Introduction

Galina Yermolenko

Any study of the West’s relations with the harem must be in large part a study of the imagination.^[2]

Roxolana, or Hurrem Sultan, the legendary wife of Suleiman I, the Magnificent (1520-1566), left a special trace in Europe’s cultural memory.

Although Western historians have been struggling to define Roxolana’s legacy for over four centuries, it is often overlooked that she was largely a creation of the European imagination. Due to the lack of historical records and hard evidence, most of what is known about this woman rests on a handful of secondhand contemporaneous accounts and subsequent reinterpretations and speculations by numerous historians, quasi historians, dramatists, and other men of letters who have shaped the Western discourse on Roxolana. Yet, despite the fictions written about this woman, her allure and impact on Europeans have not been critically explored to date.

The present collection is the first book-length critical study of the Roxolana figure in European history, culture, and imagination from the mid-sixteenth century to the present. Contributions to this collection examine cultural responses to Roxolana in both Western and Eastern Europe—namely, Italy, Spain, France, England, Germany, Turkey, Poland, and Ukraine. The collection attempts to account for Roxolana’s unwavering appeal across the continent by probing into European attitudes and ideological biases in relation to the Ottoman Other and the Female Other.

Because most of what was written about Roxolana in Europe is based on several famous moments of her career at the Ottoman court, and because the essays and translations in the present collection refer to these famous stories in various ways, it is important for the reader to get acquainted with Roxolana’s life. Following is a comprehensive, and probably most up-to-date, account.^{[3] [4]}

Hurrem Sultan

Roxolana is believed to have been born in the western part of Ukraine around 1505.3 Sometime between 1515 and 1520, when she was around 15 years of age, she was abducted by the Crimean Tatars in one of their slave raids on Ukraine. She most probably followed the route that thousands of her compatriots followed in the sixteenth century—walking in long caravans of captives to the biggest slave market in the Black Sea region, Caffa (Kefe; Kaffa; presently the city of Feodosia), on the Crimean coast, whence the captives were shipped to other Mediterranean slave markets. She then appeared in the Avret Pazari [‘Women’s Bazaar’], a slave market in Istanbul, and, according to a legend, was purchased for the imperial harem by Ibrahim Pasha, the close friend of the young Crown Prince Suleiman.^[5] Ibrahim presented her to Suleiman, probably before the latter became sultan in 1520. Her playful temperament and great singing ability quickly won her the name of Hurrem [the ‘Joyful’ or the ‘Laughing One’], and that was probably what attracted Suleiman’s eye. She quickly became Suleiman’s favorite concubine (hasseki), having ousted from that position the beautiful Circassian concubine Mahidevran (Gulbahar, Gulbehar, or Gulfrem, in other sources),^[6] the mother of Suleiman’s first-born son Mustafa.

In 1520, Suleiman ascended the throne as the tenth Ottoman sultan. In 1521, Hurrem gave birth to her first son Mehmed. From that point on, her career as a royal concubine took a rather unusual turn. The Ottoman harem system operated on the principle “one concubine mother—one son” that was designed to prevent the mothers’ influence over the sultans and dynastic affairs.^[7] Hurrem however bore the Sultan, in a quick succession, daughter Mihrimah (b.

This break in the imperial harem protocol was not lost on the Istanbul public. Rumors of Hurrem’s power over Suleiman and her influence in the harem began to circulate around the capital. These rumors were carefully recorded by several western diplomats at the Sublime Porte, travelers to Turkey, and escaped captives. The most notable of these sources were the reports of the Venetian ambassadors (baili), particularly by Pietro Bragadino (1526), Bernardo Navagero (1553), Domenico Trevisano (1554), and the author of “Relazione anonima della guerra di Persia dell’anno 1553”^[9]; the narrative, I costumi et i modi particolari de la vita de' Turchi (Rome, 1545), by an Italian traveler Luigi Bassano; and The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the Emissary of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand to the Porte between 1554 and 1562.^[10] In European reports and accounts, Hurrem was always referred to as Rossa, Rosselana, or Roxolana, for she was believed to be of Ruthenian or Russian descent.^[11]

It is hard to say what exactly propelled this young woman to the summit of Ottoman power. After all, about three hundred other beautiful women in Suleiman’s harem vied for their master’s attention. According to the Venetian reports, Roxolana was not particularly beautiful, but rather graceful, elegant, and modest.^[12] Yet, her irresistible charm and playfulness, or perhaps her fair skin and hair, may have stood out among other concubines. It may have also been her ability to produce male heirs for the Sultan that gave her that extra power. But most probably it was her intelligence and a gift for political intrigue that gave her the advantage over other women in the harem.

