Eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hathaway
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
East African ◽  
Young Turks

Abstract This article surveys the employment of eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire. After placing the use of court eunuchs in a global historical context, the study turns to the earliest eunuchs in Ottoman employ, who were probably Byzantine prisoners of war. By the early fifteenth century, East African harem eunuchs had become an important element of the palace eunuch population, and the article discusses their procurement and castration. The construction of Topkap Palace in newly-conquered Constantinople during the 1450s laid the ground for the dichotomy between African harem eunuchs and white Third Court eunuchs. An equally important watershed occurred in the late sixteenth century, when the Chief Harem Eunuch assumed the supervision of the imperial pious endowments for Mecca and Medina, making him one of the most powerful figures in the empire. By the late seventeenth century, deposed Chief Harem Eunuchs often commanded the eunuchs who guarded the Prophet Muhammads tomb in Medina. The influence of all palace eunuchs decreased during the eighteenth century, as the grand vizier acquired ever more control over the empires administration. Nineteenth-century reforms dealt a permanent blow to the harem eunuchs authority, which ended entirely when the Young Turks disbanded the harem in 1909.Аннотация Статья рассматривает вопрос о привлечении на службу евнухов в Османскои империи. После общего обзора роли придворных евнухов в глобальном историческом контексте, исследование обращается к первым евнухам на османскои службе, которые вероятно были византиискими военнопленными. К началу XV в. восточно-африканские евнухи гарема стали важнои фракциеи среди дворцовых евнухов в статье рассматривается методика их отбора и кастрации. Строительство дворца Топкапы в недавно завоеванном Константинополе в 50-х гг. XV в. положило начало дихотомии между африканскими евнухами Гарема и белыми евнухами Третьего Двора. Не менее важным рубежом становится и конец XVI в., когда старшии евнух Гарема принял на себя обязанности по управлению имперскими благотворительными пожертвованиями в Мекку и Медину, что сделало этого сановника одной из самых могущественных фигур империи. К концу XVII в. низложенные главные евнухи Гарема часто принимали командование над евнухами, охранявшими гробницу Пророка Мухаммеда в Медине. Влияние дворцовых евнухов оказывается ослабленным в XVIII столетии, по мере того как великии визирь получал все большую власть над управлением империи. Реформы XIX столетия нанесли решающии удар по власти евнухов Гарема, которая полностью сошла на нет при расформировании его младотурками в 1909 г.

scholarly journals “Turkish” Textiles in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Evidence of Transylvanian Customs Accounts

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Serial Data

Abstract This paper analyzes data from customs accounts in Transylvania from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth on traffic in textiles and textile products from the Ottoman Empire. Cotton was known and commercialized in Transylvania from the fifteenth century; serial data will show that traffic in Ottoman cotton and silk textiles as well as in textile objects such as carpets grew considerably during the second half of the seventeenth century. Customs registers from that period also indicate that Poland and Hungary were destinations for Ottoman imports, but Transylvania was a consumer’s market for cotton textiles.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Continuity and Change: Shifts in Labour Relations in the Potosí Mines (1680–1812)

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The One

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.

The Early History of the Sultanate of Angoche

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. D. Newitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Set Up

The sultanate of Angoche on the Moçambique coast was founded probably towards the end of the fifteenth century by refugees from Kilwa. It became a base for Muslim traders who wanted to use the Zambezi route to the central African trading fairs and it enabled them to by-pass the Portuguese trade monopoly at Sofala. The Portuguese were not able to check this trade until they themselves set up bases on the Zambezi in the 1530s and 1540s, and from that time the sultanate began to decline. Internal dissensions among the ruling families led to the Portuguese obtaining control of the sultanate in the late sixteenth century, but this control was abandoned in the following century when the trade of the Angoche coast dwindled to insignificance. During the eighteenth century movements among the Macua peoples of the mainland and the development of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean laid the foundations for the revival of the sultanate in the nineteenth century.

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Ian Coller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Military Training ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Distorted Version ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Religious Understanding

This prologue offers a snapshot of what Islam and Muslims meant for the France of the late ancien régime and observes the shifts that were already emerging as 1789 approached. From the end of the fifteenth century until the last quarter of the eighteenth, Islam remained on the fringe of a French consciousness. Islam was principally understood by the ancien régime as a heresy, a distorted version of Christianity. With the global geopolitical shifts of the later eighteenth century, however, these matrices of religious understanding were fundamentally changed. From the mid-sixteenth century onward, France joined a loose alliance with the Ottoman Empire, fostering ongoing contacts in diplomacy, military training, and trade with a Muslim power. Beginning in the 1720s, philosophers began to investigate the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad in new ways that undermined older theological understandings. Trade and diplomacy produced travelers' accounts that shaped the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers. Radical philosophical ideas about Islam came together with diplomatic and commercial knowledge of Muslim societies to produce a sea change in conceptions about Muslims and Islam that would become entangled with the revolutionary transformation.

