Chapter 5 How a Turkish Empress Became a Champion of Ukraine

Oleksander Halenko

Today it seems easy to accept the tremendous popularity of Roxolana in Ukraine, her native country, given that she was a real international celebrity from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

The international fame of Roxolana certainly pleased the national pride of two prominent nineteenth-century scholars and the exponents of the Ukrainian revivalist movement, Volodymyr Antonovych (1834-1908) and Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895), when, in a comment to their 1874 publication of the Ukrainian epic folklore, they stressed that Roksolana was Ukrainian by descent, notwithstanding the claims of other nations.^[361] The two scholars did not discover this fact by themselves, but rather learned it from the voluminous and very popular History of the Ottoman Empire by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856), the famous Austrian Orientalist and diplomat, who authoritatively closed the issue of Roxolana’s origin by identifying her as “a Russian lady from Little Russia” (“eine Reussin von Kleinrussland”).^[362]

However, the Ukrainian depiction of Roxolana differed from that in Western European. In the eyes of her Western contemporaries, as well as later novelists and playwrights, Roxolana remained a clever, although not infrequently cunning, European lady who outwitted the tyrannical Asians, rather than a heroic person of any sort, let alone a national heroine. Ukrainians, on the other hand, tend to see in Roxolana much more than a historical celebrity, or, in keeping with the gender perspective, a powerful woman of her time. For them, she is first and foremost a champion and protector of the Ukrainian people, an example of loyalty and self-sacrifice in the name of the nation and even the Orthodox creed.

Although the motives for excessive glorification of Roxolana in contemporary Ukraine are clear and not altogether fascinating, the origins of this glorification merit attention. As soon as Roxolana was recognized as a Ukrainian, the origins of the current Ukrainian attitudes toward her began to reflect those of the social and cultural setting in which she was brought up and that most probably influenced her behavior and career. Until that point, this millieu (that is, Ukrainian society of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) remained mute and unaccounted for in its attempts to understand the enigmatic Roxolana. My essay will attempt to acknowledge the voice of that milieu, by focusing on three possible sources of information about it: the historical context of Ukraine’s past; direct references to Roxolana in the sources written by her contemporaries; and finally, the Ukrainian epic (duma) “Marusia Bohuslavka” about a Ukrainian captive woman who helped her enslaved compatriots. It was in response to this particular duma that Antonovych and Drahomanov made the aforementioned claim that Roxolana was Ukrainian and suggested a parallel between her and the epic’s protagonist. I will argue that neither of the first two sources could have inspired any positive attitude toward Roxolana in Ukrainians. As for the latter, I will try to demonstrate that Antonovych and Drahomanov, in their choice of a folkloric parallel for Roxolana, were inspired by romantic assumptions about the Ukrainian national spirit, which led them to a misinterpretation of this epic as a manifestation of that spirit and which ultimately resulted in their portraying Roxolana as Ukraine’s champion.

Even at first glance, it seems impossible to reconcile the glorification of Roxolana with the Ukrainian perception of the Turks as one of the greatest and most feared enemies of all times. Since the conquest of the Genovese colonies in the Crimean peninsula and the submission of the Crimean Khanate in 1475, and in the course of the subsequent three centuries, the Ottoman Empire included in its possessions up to half of the present territory of Ukraine. In response to the demand of the Ottoman market for slaves, the Crimean Khanate turned the neighboring territories into a principal source of slaves, procuring thousands of them annually. The densely populated southern provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—Ukraine—became the closest and therefore most convenient target for Crimean Tatar slave raids. These raids were sometimes staged as major military campaigns, undertaken on the orders of Ottoman sultans or initiated by the Crimean Khanate against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but small hunting bands, comprising fewer than a hundred raiders,^[364] periodically roamed the poorly defended Ukrainian lands. Although it is hard to accurately calculate the total loss of the Ukrainian population through the Crimean Tartar slave raids, it may be safely estimated as approaching millions.^[365] It is quite logical that the response of the local Ukrainian population to the challenge of the Crimean slave-hunting raids became the central theme of Ukrainian national history. The rise of the Cossacks in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the agricultural colonization of the Steppe from the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries, and the entrance into the suzerainty of Muscovy in 1654 and later—all these were and are now presented by the Ukrainian national historiography as Ukraine’s reactions to the menace of slave raids by the Crimean Khanate.

