[Bilimsel Haber] New Book: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan (Lucienne Thys-Senocak)

[Onur Inal]

Ottoman Women Builders
The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan

Lucienne Thys-Senocak, Koc University, Turkey
Ashgate Publishing: Women and Gender in the Early Modern World

Examined here is the historical figure and architectural patronage of
Hadice Turhan Sultan, the young mother of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV,
who for most of the latter half of the seventeenth century shaped the
political and cultural agenda of the Ottoman court. Captured in Russia
at the age of twelve, she first served the reigning sultan¹s mother in
Istanbul. She gradually rose through the ranks of the Ottoman harem,
bore a male child to Sultan Ibrahim, and came to power as a valide
sultan, or queen mother, in 1648. It was through her generous patronage
of architectural works‹including a large mosque, a tomb, a market
complex in the city of Istanbul and two fortresses at the entrance to
the Dardanelles ‹that she legitimated her new political authority as a
valide and then attempted to support that of her son.

Central to this narrative is the question of how architecture was used
by an imperial woman of the Ottoman court who, because of customary and
religious restrictions, was unable to present her physical self before
her subjects¹ gaze. In lieu of displaying an iconic image of herself, as
Queen Elizabeth and Catherine de Medici were able to do, Turhan Sultan
expressed her political authority and religious piety through the works
of architecture she commissioned. Traditionally historians have
portrayed the role of seventeenth-century royal Ottoman women in the
politics of the empire as negative and de-stabilizing. But Thys-Senocak,
through her examination of these architectural works as concrete
expressions of legitimate power and piety, shows the traditional
framework to be both sexist and based on an outdated paradigm of
decline.

Thys-Senocak¹s research on Hadice Turhan Sultan¹s two Ottoman fortresses
of Seddülbahir and Kumkale improves in a significant way our
understanding of early modern fortifications in the eastern
Mediterranean region and will spark further research on many of the
Ottoman fortifications built in the area. Plans and elevations of the
fortresses are published and analyzed here for the first time. Based on
archival research, including letters written by the queen mother, many
of which are published here for the first time, and archaeological
fieldwork, her work is also informed by recent theoretical debates in
the fields of art history, cultural history and gender studies.

Contents: Introduction; From concubine to Valide: Turhan Sultan¹s rise
through the harem hierarchy; Ottoman women/other women; Defending the
Dardanelles: the fortress of Seddülbahir and Kumkale and the legacy of
Turhan Sultan; Building the capital: the Yeni Valide mosque complex of
Istanbul; The pillar of the state: architecture, agency and self
representation; Glossary; 

Appendices; Bibliography; Index. 
Includes 104 b&w illustrations 
February 2007 
346 pages 
Hardback 978 0 7546 3310 5