The Empress Nurbanu and Ottoman Politics in the Sixteenth Century

Building the Atik Valide

Pinar Kayaalp

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351596619
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Regional Studies

Nurbanu (1525–1583) is one of the most prominent yet least studied royal women of the Ottoman dynasty. Her political and administrative career began when she was chosen as the favorite concubine of the crown prince Selim. Nurbanu's authority increased when her son Murad was singled out as crown prince. By 1574, when her son, Murad III became Sultan, Nurbanu officially took on the title of Valide Sultan, or Queen Mother, holding the highest office of the imperial harem until her death in 1583.

This book concentrates on the Atik Valide mosque complex, which constitutes the architectural embodiment of Nurbanu's prestige, power and piety. The arrangement of the chapters is designed to enable readers to reconsider Ottoman imperial patronage practices of the late sixteenth century using the architectural enterprise of a remarkable woman as the common thread. Chapter 1 provides a general history of the wqaf institution to inform on its origins and evolution. Chapter 2 looks closely at the political dealings of Nurbanu, both in the domestic and the international sphere, building upon research concerning Ottoman royal women and power dynamics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Chapter 3 presents a textual analysis of the written records pertaining to Nurbanu's imperial mosque complex. Chapter 4 examines the distinctive physical qualities and functional features of the Atik Valide within its urban context. The book concludes by assessing to what extent Nurbanu was involved in the representation of her power and piety through the undertaking of her eponymous monument.

Providing a complete study of the life and times of this Ottoman empress, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Ottoman studies, gender studies, history of art and architecture, Islamic studies, history of religion and Middle Eastern studies.

1The shift in the Ottoman patronage system between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

The Ottoman dynasty ruled in an unbroken succession for six centuries, continually adapting to the political, social and economic conditions of the times. Imperial Ottoman patronage in architecture, art, and literature reflected and paralleled these changes. In the Ottoman tradition, the construction of imperial mosque complexes constituted the loftiest affirmation of patronage, a privilege reserved only for select members of the dynastic household. Custom imposed some solid architectonic constraints on an imperial mosque project but, beyond these formal requirements, the access to and the extent of a particular royal pious endowment depended largely on dynastic politics. Kinship, age, reproductive status, and imperial blood ties figured as pivotal parameters in this enterprise, factors that gained further ascendancy when women endowers were involved.¹ By the mid-sixteenth century, the paradigm underwent a dramatic shift as the access by royal women to grand acts of patronage, and the rewards accrued to them as a result, passed from the favorite concubine of the sultan to his mother.²

A waqf is any movable or immovable property that is given up to serve some beneficiaries within the framework of Islamic law and social institutions. In Islamic societies, we find four kinds of charitable waqfs, each with a different purpose. They are hayrî, ehlî, yarı ailevî, and aile. In the hayrî type, the revenue generated by the endowed property is collected through the autonomous functionaries of the endowment and is directly defrayed for the provision of the religious and social services stipulated in the waqf’s deed of trust. In ehlî, the revenue is collected by the appointed members of the endower’s own family, who subsequently allocate it to the realization of the established purposes of the waqf. In the third case, yarı ailevî, the family divides the collected revenue into two parts, keeping one for itself and dispensing the other for the perpetuation of the foundation’s services. An aile waqf is an ordinary family trust with properties endowed for the benefit of its founders’ successive family members. In the last three cases, as the lineage of the endower comes to an end, the endowment reverts from private to public ownership, in effect becoming a hayrî waqf. The current study refers exclusively to this type, considering that all Ottoman imperial waqfs fall into this group, and employs the term waqf to denote only the hayrî type of charitable endowments.³

There is no agreement among scholars of Islamic theology as to the provenance of the waqf institution. In fact, there is no mention in the Qur’an of the term. However, Islamic scholars readily point to some cognate institutions found in the Qur’an, including lending without interest (karz-ı hasen), spending money for God’s sake (infak fi sebilillah), giving property to family members and the needy (i’ta), feeding the poor (it’am), almsgiving (sadaka), and charitable deeds (hayrat).⁴ The Sunna constitutes the second body of Islamic sources in which to trace the provenience of the waqf institution. One hadith that uniformly appears in many waqf deeds is the following:

When a person dies, his good deed comes to an end and his Ledger of Deeds is rolled up. The only person whose Ledger will not close is one who will have left behind three things: (1) ongoing charity (sadaka-i câriye); (2) a work of wisdom for people to benefit from; and, (3) a loyal son who prays for him.⁵

Most Islamic scholars have taken the term sadaka-i câriye in the above hadith to imply waqf-making and have traced the onset of this institution in Islamic experience with the charitable works performed by the Prophet and his Companions. One often quoted example involves ‘Omar b. al-Hattab, the Companion who would become the second caliph, who asked the Messenger what would be the best way to make use of the groves and fields he received as booty after the conquest of Khaibar. Muhammad’s answer was to “tie up” (one of the fundamental meanings of the verb waqafa) the land and gardens, and devote any income from them to the welfare of the faithful.⁶ Notwithstanding such early instances of Islamic waqfs, the problem still persists as to why this institution emerged and thrived in Islam in the first place when the religion already had established not only the charitable duties enumerated earlier in this paragraph, but also the pivotal religious requirements of zekât (alms to the needy, one fortieth of one’s yearly income) and fitre (alms given at the close of Ramadan). Considering that all these duties are prima facie institutions of benevolence, why did waqf-making make up much of the provision of the pious and social services in the Islamic world?