Introduction: The Ottoman Empire and its Frontiers

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. S. PEACOCK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

Stretching across Europe, Asia and Africa for half a millennium bridging the end of the Middle Ages and the early twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was one of the major forces that forged the modern world. The chapters in this book focus on four key themes: frontier fortifications, the administration of the frontier, frontier society and relations between rulers and ruled, and the economy of the frontier. Through snapshots of aspects of Ottoman frontier policies in such diverse times and places as fifteenth-century Anatolia, seventeenth-century Hungary, nineteenth-century Iraq or twentieth-century Jordan, the book provides a richer picture than hitherto available of how this complex empire coped with the challenge of administering and defending disparate territories in an age of comparatively primitive communications. By way of introduction, this chapter seeks to provide an overview of these four themes in the history of Ottoman frontiers.

Anticorruption in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Knights
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain

This chapter takes the premodern divide, which is framed in English historiography as the end of “old corruption,” as the starting point for a long-term overview of anticorruption in Britain and its colonies. Focusing on anticorruption movements, it adds another dimension to the paradox of modernization by showing that although a transition took place in the period between the late-sixteenth century and the nineteenth century, it was by no means a linear one: anticorruption measures to ensure the scrutiny of public accounts could be introduced in the late-seventeenth century, abandoned and then reintroduced later in the eighteenth century. The chapter also argues that there is a relationship between late-sixteenth-century Reformation and eighteenth-century reforms, both of which involved an attack on corruption.

Prenuptial pregnancy in a rural area of Devonshire in the mid-nineteenth century: Colyton 1851–1881

1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Robin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Rural Area ◽  
Sexual Behaviour ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Long Duration

The popularly held belief that in Victorian times a rigid code of sexual behaviour was in operation throughout the country, and that transgression of the code resulted in loss of respectability, has been under attack for some time now. One of the weapons used in the assault has been the extent of prenuptial pregnancy during the period compared with earlier centuries. In the first of his two papers on prenuptial pregnancy in England, published in 1966, P. E. H. Hair demonstrated that the phenomenon was of long duration. Roughly one-third of his sample of 1,855 brides traced to a maternity between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had been pregnant at marriage, and he considered that this was an under-estimate of the true proportion. Data from a number of reconstitution studies published in a recent work edited by Laslett, Oosterveen and Smith show that prenuptial pregnancies, measured in 50-year periods from 1550–1849, peaked in the second half of the sixteenth century at 31 per cent of all marriages traced to the birth of a child, only to decline over the next hundred years through the heyday of Puritanism and beyond to their nadir of 16 per cent by the end of the seventeenth century. From the early eighteenth century onwards, however, the proportion of such pregnancies increased, at first slowly and then gathering pace until by 1800 the previous peak at the end of the sixteenth century had been passed, the proportion of prenuptial pregnancies standing at 33 per cent. The rate continued to rise through the early years of the nineteenth century into the Victorian era, reaching 37 per cent for the 50 years ending in 1849.

The Value of Imported Ceramics in the Dating and Interpretation of the Rhodesian Iron Age

1968 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Garlake
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Glass Beads ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

Since the start of archaeological investigation in Rhodesia, isolated sherds of imported Chinese ceramics have been found in the important Iron Age ruins of Zimbabwe, Khami and Dhlo Dhlo. More recently, abundant finds of both Chinese and European glazed wares have occurred in excavations of early Portuguese trading stations within Rhodesia. All such imports are here redescribed from an examination of the finds and from a detailed study of the early excavator's reports. As a result, some important early misdescriptions and misunderstandings become apparent. The dating evidence provided by the imports is therefore also re-examined.Very rare sherds of Chinese celadons are virtually the only imported ceramics found in the later deposits at Zimbabwe, and at five other sites. These may be correlated with finds from J. S. Kirkman's excavations in trading settlements of the East African coast, and are dated certainly earlier than the sixteenth century. The finds from four other sites, the most important being the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins, consist mainly of Chinese blue-and-white porcelains and their European imitations. They correlate well with finds not only from the seventeenth and early eighteenth century Portuguese trading stations in Rhodesia, but also with finds from contemporary deposits at Fort Jesus, Mombasa. The precise dating of the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins within this period, as suggested by the imports, shows Khami to belong to the early seventeenth century with Dhlo Dhlo a century later. The divergence between the Khami, Dhlo Dhlo and Portuguese imported ceramics and those of Zimbabwe is sufficiently striking to suggest strongly that Zimbabwe was of negligible trading power by the time the Portuguese penetrated the interior in the sixteenth century. Evidence bearing on this, particularly from the 1958 Zimbabwe excavations, is discussed in detail.Glass beads and glass are the only other imports to survive in Central African archaeological contexts and are of considerably less chronological value than the ceramics. They are, however, also considered, as are the pattern and extent of the trade with the interior evidenced by these imports.

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