It should be noted that some aspects in Roxolana’s legacy, such as the construction of a mosque near the “Women’s market” (Avrat Pazar) in Istanbul and her endowment, which stipulated special treatment of slaves in the hospital, may testify to her empathy for the slaves. But, firstly, the Ukrainian public was, and still is, largely ignorant of such details. Secondly, it would be a gross exaggeration to surmise that Roxolana played a great role in the foreign policy of the Ottoman Empire, let alone to assert her involvement in the slave trade. Although she remained the second most powerful person of the great Empire and fully used its riches, part of which certainly came from the slave raids and slave trade, the Ottoman treasury collected thousands of golden pieces as custom dues from the import of slaves, and it is unthinkable that the Sultan’s wife could have stopped this practice, even if she had wished to. In 1527, when Roxolana’s influence on the Sultan was already well noticed by the foreign diplomatic residents in Constantinople, Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha told Hieronimus Laszki, Ambassador of Transylvania, that the customs in Kili and Kefe (Keffe; Caffa), two major slave markets on the Ottoman border, ^[366] alone brought in 50,000 golden pieces annually, and that in the preceding two years their income had even grown by 30,000 golden pieces.^[367]

Roxolana’s actions in the harem, according to available information, do not point to her particular sympathy for compatriots. For example, the Venetian ambassador Bragadino reported an accident in the Sultan’s palace that demonstrated her jealousy toward her compatriots, rather than her ethnic solidarity or compassion.

Now we need to establish whether Ukrainians knew anything about Roxolana before Volodymyr Antonovych and Mykhaylo Drahomanov recognized her as an important historical figure of Ukrainian origin. Why did Ukrainians seem to be so indifferent to the popularity of Roxolana in early modern Western Europe, and why did they not claim her earlier?

These questions can be partly explained by the fact that the Ukrainian polity hardly existed in Roxolana’s lifetime. This polity began to take shape only in the mid-nineteenth century, with Antonovych and Drahomanov being prominent leaders of the nascent nationalist process. As a distinct ethnic territory, Ukraine emerged on the former territory of former Kyivan Rus, which after the Mongol conquest was absorbed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its cultural and ethnic identity was secured by the Orthodox faith of the Rus population, whereas the ruling dynasties and the significant number of subjects in both parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth professed Catholicism. Although it first occurred in the Rus chronicles several decades prior to the Mongol invasion and was also used in Muscovy, the name “Ukraine” became the colloquial name for the Orthodox provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth century. In official usage, these territories were referred to as “Rus’” or “Little Rus.” Under the suzerainty of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the local Ukrainian elite entered the ranks ofthe ruling class and progressively adopted Polish culture and Catholic religion, whereas the lower classes remained predominantly Orthodox.

While Roxolana was widely popular among the literate circles of Western Europe, in Ukraine she was mainly featured in oral tradition. Thus it is possible to detect at least indirect traces of this memory in Ukraine. The reading audience of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth undoubtedly knew the story of Roxolana from The Turkish Letters of Ogier de Busbecq, widely published in Western Europe.^[369] Samuel Twardowski, the secretary of the Polish Embassy to Sultan Mustafa in 1622, led by Prince Krysztof Zbaraski, rather closely retold it in his poem (first published in 1633) about the embassy.^[370] He even mentioned her once by the name of Roksolana (a Slavic spelling of the name Roxolana invented by Busbecq^[371]). In addition, Twardowski mentioned several details unknown to Busbecq, but evidently widely known in that land, namely, that Roxolana was a daughter of a humble Orthodox priest (podfy pop) from the Ukrainian town of Rohatyn and that Sultan Süleyman presented her before the Polish King as his (King’s) sister.^[372] As a Pole and a Catholic, Twardowski was outraged by this fact, and he openly expressed his contempt towards Roxolana. In his eyes, even the wife of a powerful Sultan was merely a “Russian” (Ruska, Ruskoja), that is, a member of the lower class, the inferior ethnos, and the inferior faith.