The harem was part of the Sultan’s greater royal family of about 80,000 people, including concubines, viziers, military officers (janissaries, sipahis), eunuchs, and other government officials, all of whom were slaves of foreign (predominantly Slavic and Caucasian) origin acquired through child levy (devfirme), slave trade, or as gifts.^[13] This slave elite—frequently referred to as the kullar or kul [‘a slave of the sultan, educated in the palace and in the service of the state’]^[14]—was the sultan’s property, even though it differed radically from other types of Ottoman slaves, such as domestic or galley slaves, in that its members were raised in the imperial palace, well educated, and appointed to high offices of state.

Hurrem understood the Sultan’s nature very well^[15] and skillfully used that knowledge to her advantage. She was able to perceive Suleiman’s most distinctive trait—his reliance on the council of his close relatives and viziers, such as his mother Hafsa, his six sisters, and his friend Ibrahim Pasha—and managed to establish a special bond with the Sultan, having become to him much more than a concubine and mother of his children. She served as his intimate confidante. When the Sultan was absent from the capital on his numerous, almost annual, war campaigns, Hurrem informed him of daily events in their family, the royal court, and the capital, such as the plague epidemic in Istanbul, various rumors about the courtiers, or their children’s ailments and treatments.^[16] Their correspondence is a living proof of their devotion for each other. In one letter, Hurrem wrote: “My Lord, your absence has kindled in me a fire that does not abate. Take pity on this suffering soul and speed your letter, so that I may find in it at least a little consolation.”^[17]

Suleiman’s letters to Hurrem breathed with equal passion. In one of his poetic letters to her, he wrote:

My very own queen, my everything,

my beloved, my bright moon;

My intimate companion, my one and all,

sovereign of all beauties, my sultan.

My life, the gift I own, my be-all,

my elixir of Paradise, my Eden,

My spring, my joy, my glittering day,

my exquisite one who smiles on and on.

[ ]

My Istanbul, my Karaman, and all the

Anatolian lands that are mine;

My Bedakhshan and my Kipchak territories, my Baghdad and my Khorasan. [... ]^[18]

Suleiman expressed his love for Hurrem in many other ways. His treatment of Hurrem was exceptional by all standards of his slave elite. Hurrem’s harem salary—2,000 aspers a day—was phenomenal! For a comparison, a standard hasseki stipend in the sixteenth century was between 150 and 500 aspers per day, according to the Ottoman privy purse records.^[19]

One can say that Suleiman put Hurrem outside and above the slave hierarchy, having broken practically every article of the imperial harem protocol to her benefit. In 1533 or 1534—the exact date is unknown, but possibly after the death of Suleiman’s mother, valide sultan Hafsa, in 1533—Suleiman contracted a legal marriage with Hurrem, thereby manumitting her as a slave. The event shocked both the Ottoman public and the Western observers: “In doing this,” wrote ambassador Busbecq, “he violated the custom of the sultans who had preceded him, none of whom had contracted a marriage since the time of Bajazet I.”^[20] The wedding was celebrated in a magnificent formal ceremony. A journal entry of the Genoese Bank of St. George in Istanbul described the festivities in the following manner:

This week there has occurred in this city a most extraordinary event, one absolutely unprecedented in the history of the sultans. The Grand Signior Suleiman has taken to himself as his Empress a slave woman from Russia, called Roxalana, and there has been great feasting. The ceremony took place in the Seraglio, and the festivities have been beyond all record. There was a public procession of the presents. At night the principal streets were gaily illuminated and there is much music and feasting. The houses are festooned with garlands and there are everywhere swings in which the people swing by the hour with great enjoyment. [... ] There is great talk about the marriage and none can say what it means.^[21]

With the marriage contract, Hurrem was awarded 5,000 ducats annually in legal dowry.^[22] She was now a wealthy sultana, with grand apartments and a hundred maids.

Hurrem’s power was also manifest in the fact that upon marrying her, the Sultan became practically monogamous, which was unheard of in the Ottoman harem history.^[24] Rumor had it that she persuaded the Sultan to marry off the most beautiful young concubines in his harem, arguing that their unused beauty was being wasted away. Traditionally, those concubines who did not become intimate with the sultan would eventually be married off to high-ranking court officials, members of the kullar, and would thus graduate from the harem. Yet, as one writer put it, when Hurrem burst into the imperial harem, everyone graduated very quickly.^[25]

Hurrem’s long-time rival, Mahidevran, was out of the way in 1534, having followed her son Mustafa to the province of Manisa, in eastern Turkey.^[26] In the Ottoman royal family tradition, a sultan’s concubine was to remain in the harem only until her son came of age (around 16 years old or so), after which he would be sent away from the capital to govern a faraway province, and his mother would follow him. She would return to Istanbul only in the capacity of valide sultan, or mother of the reigning sultan. This tradition, as well as the tradition of sultans’ not having legal wives, was designed to protect the ruling dynasty from the influence of one woman or her clan.

