Download or read book Inside the Seraglio written by John Freely and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the House of Osman, the imperial dynasty that ruled the Ottoman Empire for more than seven centuries, an empire that once stretched from central Europe to North Africa and from Persia to the Adriatic. The capital of this empire was Istanbul, ancient Byzantium, a city that stands astride Europe and Asia on the Bosphorus. And it was in the great palace of Topkapi Sarayi that the sultans of this empire ruled. Inside the Seraglio - a classic of Ottoman history - takes us behind the gilded doors of the Topkapi and into the heart of the palace: the harem, where the sultan would surround himself with his wives, concubines, eunuchs, pages, dwarfs and mutes and where all the tempestuous events of empire were so often played out. This is the history of a remarkable palace in all its colour and opulence and the story of its influence on a great empire.
Download or read book Seraglio written by Janet Wallach and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transporting readers to the menacing yet majestic world of eighteenth-century Turkey, biographer and Middle East expert Janet Wallach brilliantly re-imagines the life of Aimee Dubucq, cousin of Empress Josephine, in her first novel "Seraglio. At the age of thirteen, when en route from France to her home in Martinique, Aimee Dubucq is kidnapped by Algerian pirates. Blonde and blue-eyed, the genteel young girl is a valuable commodity, and she is soon placed in service in the Seraglio - the Ottoman Sultan's private world - in Topkapi Palace. As Dubucq, renamed Nakshidil ("embroidered on the heart") discovers the erotic secrets that win favor of kings and deftly learns the affairs of the empire, she struggles to retain her former identity, including her Catholic faith. Overtime Nakshidil becomes the intimate of several powerful sultans: wife to one, lover and confidante to another, and adoptive mother to a third. Her life often treads the tenuous line between sumptuous pleasures and mere survival until her final years when she is awarded control of the harem as the valide, mother of the Sultan. With phenomenal research and a mesmerizing voice, Janet Wallach provides a powerful and passionate glimpse of East-West history through one woman's distinctly European eyes.
Download or read book The Steel Seraglio written by Mike Carey and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A confident One Thousand and One Nights for our present . . . Furious pop entertainment—full of sex, passion, violence, and magic.” —Slant magazine This is the story of the legendary City of Women, told through the tales of those who founded it, championed it, and made it flourish. When the city of Bessa undergoes a violent coup, its lazy, laissez-faire ruler, Bokhari Al-Bokhari, is replaced by the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. With little use for the pleasures of the flesh, Hakkim sends his predecessor’s 365 concubines to a neighboring sultan as a gift. But when the new sultan discovers the concubines are harboring Al-Bokhari’s youngest son—a child who might grow up to challenge his rule—he repents of his mercy and sends his soldiers to slaughter the seraglio down to the last woman and child. What he doesn’t count on is a concubine trained in the art of murder—or the courage and fortitude of the women who will rise up with her to forge their own city out of the unforgiving desert. It’s an undertaking beset with challenges: hunger and thirst, Hakkim’s relentless hate, and the struggle to make a place for themselves in a world determined to underestimate and undermine them. Through a mosaic of voices and tales, we learn of the women’s miraculous rise, their time of prosperity—and how they carried with them the seed of their own destruction. “A thrilling tale.” —Publishers Weekly “A masterful, engaging and utterly fascinating story by three wonderful writers.” —SFRevu.com “The Steel Seraglio brings its alternate world of struggle, politics and magic very much to life.” —Locus
Download or read book Pawn in Frankincense written by Dorothy Dunnett and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-08-11 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fourth book in the legendary Lymond Chronicles, Francis Crawford of Lymond desperately searches the Ottoman empire for his kidnapped child. Somewhere within the bejeweled labyrinth of the Ottoman empire, a child is hidden. Now his father, Francis Crawford of Lymond, soldier of fortune and the exiled heir of Scottish nobility, is searching for him while ostensibly engaged on a mission to the Turkish Sultan. At stake is the political order of three continents, for Lymond's child is a pawn in a cutthroat game whose gambits include treason, enslavement, and murder. In that game's final move, which is played inside the harem of the Topkapi palace, Lymond will come face to face with his most implacable enemy and the dreadful ambiguities of his own nature. With a Foreword by the author.