The building of charitable monuments emerged and thrived in Ottoman society to a large extent because it benefited the patron as much as the designated beneficiaries. This is also true for patronage practices across all ages and cultures. To illustrate, if today we evoke the name of Gian Galeazzo, the illustrious member of the Visconti family, it is largely because he was responsible for the materialization of the Duomo in Milan, whose construction Galeazzo commissioned in 1386. Alternatively, if we recall a minor Mamluk ruler, al-Nasir Hasan, it is largely because of the remarkable mosque complex he built in Cairo in the mid-fourteenth century.⁷ Actually, even a small-scale, relatively insignificant charitable deed may be instrumental in keeping alive the name of its benefactor for ages, such as the fountain built by Sultan Abdülmecid in 1839 in honor of his mother, Bezmiâlem, which modestly sits at the center of the neighborhood it lent its name to, the Valide Çeşme neighborhood in Beşiktaş.⁸ Evidently, acts of charitable giving, while intended to draw their initiators closer to God, also help exalt their names in their lifetime and posterity. In other words, a waqf rewards the patron in both the temporal and the spiritual meaning of the term, emphasizing its patron’s wealth, rank, and power as well as generosity, piety, and compassion. Islamic law prescribed a strict process applicable to waqf-making. Once one was conceptualized, a deed of trust (waqfiyya) would be drawn up to withhold the property from the rightful owner and to prescribe the manner in which the endowed property should be employed to serve its purpose. The document would then be signed by witnesses who corroborated the appropriate status of the endower as a free or manumitted adult and an individual of sound mind. Subsequently, a qadi would determine the endowment’s good cause,⁹ and finally approve its establishment. At this point, the waqf would acquire an irreversible legal identity impervious to future vagaries. Specifically, it could no longer be withdrawn or modified, nor could it be seized or usurped by political or religious authorities.

The personal motives of the endowers, as well as those of political and religious authorities, were not categorically subjugated to the legal stature of a waqf. In reality, these motives and considerations, rather than being disassociated from the broader framework of the phenomenon of waqfs, were centrally manifested in the conceptualization and functioning of these charitable projects.¹⁰ Ottoman imperial waqfs were particularly influenced by such factors. For one thing, the sultan closely controlled the establishment of imperial charitable endowments by granting or withholding his requisite approval. Second, dynastic politics could encroach upon the immutability of an imperial endowment even after the qadi’s seal was impressed upon the deed of trust. As an example, Safiye Sultan (d. 1619), the favorite concubine of Nurbanu’s son, Murad III (r. 1574–1595) and mother of Sultan Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603), had to abandon the construction of her imperial mosque complex in Eminönü when, upon Mehmed’s death in 1603, her stipend and grants were abruptly cut-off by the new Sultan, who ordered her back to the Old Palace.¹¹

Imperial waqf-making was by no means the only form of patronage in Ottoman history. Other venues of beneficence were always available, including literary, artistic and scientific patronage, each of which exalted the patron in the eyes of the target audiences. Many influential members of the Ottoman elite were noted as patrons not only of architecture, but other creative and scholarly endeavors as well. For example, the Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha (d. 1561), while engaged in the construction of his major mosque complex in Rodoscuk (1551–1553), endowed several other mosques with expensive copies of Qur’ans.¹² Similarly, the literary and artistic patronage of Mahmud Pasha (1453–1474), Grand Vizier of Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451–1481), rivaled his architectural patronage.¹³ Nonetheless, the construction of large-scale pious endowments always remained the most prestigious form of charitable giving, a venue open only to the most highly placed members of the Ottoman dynastic hierarchy.

There are very few scholarly works devoted exclusively to Nurbanu or her imperial mosque complex in spite of the fact that she was the first and one of the most influential queen mothers of the dynasty as well as the founder of one of the most expansive charitable endowments in the history of the Ottoman Empire.¹⁴ Typically, Nurbanu is referred to as a central figure in Ottoman history within the context of late sixteenth century Harem politics.¹⁵ As for the Atik Valide, it has been treated only within the larger framework of Sinan’s trajectory of charitable building projects and characteristics of Ottoman mosque complexes.¹⁶ This work focuses on this particular mosquer complex, and investigates how this charitable foundation was influenced by, and in turn influenced, the Ottoman architectural patronage system. It frames the conception, planning, construction, and organization phases of the Atik Valide within the broader context of the Ottoman patronage tradition and brings forth Nurbanu’s political and diplomatic trajectory in order to convey the full iconographic import of her monument.

The materialization of the Atik Valide closely reflects the historical circumstances in Ottoman society in the late sixteenth century and imparts a good sense of what was to come in the next. Nurbanu undertook this grand act of patronage at a point in time made critical by a special confluence of events, and its story should be told in this broader context. In the post-declinistic periodization of Ottoman history, the century and a half between the midpoint of Süleyman I’s reign (c. 1545) and the end of Ahmet III’s (1695) is considered an era of adjustment in response to rapid economic, political, and social changes that began taking place all at once in the Ottoman Empire.¹⁷ While it would be questionable to subject a political entity of such longevity and breadth to any sort of rigid temporal demarcations, it should be kept in mind that certain structural changes did take place in that organism in the mid- and late-sixteenth century. Transformation came about gradually, in response to the developments inherited from the previous period, exacerbated by confluent contingencies. The mid- to late- sixteenth century marks the time that the Ottoman Empire tried to come to terms with the new consciousness that it no longer was an indomitable world power. Although the Ottoman state was expansionist until at least 1683, it was considerably less militarily successful after 1566, and there were fewer instances of sultanic participation in campaigns.

In the previous phase of the Empire’s history, the royal family was spread through the dominion, with the sultans frequently away on military campaigns while the princes spent their formative years in Anatolian provincial capitals accompanied by their mothers, mentors, servants, and concubines. Beginning with Hürrem, the mothers of the princes sta...