Hurrem however remained in the harem with her hunchback son Jihangir, even after her three other sons—Mehmed, Selim, and Bayazid—left Istanbul to govern their provinces.^[27] Moreover, in 1536 Hurrem transferred the harem from the Old Palace (Eskiserai) to the New Palace (Topkapi).^[28] Such close proximity to the sovereign enabled her to exert enormous influence both on him and the Ottoman affairs. She influenced Suleiman’s choice of viziers and grand viziers, and she actively participated in the Sultan’s diplomatic correspondence.^[29]

The Turkish public was quite troubled by such drastic, unprecedented changes in the imperial harem tradition and “by this persistent attachment of the monarch to one woman, which it considered unnatural and harmful.”^[30] The Italian traveler Luigi Bassano wrote in his Icostumi et i modi: “... the Janissaries and the entire court hate her and her children likewise, but because the Grand Turk loves her very much, no one dares to speak, and always every one speaks ill of her and of her children, and well of the first-born [i.e., Mustafa] and of his mother [i.e., Mahidevran], who has been repudiated.”^[31] The Turks believed that Hurrem held her astonishing power over Suleiman through witchcraft, and they called her ziadi, or witch. In Bassano’s words, Suleiman “bears her such love and keeps such faith to her that all his subjects marvel and say that she has bewitched him, and they call her ziadi [‘witch’].”^[32] Busbecq also cited, in his Turkish Letters, the rumor that Roxolana practiced witchcraft to entice Suleiman. While describing the Turkish belief that the hyena had a great potency in love, Busbecq mentioned several hyena owners in Istanbul who were reluctant to sell them, because they were saving them for the Sultana, “as the Sultan’s wife was commonly reputed to retain his affection by love-charms and magic arts.”^[33]

In Hurrem’s defense, it must be said that the accusations of her as a schemer and witch resulted from her ambiguous status in the harem. As Leslie Peirce argues, in the imperial harem tradition, the two roles of a sultan’s concubines—his favorite (a sexual role) and the mother of the prince (a post-sexual role)—were separated, the separation made at the moment when the woman left the harem to follow her adult son to a province. In Hurrem, however, “these two functions were collapsed for the first time in the career of one woman,” as she was “caught between two conflicting loyalties: mother to the prince, and wife to the sultan.”^[34] The public was thus confused as to whether Hurrem was loyal to her husband or to the princes, as the system did not allow a compromise in this regard.

In the spring of 1536, a dramatic event took place in the imperial harem that would be afterwards connected with Hurrem’s intrigues. The Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha (1493-1536), Suleiman’s bosom friend and favorite courtier, was suddenly executed in the imperial palace after he had dined with the Sultan and retired into a guest bedroom for the night. He was found dead the following morning—his throat cut, and the walls of his bedroom splattered with blood. Ibrahim’s execution came as a surprise to many. He had commanded extraordinary personal power due to his longstanding friendship with the Sultan. Captured as a boy from near Parga on the coast of Epirus, Ibrahim was presented to Suleiman as a page when the latter was still a young prince. Handsome, charming, intelligent, musically gifted, and socially adept, Ibrahim quickly became Suleiman’s favorite. After Suleiman ascended to the throne in September 1520, Ibrahim quickly made an illustrious career as a statesman, rising from the master of the inner chamber to the high court falconer, and to the Grand Vizier within the first three years of Suleiman’s rule.^[35] According to some sources, he even married Suleiman’s sister Hatice Sultan in a magnificent wedding ceremony in May 1524.^[36] Ibrahim was appointed Commander-in-Chief for several war campaigns (including three in Hungary and one in Persia) that he carried out successfully. He was in charge of almost all European diplomatic negotiations at the Sublime Porte.^[37] By 1535, Ibrahim had reached the zenith of power and amassed enormous wealth. He had built for himself a splendid palace on the Hippodrome, surrounded by beautiful gardens. He also endowed the construction of numerous charitable and state structures, including mosques, imarets (public soup kitchens), bridges, and aqueducts. ^[38] His sudden execution on March 15, 1536, was conducted secretly and without any apparent reason. Unlike his magnificent career, his end was undignified: his body, stripped of its clothes, was thrown outside the harem gate and then clandestinely buried in an unmarked grave. Moreover, all of his estates, foundations, and possessions were confiscated. Even his name eventually disappeared from history books.^[39]

