ottoman women.

Nashat, Guity , and Judith E. Tucker . Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring Women

to History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999 .

Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1993 . The most influential monograph on early-modern Ottoman women, it overturns

the idea that harem women were powerless.

Quataert, Donald . Ottoman Women, Households, and Textile Manufacturing, 18001914. In Women

in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, edited by Nikki R. Keddie and Beth

Baron . New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991 . A useful discussion of the economic role of

Ottoman women in the age of industrialization.

Tucker, Judith E. In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 . A significant work by one of the most important scholars

of premodern Islamic women.

Zilfi, Madeline C. , ed. Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern

Era. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997 . One of the few works devoted solely to Ottoman women.

Eric R. Dursteler

How to cite this entry:

Jennie R. Ebeling , Lynda Garland , Guity Nashat , Eric R. Dursteler "West Asia" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women inWorld History. Ed Bonnie G. Smith. Oxford University Press, 2008. Brigham Young University (BYU). 1 November2010

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