Another member of the ruling class of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, known under the penname “Michalonis Lituanus” [‘Mikhail the Lithuanian’], showed more solidarity with Roxolana in his pamphlet, “On the Manners of Tatars, Lithuanians and Muscovites,” presented to Polish King Sigismund II August in 1550. With obvious compassion, he described the misery of slavery, from which many of his compatriots suffered, and he mentioned that the favorite wife of the ruling Sultan was also stolen by the Tatars from “our” land (“rapta est ex prouincia nostra”).^[373]

In 1570, Ivan Novosiltsov, the Ambassador of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) of Muscovy to Sultan Selim II (r. 1566-1574), was the first to allege that Roxolana had attempted to protect her former compatriots from Tatar slave raids: “And when Selim-sultan was born to Seleyman [Süleyman], then the czarina pleaded with Seleyman that he do not war with Lithuania, because the czarina, Selim’s mother, was Lithuanian by birth [i.e., a Lithuanian subject], and Seleyman was friendly with Lithuania [i.e., Lithuanian Grand Duke] until his death and ordered to Selim- sultan not to go to war with the Lithuanian.”^[374] The Muscovite ambassador did not mention the source of his information, but it is clear from his report that it was not obtained from his conversations with the Ottoman officials, which ambassadors were required to relate in much detail. Novosiltsov’s statement was most probably based on a rumor that could have been picked up anywhere on his way between Moscow and Constantinople. It is thus possible to surmise that rumors about the so-called “special relations” between Polish-Lithuanian and Ottoman realms circulated widely in both countries.

And yet it is impossible to connect the origin of the Ukrainian myth of Roxolana with this evidence, because it became known to the public at large only in 1954 (the publication date of Novosiltsov’s report), long after the publication of Ukrainian epic songs by Antonovych and Drahomanov. Moreover, Novosiltsov’s report contradicts the evidence provided by other sources. In her two letters to Polish King Sigismund II (r. 1548-1573), Roxolana clearly stated that she supported the Sultan’s intention to remain at peace with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: “Let Your Majesty know that should any your plea appear before His Imperial Majesty and be mentioned by him to me, I will take my personal interest in it and will say in response ten times more in a positive way and in favor of your Majesty, doing so by the order of my soul.”^[375]

One should not overemphasize the fact that Roxolana corespondended with a foreign monarch. It was part of the Ottoman diplomatic protocol, drawn on the Steppe political tradition, which allowed sovereigns’ wives and daughters to partake in the exchange of letters and gifts with foreign rulers.^[376] Such an exchange took place only on the occasion of an embassy sent by the Sultan himself. Roxolana’s daughter Mihrimah (1522-1578) also sent her letter to Sigismund II with the same embassy.^[377] One should also keep in mind a rather cynical observation made by Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha in 1527, when Roxolana already attained a leading position in the Sultan’s entourage, that the Crimean Tatars carried out their slave raids in Ukraine disregarding the official state of peace between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish Crown.^[378] Neither the available data about the Tatar slave

raids^[379] nor the diplomatic activities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, directed at keeping peace on its southern borders,^[380] point to any decline in slave raiding of Ukraine during Roxolana’s lifetime.

Thus, the above-discussed evidence did not come directly from the Ukrainian milieu. Ukrainian people might have only kept memory of those Ukrainian women who attained success in captivity by marrying Ottoman nobles. It is impossible to know whether among such women was Anastasia Lisovska, a daughter of an Orthodox priest from the town of Rohatyn, whom one Polish noble identified as “Roxolana.” This man was Wenceslaw Severyn Rzewuski (1785-1831), a Polish magnate, born in Lviv, then part of the Austrian Empire. He was one of the students of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall and co-sponsor of the first European Orientalist journal, Fundgruben des Oriens/Mines d'Orient (1809-1818), edited by Hammer-Purgstall.^[381] For both Hammer-Purgstall and Rzewuski, Roxolana was a compatriot, because the Austrian Empire annexed Western Ukraine during the Partitions of Poland in 1772 and 1795. Thus, these two men’s claim that Roxolana was born in Rohatyn, then also in Austria’s possession, was a clear demonstration of their national pride.

There is, however, indirect evidence that can be associated with the attitudes toward Roxolana on the part of ordinary Ukrainians. The source in question is the epic song about Baida (Kniaz') [‘Prince’] Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, a popular figure of the time and an adventurer remembered by Ukrainians as the founder of the first Cossack fortified refuge (sich).^[382] He was captured by the Ottomans and executed in Istanbul in 1564, during the reign of Sultan Süleyman. According to the story told in this epic song, hetman Vyshnevetsky, while being hooked by a rib, asked his page (äæóðà; dzhura) to bring him his bow and arrows, and then he shot the Turkish czar, the czarina, and their daughter.