Hurrem’s role in the downfall of Ibrahim is a matter of conjecture. Many early modern sources did not mention her name in connection with this story. Although it is difficult to account for Ibrahim’s sudden demise, there are several possible explanations. One possibility is that Ibrahim caused his own destruction with his arrogant behavior and extravagant lifestyle. Power, wealth, and favoritism may have corrupted him to the point that he forgot his place. In his chronicle De la origine deli Imperatori Ottomani (1538), Theodoro Spandugino (Theodoro Spandounes) wrote that Suleiman showered Ibrahim with gold and presents, and “gave Ibrahim so much power to appoint and dismiss that he was like a universal patron of all government officials.”^[40] Having amassed enormous power and wealth (“vne insolente prosperite” [‘an insolent prosperity’]^[41]), he sometimes acted, and referred to himself, as “sultan.”^[42] There were also rumors that Ibrahim had harbored secret sympathies for Christians and was himself a clandestine Christian. This possibility, however, is unlikely in light of his successful military conquests in Hungary, and may be the slander of his rivals at the court who were jealous of Ibrahim’s extraordinary power and eager to bring him down.^[43]

Thus Hurrem was not necessarily the culprit in Ibrahim’s death. But she might have exploited the rumors against Ibrahim and influenced Suleiman’s decision to remove him.^[44] Her remark, in one of her earlier letters to Suleiman (from 1526), suggests that the relationship between the two favorites was not without tension: “And now you inquire about why I am hurt by Ibrahim Pasha. You will hear about it when God willing my meeting with you will be granted to me. For the moment tell Pasha our greetings. We hope they accept.”^[45] Ibrahim and Hurrem were the only two people who held a unique place in Suleiman’s life without being his blood relatives. As the intimates of the Sultan, they certainly vied for his affection. After Hafsa’s death (1533) and Mahidevran’s departure from the harem (1534), Ibrahim remained Hurrem’s only rival for the Sultan’s attention. But even if Hurrem’s jealousy of Ibrahim was illusory, it could have been easily imagined. And, indeed, so it was imagined by European chroniclers, beginning with Paolo Giovio in the 1550s, after whom Europeans firmly connected Ibrahim’s death with Roxolana’s machinations.^[46]

By the mid-1530s, Hurrem was able to wield more power than ever at the royal court. The 1539 marriage of her daughter Mihrimah to Rustem Pasha—a captive of Bosnian origin who was shrewd enough to earn governor positions at Suleiman’s court, and was appointed Grand Vizier in 1544^[47]—allowed Hurrem to form her own faction within the harem family and the government. For the first time in Ottoman history, a former concubine was able to wield so much power due to her unique position within the dynasty.^[48]

During these years, Hurrem’s royal status and public image were strengthened through her numerous building projects. Women in the Ottoman imperial family habitually endowed religious and charitable buildings, but the latter were commonly located outside, or at least on the outskirts, of the capital. Hurrem, however, had the sole privilege of building such foundations in the very heart of Istanbul. This confirmed her high status within the Ottoman dynasty.^[49] In 1538­1539, royal architect Sinan built her a charitable complex at the Avret Pazari [‘Women’s Bazaar’; later named Hasseki] in the Aksaray district of Istanbul. Hurrem’s endowment included a mosque, a medrese (university), an imaret (public soup kitchen), an elementary school, a hospital (added later, 1550-1551), and a fountain.^[50] Later, Sinan built a double bath (hamam) bearing Hurrem’s name on the grounds of the Hippodrome and next to Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia), a very prestigious area of the capital.^[51] In addition to the Istanbul endowments, Hurrem built mosque complexes and charitable foundations in Adrianopol, Ankara, Edirne, Karapinar (in Anatolia), Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina.^[52]

A tragedy that must have tarnished Hurrem’s triumph during this period was the death of her eldest son Mehmed in 1543. The young Prince was a charming person and an able governor of Manisa. Some speculated that he would be Suleiman’s heir apparent.^[53] His death was evidently a deeply felt loss for Suleiman and his family: the Sultan expressed his grief very publicly by constructing a §ehzade [‘Prince’] mosque in his memory.^[54] After Mehmed’s death, Suleiman’s eldest son by Mahidevran, Prince Mustafa, was favored by both the court and the army as the new heir apparent. Ottoman historian Pe^evi described Mustafa as being “smarter and better qualified” to be a sultan than Suleiman’s other three sons.^[55]

What happened 10 years later—the execution of Prince Mustafa at the order of his own father—constitutes one of the most dramatic and most frequently described moments of Ottoman history. In retrospect, the entire blame for the fall of Mustafa was put on Hurrem Sultan and Rustem Pasha. The Istanbul public believed that Hurrem masterminded the plot against Mustafa in order to secure the throne for one of her sons, and that she was assisted in this plan by her son-in-law, Grand Vizier Rustem. Busbecq wrote in his Turkish Letters'. “The Turks [...] are convinced that it was by the calumnies of Roostem and the spells of Roxolana, who was in ill repute as a practiser of witchcraft, that the sultan was so estranged from his son as to entertain the design of getting rid of him.”^[56]

