Both local people visiting Topkapi Palace Harem and foreign tourists who have often been deliberately misinformed about Turkey, suppose that the Ottoman Sultans lived a life of pleasure and dissipation in the Palace. But it was not like that. For reasons, harem comprised the official buildings that for over 300 years housed the central government of the Ottoman Empire. That is to say, it was the equivalent of both the presidential palace, and prime minister’s office, and key ministries, and headquarters of the army, and so on. Topkapi Palace consisted of three main areas:
The First was the Outer Palace (Birun), which extends from the Imperial Gate to the Gate of the White Eunuchs (Akagalar Kapysi), where the standard of the Prophet (PBUH) (Sancak-i sherif) was kept, and comprises two extensive courtyards. The Sultan’s apartments were not in this outer area. In the early period, it included the office of the Grand Vizier and the Council of State (Dîvân-i Hümayun), and so on.
The Second was the Inner Palace (Enderun) and contained the principal offices of the Ottoman state like the Treasury, the Palace School, the headquarters of the army, and in the early period the Sultan’s pavilion and apartments.
The Third was the Sultan’s ‘home'. The Ottoman Sultans lived here with their extensive families in apartments which today would be considered suitable only as flats for minor officials. The Harem Terrace Pool was a popular attraction spot. Since it was forbidden for men and others who were traditionally and religiously strangers to enter these apartments. The compound was called the Harem-i Hümayun, meaning Imperial Harem.
As well-known, places forbidden to enter were called “harem” by our forefathers. So what does it mean to use the term Harem, which meant places that only people who were not canonically strangers (namahrem) could enter. Harem was not a place where the Sultans caroused and held orgies, as certain writers have described suitably to their own practices.
In Islamic law, the term 'cariye' refers only to female slaves. However, there are two categories of cariye. This is explained in the foregoing introduction on Harem cariye status;
The First are female slaves the masters of whom could only benefit from their daily labors, and with whom sexual relations were prohibited. They could not be used as concubines. There was no difference between these and what today are known as domestic servants and cleaners and even permanent staff. They would go to their masters’ houses early in the morning. They do the cleaning, prepare food, or look after small children. Their male owners’ relations with them resembled those of any contract of employment. Although they were only slaves, they were not lawful for their masters. In any event, the majority of them were married to slaves like themselves. Only, as is described later, female slaves of this category in the Harem could not marry so long as they did not ‘retire’ from the Palace. Mankind has undergone various stages; there was the era of captivity, then that of slavery, and now is the era of wage-earning. Apart from the name and a few restrictions, there was very little difference between slaves of this sort and women servants of the present day.
Most probably you would not expect the daughters and wives of the Sultan in the Sultan’s household, which was known as the Harem, to cook their own food and wash their own clothes. Since they would not do these tasks, there would have to be servants employed to do them. Like such servants today, these would be women, not both male and female. Since free women would not do this work, it would be women who at that time were slaves, that is, cariyes, who would do it. The female slaves in the Ottoman Harem then, who numbered sometimes fifty, seventy, or even four to five hundred, were women servants of this kind. However wrong it would be for the master of a house today to have sexual relations with a woman servant or cleaner who comes to the house. It would have been wrong to the same degree for the Sultans to have sexual relations with female slaves of this sort. For instance, it is known how many women servants are employed in the world Presidential Palaces or any other imperial family palaces in the world at the present time. It is similarly well-known that in these places illicit relations with women employed are unthinkable.
The Second category of female slaves, were those whose owners and masters had the right both of their menial services and to use them as concubines. Their status was that of a sort of wife, from peyk, lowest status to heighest, haseki sultan. In other words ranging from lowest peyk, gözde, Ikbal, Basikbal, Baskadinefendi, Haseki Sultan highest. It was prohibited for them to have sexual relations with anyone other than their masters. Their masters were obliged to treat them as wives. If they bore children they took the name of Ummu’l-veled that is, Mother of so-and-so, and could no longer be sold to anyone else. They would be nominally freed on giving birth to the child of a free man, and obtain their actual freedom on the death of their husbands. They differed from free women in that so long as the marriage contract was not concluded their number could exceed four. It was permitted to conclude the marriage contract with them and give them the status of wife. However, scholars of Islamic law, of chiefly the Hanafi School, did not recommend this in the event of there being free women available. Very few of the women slaves in the Ottoman Harem were of this category. More importantly, up to and including Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, the Ottoman Sultans married free women. With the exception of two or three marriages, those succeeding him married not free women but slaves of the second category above. Of these, some concluded the marriage contract. One should mention that when doing this, they were implicitly following the legal views of the Maliki School. That is to say, from Mehmed the Conqueror onwards, the wives of most of the Ottoman Sultans were female slaves of the second category. OTTOMAN HAREM ® CONTINUED