Baida made a shot from his bow—

And hit the czar between the ears, And czarina—in the back of head,

And the czar’s daughter—right in her poor little head.^[383]

Albeit fantastic on the whole and not accurate chronologically (Süleyman was a widower in 1564, at the time of Baida's death)—which is not uncommon in folklore—this story captured, with remarkable precision, the real situation in the Ottoman dynasty during the life of Sultan Süleyman. Roxolana was the only wife of this sultan; therefore, she alone could have assumed the role of the empress (tsarytsia) in the eyes of Ukrainians of that time. Also princess Mihrimah, the only daughter of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent and Roxolana, was a very influential member of the Ottoman dynasty^[384] and a known figure in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, at least judging by her letters to Polish kings.^[385] Therefore, it is most probable that Roxolana and Mihrimah were well known even among ordinary Ukrainians. The epic song about Baida Vyshnevetsky does not attest to any positive attitude toward Roxolana, thus reflecting an understandable resentment, on the part of their potential victims, to members of the Ottoman dynasty who were responsible for the horrors of slave raids. It can thus be argued that Roxolana’s Ukrainian contemporaries held her as a Turkish empress (tsarytsia), and not as one of their own. Nothing in early modern folklore suggests that she was dear to her former compatriots.

Why then did Antonovych and Drahomanov see the features of Roxolana in Marusia Bohuslavka, the main character of the duma “Marusia Bohuslavka”?

In looking for an answer to this seemingly speculative question, it would be helpful first to consider alternative possibilities available to Antonovych and Drahomanov in Ukrainian folklore, which was the principal historical source for the romantic nineteenth-century historians. To be sure, the two scholars had a large pool of folklore characters to their choice. In the foreword to the aforementioned collection of Ukrainian folklore, they named as their sources more than a dozen of other publications, which appeared in both the Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire. Among those were the first anthology compiled by Mykola Tsertelev, as well as collections by Mykhailo Maksymovych, Platon Lukashevych, Waclaw Zaleski, and Zegota Pauli.^[386] These publications were inspired by the romantic belief that folklore was a manifestation of people’s spirit.

“Marusia Bohuslavka” was in fact only one duma in a series of other dumas that were, in various ways, concerned with the challenges of the “Turkish slavery.” There exist 19 such epics, which make up more than one-third of the known 52 pieces of this genre.^[387] Seven of these epics tell stories of the Ukrainian Cossacks returning from their raids against Turks and/or dying in enemy land.^[388] The remaining 12 epics show other Ukrainians in captivity.^[389] Disproving the widespread nationalist assertions that the emergence of the Cossak movement was a response of the Ukrainian people to slave raids, these epics do not call for military containment of the raids. Rather, the poems set up models of behavior in captivity for Ukrainians, all of whom, disregarding their social positions, could not be safe from the Tatar threat. All the models and patterns of behavior, suggested in these dumas, are constructed on the basis of a quite accurate knowledge of Ottoman realities, incuding slavery.^[390] They served as the basis for wide discussions on the challenges of slavery in a society exposed to slave hunts by the Crimean Tatars and other Ottomans. Folklore thus served as a sort of medium for the illiterate Ukrainian community of peasants and Cossacks, which helped to formulate and to accumulate collective experience vis-a-vis Ottoman slavery.

It is worth noting that Turechchyna [‘the Ottoman Empire’] was not depicted in Ukrainian folklore in a strictly negative sense, as a land of an alien religion or a source of suffering and death. Surprisingly, it was also presented as a land tempting Ukrainians with prospects of wealth and luxury:

You, the Turkish land, the Muslim faith,

You are replete with silver and gold,

And expensive drinks;

Only, a poor slave is deprived in this world.^[391]

Such naive but frank admittance of pleasures of life in Turkey can be taken as an implicit recognition of the prospects of assimilation for slaves. It points to the fact that the Ukrainian community recognized slavery not only as a challenge for an individual, but also a challenge for the entire community.

It is then logical to assume that the main idea of the 12 dumas was to encourage Ukrainians, who might fall into slavery, to do everything possible to return home. Conversion to Islam and adoption of the Ottoman way of life were reprobated not just as a mortal sin per se, but rather as a desertion of relatives and community, and a refusal to return home. Islam is cursed precisely for being the cause of separation between relatives:

You, cursed Muslim faith!

You bring separation to Christians in this world!