According to popular rumors, through her sorcery and female charms Hurrem managed to raise doubts and suspicions about Mustafa in the Sultan’s mind. At her behest, Rustem produced a forged letter implicating Mustafa in dealings with Suleiman’s arch-enemy, the Persian Shah. Hurrem also attempted, unsuccessfully, to kill Mustafa by sending him poisoned clothes as a gift. Finally, on October 6, 1553, the suspicious Suleiman summoned Mustafa from the province of Amasia, which the latter governed at the time, to his military tent in Aleppo and ordered his eunuchs to strangle the Prince on the spot.^[57] Gruesome details of this drama emerged in most European accounts of the tragedy: that Suleiman was watching the cruel spectacle from behind a veil in the tent and was even encouraging the mutes to finish their bloody deed promptly^[58]; that shortly afterwards, Hurrem’s hunchback son Cihangir (Jihangir), unable to cope with his beloved half-brother’s violent death, either died from grief^[59] or committed suicide^[60]; and that later Hurrem organized the murder of Mustafa’s young son.^[61]

These tragic events caused great turmoil among the janissaries and the army, and the rebellion was appeased only by lavish bounties.^[62] Rustem was dismissed from his post until 1555, when he was reinstated as Grand Vizier. There also appeared numerous poetic laments on Mustafa’s death. The poet Yahya Bey wrote:

Alas! alas! and a column of the earth is broke atwain;

For the tyrant Death’s marauders Prince Mustafa have slain.

Eclipsed is his sun-bright visage, away were his helpmeets ta’en;

Through treason and guile have they wroughten the House of Osman bane.^[63]

In another moving elegy, the poet Sami addressed Suleiman himself, appealing to his reputation as a just and lawful ruler, the Kanuni [‘Law-Giver’], and to his poetic name of Muhibbi [‘Lover’]:

O king of noble blood is this justice?

You may be the lord of the world but is this proper government?

Is this the practice of the great emperors of history?

[ ]

Is this tenderness to kill someone as dear to you as Mustafa?

You killed him deluded by a lying trick and where is the truth in that?

[ -. ]

You have been deluded by the words of an enemy: is that love?^[64]

Nevertheless, many accounts of the Mustafa tragedy were based on unsubstantiated gossip and speculation, and it is possible that the roles of Hurrem and Rustem in this affair had been greatly exaggerated.^[65] Hurrem’s fears of Mustafa were not unreasonable, as she had a great stake in this matter. Had Mustafa ascended to the throne, all Hurrem’s sons would have most likely been executed, according to the fratricide custom of the Ottoman dynasty, which required that all brothers of the new sultan be executed to avoid feuds among royal siblings.

And yet, exonerating Mustafa entirely as an innocent victim and portraying Suleiman as a mere puppet in Hurrem’s hands is also unfair. There had been signs of tension between the Sultan and Mustafa long before October 1553, whether provoked by the Hurrem faction or by others. Although Mustafa was favored to be the next sultan by his faction, this was not necessarily what Suleiman had in mind. The history of the military and governorship appointments of Suleiman’s sons provides a rather interesting piece of evidence in this regard. Traditionally, the son favored by the sultan as heir apparent would be appointed to govern the southwest province of Manisa, which was closest to the capital. Such a strategy was designed to assist the favored heir in reaching the capital, and the throne, sooner than other brothers when the incumbent sultan died. Mustapha governed Manisa between 1534 and 1541. But in 1541 he was appointed to govern the rather remote province of Amasia in eastern Turkey. It is also curious that there is no evidence of Mustafa having ever participated in a war campaign—unlike Suleiman’s other sons. Mustafa may have been Suleiman’s early favorite,^[66] but the situation mysteriously changed after 1541.

By 1553 Mustafa had served as a province governor for 20 years and had most likely been disappointed by the lack of promotion to higher offices.^[67] Suleiman, on the other hand, had other good reasons to fear that one of his sons would overthrow him: his own father, Selim I, reportedly poisoned his grandfather Bayazid (Bajazet) II to “catch the nearest way” to the throne. There had been numerous examples in Ottoman history when young princes overthrew their august fathers.

