Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (32 page)

10 - SEX AND FAMILY

Islamic
law “assigned men and women distinct social roles, and made many rights and
obligations contingent upon gender identity.” Along “with distinctions between
free and slave, and between Muslim and non-Muslim, gender difference was one of
the most significant distinctions of the Islamic legal system in the Ottoman
Empire.”

The “proper sphere” of Muslim women as articulated by
classical authorities such as Ghazali was “in domestic and sexual terms.” According
to Ghazali, the principal function of women was to obey male authority and take
care of the household and satisfy their husbands’ sexual desires. In the 16th
century, Ottoman ulema who used Ghazali as their source and model declared that
“women’s obligations” were “to bake bread, clean up the dishes, do the laundry,
prepare meals and the like.” These responsibilities to one’s home were “a
matter of heaven and hell for a woman” for if she failed to perform these
tasks, she would be “a sinner.” Screened from the gaze of the outsider, decent,
obedient, and pious Muslim women had to attend to the everyday needs of their
husbands and children without any reservation.

In Islam, marital sex was viewed as part and parcel of a
believer’s obligation toward God and in no way connoted sin for the Muslim
believer. While heterosexuality and marriage were praised as natural, normal,
and indeed necessary, the official Islam of the ulema was “violently opposed to
all other ways of realizing sexual desires,” which were denounced as abnormal,
unnatural, and running “counter to the antithetical harmony of the sexes.” The
curse of God rested on “the boyish woman and effeminate man, male and female
homophilia, auto-eroticism, zoophilia etc.” By rejecting the principle of the
natural male-female relationship, all these “deviations” constituted a revolt
against God and the divine scriptures. Among all these ungodly deviations, the
Quran regarded “male homosexuality the worst,” because it was “the essence of
all perversions.” The story of “Lot (Lut) and his city, Sodom, destroyed by God
for the sexual sins of its people,” was interpreted as the ultimate warning
against a deviation that could lead to the end and destruction of the human
family. And yet, in Ottoman society male erotic attraction to males was assumed
to be natural and, if not universal, sufficiently widespread to be tolerated.

The Ottoman concept of sexuality was based on the
traditional medical notion that human body comprised four basic elements,
namely, air, fire, earth, and water. In this conception, “man and woman were
virtually the same being, differing in the balance between the elements and in
the degree of development.” Rather than “a separate sex,” women were viewed “as
an imperfect version of men, a form that did not reach its full development.” The
“vagina, clitoris, and uterus were assumed to be an underdeveloped version of
the male penis and scrotum, and women were believed to be able to produce semen
in their ovaries and thus contribute to the creation of the fetus.” Because
this view “of the body implied that men and women were not inherently different
sexually, present-day concepts of same-sex intercourse as radically different
from heterosexual intercourse were not part of the Ottoman culture.” Thus, “while
homosexual acts were forbidden by law, as were other forms of sexual activity
such as incest and fornication, same-sex intercourse was not perceived as
fundamentally unnatural and abnormal.” Indeed, “in most circles, same-sex love
and intercourse (mainly, but not exclusively, between older and younger men)
were perceived as more proper.” Female “same-sex intercourse was known and
sometimes mentioned, but largely ignored by the men responsible for almost all
writing in the empire until well into the 19th century.” The “general
preference for homoerotic ties was present most prominently in mystical Sufi
circles” as “love between an initiate and a young disciple, often referred to
as ‘gazing upon an unbearded youth.’” By “gazing upon the beauty” of an
unbearded boy (
amrad)
, “the Sufi would fill his heart with the
attributes of God’s splendor and learn the virtues of unconditional love.”

PROSTITUTION

In addition to young beardless boys, female prostitutes
provided another important outlet for male sexual energy. As in other
societies, “traffic in sexual pleasure” was widespread in the Ottoman Empire “since
its early days, and edicts and
fetvas
were published frequently to try
to contain what authorities viewed as a problem for moral order and public
health.” During the 16th century, the central government tried several times to
clamp down on prostitution by expelling prostitutes from Istanbul, Damascus,
and other major urban centers of the empire, “and in a famous edict they were
forbidden to follow the army as it marched to and from the front.” Even in
state regulations, “procurers were warned against the use of slave girls as
prostitutes in hostels around the empire.”