Not once have you separated a husband from his wife,

Or a brother from his sister,

Or a relative from his kin.^[392]

Converts to Islam were looked down upon with scorn for deserting their comrades and compatriots, rather than for professing a different religion. Yet, the poems emphasized the importance for Ukrainians to preserve their loyalty to the Orthodox faith and the family, and they praised cooperation among enslaved compatriots. Therefore, even an exemplary renegade, such as Liash Buturlak from the duma “Samiilo Kishka,” who gathered his share of unflattering epithets in the beginning of the narrative, is ultimately shown as a helper of Cossacks in their escape from Turkey across the Black Sea. In stressing the importance of preserving strong familial and communal ties in slavery, the dumas prescribed only two ways of regaining liberty: divine help, which came as a reward for one’s loyalty to family and brothers-in-arms, and mutual assistance.

The models of behavior in slavery were clearly gendered, according to the different life prospects for male and female slaves. In the observation of Panteleimon Kulish, a prominent nineteenth-century Ukrainian historian and writer, dumas were even termed differently as songs of women and songs of Cossacks.^[393] All male captives, unless they were executed, were expected to return home. Armed violence (sometimes paired with deceit of the enemy) was seen as the only honorable way for men to escape from slavery. Hence all male characters of dumas were Cossacks, that is, professional warriors.

The recommendation for use of violence for men, however, essentially limited the social appeal of such a model. In some epics, the behavior of male characters resorting to violence in order to regain liberty seemed neither rational nor moral. For example, in the duma “²âàí Áîãóñëàâåöü” [“Ivan Bohuslavets”], the main character, a Cossack leader (otaman), succumbs to the marriage proposal on the part of a wealthy Turkish lady in exchange for liberating his brothers-in-arms, whom she has been keeping in prison. Once he achieved his goal, however, this Cossack kills his wife. It is obvious that in the eyes of the duma's readers, even assistance to his compatriots was not a sufficient justification for such a treacherous act as marrying an enemy. In order to cover up for this disgrace, the duma advances an unfailing argument, accusing the Turkish lady of an attempt to forcefully convert her Cossack husband to Islam.

Such fictional efforts to find moral justification for violence prove that appeal to violence as a means for liberation from captivity could hardly have been broadly recognized by the Ukrainian community. It is quite understandable, if one takes into account that the vast majority of Ukrainian captives were peasants, who did not have military training, and that resorting to violence would ensure their death rather than liberation.

In contrast, Ukrainian female slaves were not expected to return home. Their mission was only to help male compatriots to flee back to Ukraine. Albeit hardly invigorating, this “female” model could count on a much wider, if not universal, appeal for the Ukrainian audience. This is because it exemplified the reality of a lifelong slavery, given the fact that women lost both the ability and the incentive to return home once they entered their owners’ households. Under such circumstances, lifetime female slaves could do little for their Ukrainian community, except for helping compatriot slaves.

Of course, such a model of behavior in slavery was equivalent to a plea for self-sacrifice, which was difficult to make attractive. Even the most insistent calls for self-sacrifice for would-be lifelong slaves could hardly trigger a positive response, unless they were paired with a symmetrical reward. It was not so easy to find such a reward; therefore, four out of five female protagonists of Ukrainian dumas look neither inventive nor realistic. Dumas “ijâêà-áðàíêà” [‘A Captive Girl’] and “Âòå÷à ìàòåð³ ç ñèíîì ç òóðåöüêî¿ íåâîë³” [‘Escape of a Mother with her Son from Turkish Captivity’] tell stories of a miraculous delivery from slavery. In the duma “Êîâàëåíêî” [“Kovalenko”], a slave girl brings Cossacks the instruments hidden in a loaf of bread, which they use for a successful escape. The duma “Ñåñòðà ³ áðàò” [‘Sister and Brother’] is an elegy, in which a sister expresses a longing for her brother.

It was only the epic poem “Ìàðóñÿ Áîãóñëàâêà” [“Marusia Bohuslavka”; ‘Marusia of Bohuslav’] that suggested a rather realistic balance between self­sacrifice and reward. The reward for helping compatriots was the absolution of several mortal sins, such as conversion to Islam, adultery, and gluttony. Such a model made this epic the most powerful and artistically refined answer to the challenges of Turkish slavery.