In any event, it is rather surprising that in the course of a decade Prince Mustafa failed to dissipate his father’s suspicions about himself. The situation had been steadily escalating for years. Because Mustafa was supported by the army, his actions may have eventually developed into a factional war, or at least they may have appeared so to the Sultan. Thus, Suleiman’s reactions were not unreasonable in the face of the impending Civil War.^[68] As Turkish historian Halil Inalcik has argued, Suleiman’s actions against Mustafa reflected his view that law and order in the Empire were more important than family relations.^[69]

That the dynastic tension could be destructive for the peace of the Empire became evident from the events in the wake of Mustafa’s death. Two sons of Hurrem, Selim and Bayazid, became locked in a deadly power struggle for the title of heir apparent. While Hurrem was still alive, she was able to temper their animosity. But after her death in the spring of 1558, the feud between the two brothers exacerbated. By the spring of 1559 it unfolded into a full-scale civil war.^[70] Bayazid was defeated at the battle of Konya and fled to the Persian Shah, Suleiman’s arch-enemy. He was soon extradited to Suleiman’s agents and was executed, together with his sons, at the behest of his own father in Tabriz in September 1561.^[71]

But by that time Hurrem was already dead. She died on April 18, 1558, around the age of 53, of some unknown disease. Suleiman became inconsolable and sank into a period of deep mourning. He buried his wife in a domed mausoleum, close to the Suleymaniye mosque, which he constructed and appointed as his own burial place.^[72] Hurrem was the first woman in Ottoman harem history to have been honored in that way.

The Sultan lived for eight more years—eight unhappy years filled with suffering from gout and arthritis, and from an incurable ulcer, or gangrene, on his leg.^[73] There is no doubt that he also suffered emotionally from the feud between his two remaining sons. Suleiman died suddenly, of a heart attack, on September 7, 1566, while on a war campaign to Szigetvar, Hungary. Altogether he had ruled his Empire for 46 long years, and his reign went down into Ottoman history as the “golden age.” Ultimately, it was Hurrem’s son Selim who inherited the throne, but he turned out to be a drunkard and a weak, ineffectual ruler. Selim II lost the famous Battle of Lepanto (1571) that significantly diminished Ottoman power in the Mediterranean region. Many historians have associated the start of the Ottoman Empire’s decline with his reign.

Unquestionably, Hurrem has left us with a dubious personal and historical legacy. She enjoyed the lifetime devotion of her sultan-husband in the very heart of a crowded Ottoman harem, and bore several of his children. Yet, sadly, her family disintegrated a few years after her death: by 1562 all of her sons, except Selim, were dead.^[74] Those who hated her could gloat at the ironic and tragic twists of fate that rendered this woman her just “desserts,” even if posthumously.

In her harem career, Hurrem achieved infinitely more power than any hasseki in the preceding three hundred years. As Navagero wrote in 1553, “... there has not been in the Ottoman house a lady that has had more authority.”^[75] Unlike other royal concubines before her, who had never risen above the level of harem rivalry, Hurem successfully employed her political ambition and actively shared power with her sovereign husband.

But Hurrem’s personal victory over the Ottoman slave system, though amazing in its scale and significance, led to politically questionable results. She forever changed the balance of power within the Ottoman seraglio, having introduced “the sultanate of women,” or a pattern of strong concubines and sultanas and weak sultans, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She was afterwards blamed for having created “the system of rule by favorites and courtiers which was soon to enfeeble the empire so disastrously.”^[76] Early modern Ottoman historians, such as Qelebi, PeQevi, and Solakzade, portrayed Hurrem as a ruthless schemer pursuing illegitimate goals, and they never forgave her Mustafa. At the same time, they vindicated Suleiman I as an innocent, albeit bewitched and uxorious, ruler.^[77] This highly unpopular Turkish image of Hurrem was transmitted to the early modern West by the diplomats, travelers, and escaped slaves, and it persisted in European historical writings on the Ottoman Empire for several centuries.

The Collection

The essays and translations selected for this collection largely reflect the evolution of the Roxolana image in Western and Eastern Europe from the mid-sixteenth century to the present. The volume is divided into two parts: the first featuring seven critical essays, and the second, six excerpts and texts from never-before­translated works concerning Roxolana as a historical person or dramatic character. In addition, three Appendices provide valuable material related to the scope of this volume: the plot summaries of six plays discussed or translated in this volume, a brief essay of the origins of the names and a chronology of Hurrem’s life and major events of Suleiman’s reign.

Galina Yermolenko’s essay opens Part I to offer the readers a comprehensive evolution of the Roxolana image in Europe throughout the ages (from the mid­sixteenth century to the present) and cultures (Italy, France, England, Germany, Poland, and Ukraine). The purpose of such an overview is to demonstrate a common element in the perception of the Roxolana figure by the West, despite certain cultural variations of her image in specific Western European countries. This composite Western image largely follows the development of Europe’s relations with the Turkish “Other” throughout the ages, as the very concept of “Europeanness” was evolving against the image of the “Turk.”^[78] The essay also shows that the development of the Roxolana image took a different shape in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Ukraine, due to their different historical fates and geographic locales. This chapter places in a larger context the remaining essays that deal with culture-specific and time-specific images of Roxolana.

