Safavid imperial harem

The royal harem of the Safavid ruler played an important role in the history of Safavid Persia (1501-1736).

Suleiman I and his courtiers (1670)
Portrait of Corasi, Sultan Agha Khanum, second wife of Tahmasp I
Fresco from the portico of the Ali Qapu palace, depicting a Persian woman

Hierarchy and organisation

The Safavid harem consisted of mothers, wives, slave concubines and female relatives, and was staffed with female slaves and with eunuchs who acted as their guards and channel to the rest of the world.[1] Shah Sultan Hossain's (r. 1694–1722) court has been estimated to include five thousand slaves; male and female, black and white, of whom one hundred were black eunuchs.[2]

Consorts

The monarchs of the Safavid dynasty preferred to procreate through slave concubines, which would neutralize potential ambitions from relatives and other inlaws and protect patrimony.[1] The slave concubines (and later mothers) of the Shah's mainly consisted of enslaved Circassian, Georgian and Armenian women, captured as war booty, bought at the slave market or received as gifts from local potentates.[1] The slave concubines were sometimes forced to convert to Shia Islam upon entering the harem, and referred to as kaniz.[3][4] In contrast to the common custom in Islamic courts to allow only non-Muslim women to become harem concubines, the Safavid harem also contained Muslim concubines, as some free Persian Muslim daughters were gifted by their families or taken by the royal household to the harem as concubines.[5]

The enslaved harem women could achieve great influence, but there are also examples of the opposite: Shah Abbas II (r. 1642–1666) burned three of his slave-wives alive because they refused to drink with him,[6] as well as another wife for lying about her menstruation period,[7] and Shah Safi (r. 1629–1642) stabbed his wife to death for disobedience.[6]

Princes

In the early Safavid period, young princes were placed in the care of a lala (high-ranking Qizilbash chief who acted as a guardian) and eventually given charge of important governorates.[8] Although this system had the danger of encouraging regional rebellions against the shah, it gave the princes education and training which prepared them for dynastic succession.[8]

This policy was changed by Shah Abbas I (1571-1629), who "largely banished" the princes to the harem, where their social interactions were limited to the ladies of the harem and eunuchs.[9] This deprived them of administrative and military training as well as experience of dealing with the aristocracy of the realm, which, together with the princes' indulgent upbringing, made them not only unprepared to carry out royal responsibilities, but often also uninterested in doing so.[9]

The confinement of royal princes to the harem was an important factor contributing to the decline of the Safavid dynasty.[8][10]

Staff

The administration of the royal harem constituted an independent branch of the court, staffed mainly by eunuchs.[11] These were initially black eunuchs, but white eunuchs from Georgia also began to be employed from the time of Abbas I.[11]

Slave eunuchs performed various tasks in many levels of the harem as well as the general court. Eunuchs had offices in the general court, such as in the royal treasury and as the tutors and adoptive fathers of non-castrated slaves selected to be slave soldiers (ghilman), as well as inside the harem, and served as a channel between the secluded harem women and the outside court and world, which gave them a potentially powerful role at court.[1]

The harem as a social and political institution

The mothers of rival princes together with eunuchs engaged in palace intrigues in an attempt to place their candidate on the throne.[8] From the middle of the sixteenth century, rivalries between Georgian and Circassian women in the royal harem gave rise to dynastic struggles of an ethnic nature previously unknown at the court.[12] When Shah Abbas II died in 1666, palace eunuchs engineered the succession of Suleiman I and effectively seized control of the state.[13][14]

Suleiman set up a privy council, which included the most important eunuchs, in the harem, thereby depriving traditional state institutions of their functions.[13] The eunuchs' influence over military and civil affairs was checked only by their internal rivalries and the religious movement led by Muhammad Baqir Majlisi.[14] The royal harem reached such proportions under Sultan Husayn (1668–1726) that it consumed a large part of state revenues.[14]

After the fall of the Safavid dynasty, which occurred soon afterwards, eunuchs were never again able to achieve significant political influence as a class in Persia.[14]

See also

References
  1. Sussan Babaie, Kathryn Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz-MacCabe, Mussumeh Farhad: Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran, Bloomsbury Academic, 2004
  2. Ricks, Thomas. 2001. Slaves and slave trading in Shi’i Iran, AD 1500–1900. Journal of Asian and African Studies 36: 407–18
  3. Foran, John (1992). "The Long Fall of the Safavid Dynasty: Moving beyond the Standard Views". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 24 (2): 281–304. doi:10.1017/S0020743800021577. JSTOR 164299. S2CID 154912398.
  4. Taheri, Abolghasem. 1970. Political and Social History of Iran from Teymur's Death until the Death of Shah Abbas II. Tehran: Habibi. (in Persian)
  5. Hamid, Usman. 2017. Slaves in the name Only: Free Women as Royal Concubines in Late Timurid Iran. In Concubines and Courtesans:Women and Slavery in Islamic History. Edited by Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain. New York: Oxford University Press
  6. Sherley, Anthony, Robert Sherley, and Thomas Sherley. 1983. The Travelogue of the Sherley Brothers. Translated by Avans. Tehran: Negah.(in Persian)
  7. Chardin, John. 1993. Chardin's Travels in Persia. Translated by Eghbal Yaghmayi. Tehran: Toos Publication. (in Persian)
  8. Savory 1977, p. 424.
  9. Roemer 1986, pp. 277–278.
  10. Roemer 1986, p. 330.
  11. Savory 1986, p. 355.
  12. Savory 1986, p. 363.
  13. Roemer 1986, p. 307.
  14. Lambton, A.K.S. "K̲h̲āṣī (II.—In Persia)". In Bearman et al. (1978), p. 1092.

Sources
  • Bearman, P.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P., eds. (1978). Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.). Brill.
  • Fisher, William Bayne; Jackson, Peter; Lockhart, Lawrence, eds. (1986). The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 6. Cambridge University Press.
  • Roemer, H. R. "The Safavid Period". In Fisher, Jackson & Lockhart (1986).
  • Savory, R. M. (1977). "Safavid Persia". In P. M. Holt; Ann K. S. Lambton; Bernard Lewis (eds.). The Cambridge History of Islam. The Central Islamic Lands from Pre-Islamic Times to the First World War. Vol. 1A. Cambridge University Press.
  • Savory, R. M. "The Safavid Administrative System". In Fisher, Jackson & Lockhart (1986).
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