The practice of punishing prostitutes by banishing them
from towns, and at times, even hanging them at the entrance to city markets,
continued into the 17th century. While such harsh punishments were hailed by
the members of the elite who could support several wives and female slaves,
they were opposed by the poor who could only afford cheap and publically
available sex. In his
Book of Travels,
the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi
proudly reported that in 1652, his patron, Melek Ahmed Paşa, who at the
time served as the governor of Rumelia, banished all of the prostitutes from
Sofia, Bulgaria. In accordance with Islamic law and “for the reform of the
world,” a few of these prostitutes “were strung up like chandeliers to adorn
the town at the street corners in the silk market.” To demonstrate the
popularity of his patron’s act, Çelebi added that “the notables of the province
were grateful that their town was now tranquil and free of prostitutes,” but he
had to admit that “for the sake of their carnal pleasures,” the local “rogues
and brigands bruited it about that the town’s resources had grown scarce, and
there would now be famine and dearth, even plague.” And indeed, the plague they
had predicted did begin, devastating the town and killing thousands.

Common though it may have been, prostitution in the Ottoman
Empire “was not usually practiced in formal establishments intended for the
purpose.” The “older” and more traditional form of prostitution portrayed in
the Karagöz shadow theater was Zenne, “the lone damsel” living “in a rented
house in the neighborhood and socializing with men” and symbolizing the “blurred
boundaries between companionship and sexual favors.” It was only in the second
half of the 19th century that the brothel “as a commercial enterprise” and a
new space for male-female encounters emerged. Indeed, throughout the 19th
century, as the European urban centers of the empire grew in size and
population and a “culture of public parks, cafés, beer gardens, and dance halls”
spread, prostitution “assumed new proportions” and emerged as a “major
industry.”

In 1879 in Salonika, local journalists “denounced the
‘depraved women’ who haunted the city’s beer-halls, and demanded they be driven
away,” and a year later, “Christian, Jewish and Muslim community leaders
protested to the municipality at their presence in the heart of the city,” but
by 1910, “girls of all races and religions were working its more than one
hundred brothels in a separate quarter near the railway” and “neither the
rabbis nor the other notables of the city seemed very concerned about the
problem.” According to one source, there were three types of prostitutes: “the
woman who had her own room, the woman who went to the room of her client, and
those who consorted in the open because woman and client were both too poor to
rent rooms.” This last category “included youths from villages who had saved up
in order to walk many kilometers to the town for no other reason than sex.”

In addition to the brothel, the second half of the 19th
century witnessed the emergence of a new phenomenon in Ottoman society, namely,
the practice of keeping a mistress or the woman who lived in a clandestine
apartment and served the unique sentimental and sexual needs of her lover. Traditional
Ottoman society had developed its own unique outlets for males who wished to
have extramarital sex. In accordance with the Islamic law, “men could marry
several women; richer men could own slaves and exploit them sexually; many
public baths also functioned as meeting places for same-sex encounters,” but as
“slavery declined in the 19th century and polygamy was frowned on in certain
urban circles,” the new institution of mistress “often called
metres
(from
French
maitresse)
” appeared and took over from Zenne, the neighborhood’s
“lone damsel.” The brothels of “the fashionable streets of Pera, Istanbul’s
urban center, were now in need of new venues for extramarital and premarital
encounters of the modern kind.” According to the Islamic law, the punishment
for an adulteress was death by stoning. Various schools of Islamic
jurisprudence, however, introduced provisos, which made inflicting such harsh
punishment in effect impossible. That “adultery had in fact been committed had
to be proved through the testimony of at least four male witnesses, and a woman
accused by her husband of adultery could evade punishment by denying the
allegation and basing her denial on a solemn oath.” This “particular ruling was
commonly adhered to in Ottoman jurisdiction where
kadis
generally
refrained from deciding that adultery had been formally proven.” When residents
of a neighborhood surprised a couple engaged in intercourse, “the verdict would
usually be one of ‘alleged adultery’ and a prison term and/or condemnation to
the galleys would be imposed.” Women “who bore illegitimate children or
cohabited out of wedlock,” however, “were never regarded with tolerance, and
urban security officers were empowered to keep an eye on them,” or place them
in the custody of the local police. To reduce the potential for extramarital
relationships, every effort was made to “keep unmarried men out of residential
districts.”