The next two critical essays discuss the impact of the Roxolana figure on English history and drama. Claire Jowitt’s chapter shows how Roxolana served as a prototype for Queen Tota, a character from Thomas Heywood’s play Fair Maid of the West (Parts I and II), who is represented as a sexual predator and a manipulative and ruthless witch. The essay explores the ways in which Bess, “the fair maid of the West,” simultaneously represents the antithesis of the famous Sultana and mimics the Moorish Queen. Judy Hayden’s essay in Chapter 3 compares the depiction of the exotic Roxolana in two Restoration plays: The Tragedy of Mustapha (1665), by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, and Ibrahim the Illustrious Bassa (1676), by Elkanah Settle. This comparison allows Hayden to closely examine the historical context in which these two tragedies were written, focusing on the implications of the Roxolana figure for the court of Charles II, and the relationship between the King, his numerous mistresses, and his subjects.

Part I of the collection also features four essays on the continental European images of Roxolana from the sixteenth century onward. Beate Allert’s chapter discusses the perception of Roxolana in four seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German tragedies: Daniel von Lohenstein’s Ibrahim Bassa (1653), August von Haugwitz’s Obsiegende Tugend: Oder der Bethorte doch wieder Bekehrte Soliman (1684), Christian Weisse’s Mustapha und Zeangir (1761), and Gotthold Lessing’s unfinished Giangir oder der verschmähte Thron (1748). The first two plays elaborated on the Ibrahim murder, while the latter two drew on the Mustapha murder. Allert compares and contrasts the Baroque images of Roxolana featured in Lohenstein’s and Haugwitz’s plays with the Enlightenment response to her manifested in the tragedies of Weisse and Lessing. Allert claims that Roxolana remained a figure of much interest for the German Baroque and Enlightenment dramas, where “her depiction move[d] between a fascination with the unknown and exotic to a consideration of philosophical and ethical issues.”

Two essays covering Roxolana in Ukrainian culture illustrate the shifts in the perception of her figure from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century and the present. Oleksander Halenko’s chapter discusses the emergence of a romantic image of Roxolana during nineteenth-century national revival in Ukraine. Halenko connects this phenomenon with the 1856 discovery and publication of an early modern poem “Marusia of Bohuslav” which told a story of a heroic Ukrainian woman freeing Ukrainian Cossacks from Turkish captivity. Halenko’s essay also throws an interesting light on the perception of Turkish captivity by early modern Ukrainians: namely, the different gender expectations and models of behavior that were projected for Ukrainian men and women.

In contrast to this idealized image, Maryna Romanets presents, in Chapter 6, an iconoclastic Roxolana that has appeared in recent Ukranian literature, an image that “demythologizes and demystifies” her through its “hybridization with the conventional Orientalist fantasies of Western libertine pornography.” As a case in point, Romanets analyzes Yuri Vynnychuk’s erotic novel Zhytiie haremnoie [Life in the Harem] (1996) that fabricates a pseudo-autobiographical manuscript of Roxolana. Romanets finds in this novel a “subversive postcolonial stance of post­independence Ukrainian writing,” which reflects the process of “artistic and literary decolonization” of Ukraine. Such an irreverent approach aims at deconstructing “grand old narratives” and at revising and rewriting established historical texts.

Part I closes with an essay by Turkish scholar Ozlem Ogüt Yazicioglu discussing Hurrem’s images in modern Turkish historical and literary works. Ogüt Yazicioglu compares the works of the early Republican era and the 1950s—such as the historical novels by M. Turhan Tan and Feridun TülbentQi, and a cycle of history plays by Orhan Asena (from his Suleiman the Lawgiver Tetralogy, 1950s)—with the more recent writings by Adnan Baykal (Interview with Hurrem Sultan, 2004) and Ozen Yula (UnofficialHurrem, 2005).^[79] Although the twentieth-century works examined the ways in which Hurrem challenged the patriarchal and hierarchical order of the imperial court, the recent works approach the figure of Hurrem along postmodern lines, presenting her as capable of de/reconstructing and transforming herself continuously.

Interestingly, both Romanets’s and Ogüt Yazicioglu’s essays examine contemporary alternative and untraditional readings of the Roxolana/Hurrem figure, which manifests a postmodern tendency for probing into the issues of truth, representation, and identity. At the same time, they both deal with the texts that simultaneously appropriate and criticize western fantasies of the Orient and other cliches associated with the Self/Other dichotomy.

