← Back to the front page

Distinctive Facts About The Mighty Ottoman Empire

Khalid Elhassan August 13, 2020 35 min

Battle of Ankara - Timurid Empire — Tamerlane gloating over the captured Bayezid I. Wikimedia

17. Cage Your Brothers Instead of Kill Them

Ottoman royal siblings locked up in the Kafes. Imgur

Eventually, a reaction set in against the Ottoman tradition of fratricide. So a new tradition was developed to take its place: instead of new sultans outright murdering their siblings upon ascending the throne, they simply locked them up. Thus was born the system of the Ottoman Kafes, or “Cage”, whereby sultans set up a secluded part of their royal Harem as a detention center for their brothers.

There, in the Kafes, potential rivals to the throne were kept under house arrest, under surveillance by palace guards and isolated from the outside world to prevent intrigues and plots. As seen below, life in the Kafes could be rough. However, for those living in it, by dint of the very fact that they were still living at all, meant that it (usually) beat the alternative.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.