Download or read book The Seraglio written by James Merrill and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 1987 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Love and Leftovers written by Sarah Tregay and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romantic and bittersweet, Love and Leftovers captures one girl's experience with family, friends, and love. Dragged to New Hampshire for the summer, Marcie soon realizes that her mom has no plans for them to return to Marcie's father in Idaho. As Marcie starts at a new school, without her ragtag group of friends called the Leftovers, a new romance heats up, but she struggles to understand what love really means. Perfect for fans of romances like Anna and the French Kiss and those by Sarah Dessen as well as readers of poetry, Love and Leftovers is a beautiful and fresh take on love.
Download or read book Sultan s Court written by Alain Grosrichard and published by Verso. This book was released on 1998-08-17 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of Western accounts of "Oriental despotism" in the 17th and 18th centuries, focusing particularly on portrayals of the Ottoman empire and the supposedly enigmatic structure of the despot's court - the seraglio - with its viziers, dwarfs, mutes, eunuchs and countless wives.
Download or read book The Singing Turk written by Larry Wolff and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of the eighteenth century, European opera houses were staging operas featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini created a series of works, including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the great nemesis of Christian Europe, became so popular in the opera house and what they illustrate about European–Ottoman international relations. After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, the Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood that Turkish issues were also European issues, and the political absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about politics in Europe, from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon. While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim Turks were, to some degree, different from themselves, this difference was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.
Download or read book The Sultan s Seraglio written by Ottaviano Bon and published by Saqi Books - Saqi Books. This book was released on 1996 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From 1604 to 1607, Ottaviano Bon was the Venetian representative to Istanbul where he recorded every aspect of life at the Topkapi Palace. The result was published under the title, "The Sultan's Seraglio", and it provides an account of the period of Ahmet I. It covers such topics as: life in the harem; the exchange of gifts between Turkish and Western dignitaries; the menu at official state banquets; the buying of slaves in the weekly slave market; and the great religious festivals and circumcision ceremonies. All the various Ottoman hierarchy are described in great detail, including the viziers, the aghas and the "itchoglans", as also are the mutes and the clowns who were the Sultan's constant companions and accompanied him on boat trips down the Bosphorus to his palaces and gardens."--bookdepository.
Download or read book Sultana written by Michel (Prince of Greece) and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1983 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Roxolana in European Literature History and Culture written by Galina I. Yermolenko and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is the first book-length scholarly study of the pervasiveness and significance of Roxolana in the European imagination. Roxolana, or "Hurrem Sultan," was a sixteenth-century Ukrainian woman who made an unprecedented career from harem slave and concubine to legal wife and advisor of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566). Her influence on Ottoman affairs generated legends in many a European country. The essays gathered here represent an interdisciplinary survey of her legacy; the contributors view Roxolana as a transnational figure that reflected the shifting European attitudes towards "the Other," and they investigate her image in a wide variety of sources, ranging from early modern historical chronicles, dramas and travel writings, to twentieth-century historical novels and plays. Also included are six European source texts featuring Roxolana, here translated into modern English for the first time. Importantly, this collection examines Roxolana from both Western and Eastern European perspectives; source material is taken from England, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Poland, and Ukraine. The volume is an important contribution to the study of early modern transnationalism, cross-cultural exchange, and notions of identity, the Self, and the Other.
