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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

9. The Sultan’s Palace Was a Claustrophobic Snake Pit

Sultan Selim III holding an audience at the Gate of Felicity, in front of the Topkapi Palace. Wikimedia

Life in the Ottoman sultan’s palace was no bed of roses – not even for the sultan. Throughout much of the Ottoman era, it was deemed unseemly for a sultan to speak too much, so a form of sign language evolved, and the ruler spent most of the day surrounded by silence. Those in the palace intrigued nonstop, as courtiers, viziers, eunuchs, and women of the Harem jockeyed for power.

The powerful eunuchs split along racial lines, and the Chief Black Eunuch and the Chief White Eunuch were fierce rivals. Protocol demanded that the sultan be escorted wherever he went by huge train of attendees, causing one ruler to complain: “If I go to one of the rooms, 40 pages are lined up; if I have to put on my trousers, I do not feel the least comfort, so the sword bearer has to dismiss them“.

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.