Valide sultan

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Valide Sultan ( Ottoman والده سلطان; officiallyمهد علیای سلطنت / mehd-i ʿulyā-yı salṭanat  / 'the highest cradle of rule') was the traditional title of the mother of the respective ruling sultan in the Ottoman Empire .

Not only because of the informal power that this position brought with it, but also because of the official position that the Queen Mother occupied in the harem , the Valide Sultan was at times the most powerful person in the entire Ottoman Empire after the Sultan.

Especially in the 17th century under a number of sultans who came to the throne as children or were politically disinterested, the respective Valide Sultan therefore exercised de facto power. This period went down in Turkish history as the rule of women .

While marriages were still concluded for dynastic reasons (e.g. with Byzantine princesses) in the early days of the Ottoman Empire , the outstanding peculiarity of the later Ottoman marriage system was that the original status of the sultan's wives was irrelevant. It could also be a simple harem slave from abroad with whom the Sultan had fallen in love and who had risen in the hierarchy of the seraglio . The advantage of this construction, unthinkable for Europe, i. H. a slave as the mother of the ruling sultan, were precisely her lack of family and dynastic ties to foreign powers and royal houses.

This opportunity for advancement provided material for romantic and adventurous legends, especially in the West. In the majority of cases, the Valide Sultans had no Turkish background, but were often Circassian , Albanian , Russian , Bulgarian , Serbian and Greek Ottoman women, but there were also some Italians and French women .

See also

literature