Download or read book That Greece Might Still be Free written by William St. Clair and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When in 1821, the Greeks rose in violent revolution against the rule of the Ottoman Turks, waves of sympathy spread across Western Europe and the United States. More than a thousand volunteers set out to fight for the cause. The Philhellenes, whether they set out to recreate the Athens of Pericles, start a new crusade, or make money out of a war, all felt that Greece had unique claim on the sympathy of the world. As Byron wrote, 'I dreamed that Greece might Still be Free'; and he died at Missolonghi trying to translate that dream into reality. William St Clair's meticulously researched and highly readable account of their aspirations and experiences was hailed as definitive when it was first published. Long out of print, it remains the standard account of the Philhellenic movement and essential reading for any students of the Greek War of Independence, Byron, and European Romanticism. Its relevance to more modern ethnic and religious conflicts is becoming increasingly appreciated by scholars worldwide. This new and revised edition includes a new Introduction by Roderick Beaton, an updated Bibliography and many new illustrations.
Download or read book Book of felicity written by Muḥammad ibn Amīr Ḥasan al-Suʻūdī and published by . This book was released on 1582 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The 16th and early 17th centuries were the most fertile period of Turkish-Ottoman painting, with the reign of Murad III (1574-1595) being particularly prolific in beautiful works of art, such as this Mataliʻ al-saadet--Book of Felicity--by Muhammad ibn Amir Hassan al-Suʻudi. This work, which the sultan himself ordered to be translated from the original Arabic, features descriptions of the 12 signs of the zodiac accompanied by splendid miniatures, a series of paintings showing how human circumstances are influenced by the planets, astrological and astronomical tables, and a enigmatic treatise on fortune telling. All the paintings seem to be by the same workshop under the guidance of the famous master Ustad ʻOsman, undoubtedly the artist of the opening series of paintings dedicated to the signs of the zodiac. ʻOsman, active between ca. 1559 and 1596, directed the artists in the Seraglio workshop from 1570 onwards and created a style charaterized by accurate portraits and a magnificent treatment of illustration. Sultan Murad III held illuminated manuscripts in greater esteem than any other sultan; this treatise of felicity was especially commissioned by him for his daugther Fatima. Turkish binding in red leather with gold tooling"--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul written by John Freely and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the Byzantine monuments of Istanbul, most notably, Haghia Sophia. The remains of the land and sea walls, the Hippodrome, imperial palaces, commemorative columns, reservoirs and cisterns, an aqueduct, a triumphal archway, a fortified port, and twenty churches are also described in chronological order in the context of their times. These "monuments" are viewed in relationship to the political, religious, social, economic, intellectual and artistic developments of the Byzantine dynasties.
Download or read book The Harem written by N. M. Penzer and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Topkapi Palace written by Godfrey Goodwin and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the palace of the Ottoman sultans in Istanbul, it takes the reader through all the rooms and gardens which are open to the public - and some that are not. It talks about the thousands who lived in the saray. It gives an understanding of this core of Ottoman life.
Download or read book The Harem written by Norman Mosley Penzer and published by Dover Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly four centuries, the Ottoman sultans dwelt amid the secret splendors of Topkapi Palace. Access to the Grand Seraglio--which served as the empire's administrative, legislative, and judicial center and an academy of fine arts, as well as the ruler's home--was jealously guarded, even after the sultans ceased to reside there in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1936, a distinguished scholar of Orientalism, Norman Mosley Penzer (1892-1960), was afforded a rare opportunity to step inside the Grand Seraglio; in this eagerly embraced and much-consulted volume, he reveals what he found. Constructed between 1459 and 1465 at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Topkapi Palace stands in present-day Istanbul, near the confluence of the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Marmara Sea. Penzer surveyed the entire palace from end to end during numerous visits over the course of two years, and he presents photographs and floor plans that provide a comprehensive view of Topkapi's structure. Penzer's illustrations of the opulent gardens, chambers, and pavilions come to imaginative life with his explorations of day-to-day palace life--particularly among the women of the harem and their eunuch guards. His evocative accounts of the manners, dress, and politics of Turkish court life continue to influence the scholarly work of the twenty-first century, and this classic history remains indispensable to studies of harem life.