Part II of the volume contains a number of never-before-published translations from continental European texts involving Roxolana. The first five texts largely represent several widely known plots involving Roxolana that circulated in early modern European history and drama: 1) how she tricked Soliman (Suleiman) into marriage (Desmares’s Roxelane); 2) her extreme beauty and Soliman’s great love for her (de Vega’s La Santa Liga); 3) her part in the fall of Ibrahim Bassa (Illescas’s chronicle); and 4) her part in the execution of Prince Mustapha (Bonarelli’s Il Solimano) and the ensuing suicide of Mustapha’s half brother Jihangir (Lessing’s Giangir).^[80]

Ana Pinto’s translation of an excerpt from a Spanish historical chronicle Segundaparte de la Historia pontificaly catholica (1606), by Gonzalo de Illescas, relates the story of Ibrahim Bassa’s fall. In an account very similar to Paolo Giovio’s in his chronicle Historiarum sui temporis (1552), Illescas connects Ibrahim’s fall with Roxolana’s intrigues. The excerpt thus demonstrates the pan-European “recycling” and proliferation of the negative Roxolana image (associated with her interference into Ottoman state affairs) in early modern Western chronicles and compilations.^[81]

Pinto’s translation of several scenes from Lope de Vega’s play La Santa Liga (1598-1603) provides a glimpse into early modern Spanish literary constructions of Roxolana (Rosa Solimana), a little known page in the evolution of her Western images. In contrast to Illescas’s chronicle and the French and English Senecan tragedies that demonized Roxolana as a law-breaker and a witch, Rosa Solimana appears as a positive character here, as her sensible advice to the Sultan and her excessive beauty are highly praised.^[82] It is rather Sultan Selim (Selim II), the quintessential Turkish sultan and Rosa’s typical husband in Spanish literature of the Golden Age,^[83] who is portrayed as an idle and lustful “Turk.” La Santa Liga features an early modern topos—the conflict between love and duty in a male ruler, and the danger that a beautiful woman poses for him. The play also manifests the importance, for the Spanish cultural memory, of the Battle of Lepanto and Spain’s leading role in the Western Christendom’s victory over the Turks.

Virginia Picchietti’s translation of Acts IV and V of Prospero Bonarelli’s neoclassical tragedy Il Solimano (1620), featuring the Mustapha-Roxolana plot, gives the readers an opportunity to witness a shift in the early modern dramatic representations of Roxolana. Here she emerges as a genuinely tragic heroine. The reader will also be able to experience the neoclassical atmosphere of the play, as the events are related in a tone evocative of the fatalism permeating ancient Greek tragedies, such as Oedipus Rex.

In contrast, Roxolana appears in a much lighter context in Andrzej Dziedzic’s translation of Acts II and V of Jean Desmares’s tragicomedy Roxelane (1643), which dramatizes the anecdote of Roxolana’s clever ruse in getting Soliman to marry her.^[84] This tragicomedy suggests a more tolerant attitude toward women’s participation in governing a state: at the end the Sultan welcomes Roxolana (Roxelane) as his “legitimate wife.” One can also view Soliman here as a new

type of a ruler, who is capable of reconciling duty before the law with a passion for his wife, and is willing to share power with her.

Beate Allert’s translation of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s unfinished fragment Giangir oder der verschmähte Thron (1748) gives the readers a glimpse into how the Enlightenment may have perceived Roxolana. This translation accompanies Allert’s discussion of the response of the German Baroque and Enlightenment drama to Roxolana in Chapter 4.

Galina Yermolenko’s translation ofthe libretto of a Ukrainian opera Roksoliana, composed by Denys Sichynsky in 1911, demonstrates how Roxolana was turned into a national heroine, even a martyr, by the nineteenth- and early twentieth­century national revival discourse. This translation differs from the preceding four translations of western plays in its radically different conception of the Roxolana figure while retaining the conventional figure of the “Turk” (Suleiman) as alternating between excessive cruelty, amorous passion, and mercy.

In exploring the allure and pervasiveness of the Roxolana figure in the European imagination, from the sixteenth century through the present, the collection delves into major anxieties Europeans have had in relation to the Self and the Other. As a woman of Eastern European descent, a former slave, a Muslim convert, and a powerful Asian queen, Roxolana stands at the crossroads of these concerns. A crosscultural and transnational figure, she represents the Exotic Female Other par excellence.

The collection also brings to the fore, and questions, the roles of various cultural and political representations in the ever-changing discourse on Roxolana. Representations of the past often reflect and respond to the concerns of the cultures in which they are produced. In doing so, representations can act as both “formations” and “deformations,” to paraphrase both Roland Barthes and Edward Said.^[85] European representations of the motifs and figures associated with the Ottoman Other are particularly marked by such “deformations,” as they “did not necessarily refer to the real Orient but to the field surrounding the word.”^[86] In Said’s famous statement, “the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone else’s work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an amalgam of all of these.”^[87] Roxolana, in this respect, is like the Orient itself—less a historical figure than an amalgam and a site of various cultural fantasies and constructions.