Letters and Gifts in the Harems of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul

These two volumes are focused on the lives of royal women during Sultan Selim III's reign. Mihrişah Valide Sultan, Sineperver Kadınefendi, and the sultan's sisters, whose tangible presence in Istanbul's landscape, both through their philanthropic acts, political engagements, and pleasure pastimes, begs further scholarly grounding. Through their sub-courts, we argue that they were important constituents of Selim III's reform initiatives, collectively known as the nizam-ı cedid. The complementary volumes unpack the ways in which they made their presence tangible to their subjects, the very fact that their courts were now a part of the foreign delegations' visitation circles alongside the sultan's own in an expanded Bosphorus network. They also detail their prolific epistolary output, especially their correspondences with their kethüdas (stewards), their financial advisors. These letters reveal aspects of their material world, rivalries, worries, but perhaps most importantly, their central roles in courtly decorum.