GIVING BIRTH

Among the Ottoman elite, astrologers and diviners were
asked to take the woman’s horoscope and determine whether she should get
pregnant and if so, when. At times, they warned the wife against pregnancy by
predicting that she would suffer and that in the end she would die in the
childbirth. Sometimes, such warnings alarmed and frightened the wife to the
point that she would not allow her husband to approach her. Regardless, the
news of a woman’s pregnancy was welcomed with joy and a great deal of
trepidation. In rich and powerful households, the servants celebrated the news
of a pregnancy because whenever the lady of the house gave birth, she distributed
money and gifts to the members of her household.

Highly skilled midwives were indispensable to childbirth.
Women who had acquired considerable experience and skill in delivering children
were greatly respected at all levels of Ottoman society. Many families had
their own favorite midwife, in whom they had developed enormous confidence.
When the woman’s labor had reached the final stage, the midwife sat her on a
chair with side arms, a high back, and “a seat scooped out to facilitate the
delivery of the child.” Just prior to the appearance of the child’s head, the
midwife uttered the
tekbir,
or “God is great.” With the arrival of the
child, the midwife and all the women present proclaimed the
şehadet:
“I
bear witness that there is no god but God, I bear witness that Muhammad is the
messenger of God.” Then the midwife washed the newborn in warm water and cut
the umbilical cord.

To protect the mother from evil eye, a copy of the Quran,
which had been installed in an embroidered bag, was placed at the head of the
couch. At its foot hung “an onion impaled on a skewer, wrapped in red muslin
and ornamented with garlic and blue beads.” When the mother had been dressed
up, her husband came to visit his wife and the new baby. He held the child
toward Mecca and uttered the Muslim’s declaration of faith in his right ear: “I
bear witness that there is no god but God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the
messenger of God.” He then chanted the
bismillah
(“In the name of God”)
in the baby’s left ear and three times announced the child’s name. Shortly
after a successful delivery, and sometimes the day after the baby was born, a
messenger bearing the good news visited the homes of relatives and friends. At
each home, he was rewarded with a tip.

Childbirth in the Ottoman Empire could be extremely
dangerous—even when the woman giving birth was a member of the Ottoman ruling
family. In his writings, the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi described the
pregnancy of Kaya Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Murad IV, who was married to
Evliya’s patron, Melek Ahmed Paşa. As the time for delivery arrived, close
female relatives and friends, and all the experienced women and skilled
midwives, arrived. Forty Quran recitals and 4,000 invocations of the prophet
Muhammad were recited, and after she had given birth to a daughter, her husband
gave away 10 purses of his own and 40 purses of Kaya Sultan’s money to the poor
and the needy, as alms and a sincere expression of gratitude. Melek Ahmed Paşa
also “clothed 500 men in all sorts of garments and they responded by showering
him with benedictions.” But as Çelebi had to admit, God did not answer these
prayers and “the placenta,” which was “supposed to come down the uterus and
exit the mother’s womb as the afterbirth,” remained “stuck in the womb.” The
women and the midwives placed the Kaya Sultan “in blankets and shook her
mercilessly.” Twice “they suspended her upside down,” and they “filled a honey
barrel with orange-flower water and put her inside.” To make a long and sad
story short, the women “tortured” Kaya Sultan “for three days and nights”
without finding a remedy. Finally, “the bloody midwives came with their arms
smeared in almond oil and stuck their oily arms up into the sultana’s uterus all
the way to their elbows” and “brought out a piece of skin.” But they were not
willing to release their patient. One midwife insisted that there was still
some skin left inside and “stuck her hand up the vagina and brought out several
items that looked like pieces of wet skin.” At last, four days after giving
birth to a girl, the princess died.