“Ìàðóñÿ Áîãóñëàâêà” tells the story of a female slave, Marusia, a daughter of an Orthodox priest, who became a concubine to a powerful Turk, but despite all the pleasures of her status, described by her as “Turkish luxury” (“ðîçê³ø òóðåöüêa”) and “accursed relish” (“ëàêîìñòâo íåùàñíe”), she sets free seven hundred Cossack slaves whom her Turkish master kept in the dungeon. The woman refuses to return to Ukraine together with the released Cossacks on the grounds that she had already converted to Islam and accepted, even if involuntarily, her comfortable lifestyle in Ottoman captivity:

As I have turned Turk, turned Muslim,

For Turkish luxury,

For accursed relish.^[394]

Yet Marusia Bohuslavka expresses her longing for her family, asking the Cossacks to relate the news about her to her parents, who live in her native town of Bohuslav^[395] (whence her sobriquet “Bohuslavka”). Thus, this duma relates a realistic story of a person with conflicting loyalties.

The poem did not state what consequences Marusia’s actions might have entailed once her master discovered the treason, leaving the conflict between the divided loyalties of the slave woman without a rational explanation. On the one hand, this character demonstrates the continuing commitment to her compatriots (hence to her motherland), her family, and even the Orthodox creed as she carries out her heroic deed on the holy day of Easter. On the other hand, she has definitely accepted her slave status. Marusia’s heroic act in such controversial circumstances creates an impression of her selfless service to her motherland, which is appropriate for an epic story. But in compliance with the dominant positivist philosophy and nationalistic paradigm of the mid-nineteenth century, which mistook folklore for a mirror reflection of reality, two editors presented, rather banally, the epic story of Marusia Bohuslavka as a true lifestory (sudba) of a Ukrainian elite slave woman, not a mere chattel. From this point of view, Roxolana represented a full analogy to Marusia Bohuslavka. The editors validated their conclusion by quoting Mikhalon Lituanus, who also cited (although for a different reason) the wife of the Ottoman Sultan Süleyman, and the mother and the wife of the Crimean Khan Sahib Guiray (r. 1533-1551) as examples of slave women who were taken into households of important and wealthy Ottomans.^[396] In this way, the real historical figures, such as Roxolana, were merged with the fictitious epic characters, such as Marusia Bohuslavka, into a category of “elite slave women,” as one would term them today. Thus individual features of a fictional character, recognized as typical, were extended to a real person, and so Marusia Bohuslavka became a prototype for the construction of the Roxolana image in contemporary Ukraine. The case of mutual help between slave compatriots, a slave woman and the Cossacks, articulated clearly in this epic poem made it particularly appealing to the awakening national consciousness of Ukrainians.

This epic was recorded by Kulish in 1853, and it was published three years later.^[397] Twenty years had passed before Antonovych and Drahomanov, using the methodology of their time, decided to mix this epic with Hammer-Purgstall’s statement about Roxolana as a daughter of the Orthodox priest from Rohatyn and about other Ukrainian members of the Ottoman dynasty. This connection proved to be irresistible to Ukrainian intellectuals and nationalists. Three years later Kulish, the first publisher of this epic, referred to the information reported by Hammer- Purgstall in his History of the Reunification ofRus.^[398] After that point, two figures— Marusia Bohuslavka and Roxolana—became inseparable. Even Ahatanhel Krymsky, in his History of Turkey (1924), routinely quoted this epic as evidence of an elite slave woman of Ukrainian origin and immediately afterward switched his narrative to Roxolana.^[399] As a longtime and most authoritative Orientalist historian of Ukraine, Krymsky helped to strengthen the parallel between Roxolana and Marusia Bohuslavka, which eventually became accepted as a historical fact.

Thus, it may be concluded that the excessive veneration of Roxolana in Ukraine took its origins first in the national pride of two Austrian Orientalists who discovered that the famous Sultana was born on the territory that had just come into the possession of the Austrian emperors. Then two Ukrainian historians claimed her for the Ukrainian nation. Like the intellectuals of other nascent nations of the nineteenth century, they relied on folklore as authentic historical source. They assimilated the epic personage of Marusia Bohuslavka, who helped her slave compatriots, with Roxolana. It was an error, but it passed unnoticed in the time of national consolidation in Ukraine, and it was this mistake that set off the campaign of excessive veneration of Roxolana for her imagined patriotism.

The analysis of Ukrainian epics also reveals the fact that they reflected a wide discourse about the challenges of “Turkish slavery,” which developed in Ukrainian society contemporaneously with the epoch of slave raids. How exactly the Turkish slavery influenced Roxolana’s career at the imperial Ottoman court is a subject for another study.

This page has been left blank intentionally