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 The Sultan s Seraglio written by Ottaviano Bon and published by . 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 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 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 Sultan written by Isaac Bickerstaff and published by . This book was released on 1780 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Sultans written by Noel Barber and published by New York : Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1973 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of this vast, astonishing and brilliantly readable work of history is the bizarre story of the Ottoman Empire, seen through the lives and actions of its sultans, with their absolute power and terrifying cruelty, their love of pomp and magnificence and their overwhelming venality and corruption. The author describes the men, the events, the daily life, the strange customs of Turkey's court, from her emergence as a great power in the sixteenth century to the death of Kemal Ataturk, who overthrew the Sultanate to establish a new and more modern form of tyranny. This book is a unique and fascinating record of four centuries of glory, debauchery, splendor and cruelty. --from inside jacket flap.

Download or read book The Mapmaker s Daughter written by Laurel Corona and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vividly detailed and beautifully written, this is a pleasure to read, a thoughtful, deeply engaging story of the power of faith to navigate history's rough terrain."—Booklist How Far Would You Go To Stay True to Yourself? Spain, 1492. On the eve of the Jewish expulsion from Spain, Amalia Riba stands at a crossroads. In a country violently divided by religion, she must either convert to Christianity and stay safe, or remain a Jew and risk everything. It's a choice she's been walking toward her whole life, from the days of her youth when her family lit the Shabbat candles in secret. Back then, she saw the vast possibility of the world, outlined in the beautiful pen and ink maps her father created. But the world has shifted and contracted since then. The Mapmaker's Daughter is a stirring novel about identity, exile, and what it means to be home. "A close look at the great costs and greater rewards of being true to who you really are. A lyrical journey to the time when the Jews of Spain were faced with the wrenching choice of deciding their future as Jews—a pivotal period of history and inspiration today."—Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth I "The many twists and turns in the life of the mapmaker's daughter, Amalia, mirror the tenuous and harrowing journey of the Jewish community in fifteenth-century Iberia, showing how family and faith overcame even the worst the Inquisition could inflict on them."—Anne Easter Smith, author of Royal Mistress and A Rose for the Crown "A powerful love story ignites these pages, making the reader yearn for more as they come to know Amalia and Jamil, two of the most compelling characters in recent historical fiction. An absolute must-read!"—Michelle Moran, author of The Second Empress and Madam Tussaud

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 The Sultan Or A Peep Into the Seraglio written by Isaac Bickerstaffe and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Description: Manuscript is endorsed with an 'X' and includes a few deletions. The title page states songs are 'One by Gierdini, One by Bach'. There are extensive differences between the printed and manuscript versions, with some parts entirely different.

Download or read book The Sultan Or a Peep Into the Seraglio written by Isaac Bickerstaff and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-06-10 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sultan, or a peep into the seraglio By Isaac Bickerstaff The sultan, or a peep into the seraglio: A farce, in two acts. By Isaac Bickerstaffe. Acted at the Theatres Royal in Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden.Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 - 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, [1] and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms - such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier - or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

Download or read book The Sultan Or A Peep Into the Seraglio Taken from the Manager s Book at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane written by Isaac Bickerstaff and published by . This book was released on 1785 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Slavery in Turkey The Sultan s Harem written by Frederick Millingen (Major, F.R.G.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Harem written by N. M. Penzer and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-01-18 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This survey features photographs and floor plans of Topkapi Palace as well as profiles of the harem's women, their eunuch guards, and court manners, dress, and politics. 42 black-and-white illustrations.

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.

Download or read book The Secrets of the Harem written by Anonymous and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secrets of the Harem is an anonymous insider view on historical Turkish harems. Excerpt: "Many people have an idea that Turkish women absolutely do nothing that is either useful or ornamental aside from the decoration of their own persons, but that is not altogether true, as my residence of over a year in their country taught me, for they are really dextrous with the needle and do work which is as fine as that done by the sisters in the convents, or that of the wives of the feudal noblemen of olden times. The favorite pastime of the Turkish women is the bath, which brings together the wives and slaves of all the well-to-do Turks, and it is like a picnic of school children. These wives, most of them very young—some, indeed, not over twelve or fourteen years old—take their lunch along, and they eat and steam, plunge and splash, and play pranks upon each other in the wildest glee the whole day long. No fear of an angry husband haunts their minds, for they are not expected to do anything, and their husbands very rarely enter the harems before six o'clock. By this time they are all back, rosy and sweet from their bath."

Download or read book Sultan s Wives Or a Visit to the Seraglios Classic Reprint written by L. Dunne and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Sultan's Wives, or a Visit to the Seraglios Through the advice of friends I have altered the title of this book: The first edition was called a Trip to Constanti nople, the Women of Turkey, &c., 850. When writing it I had no idea of its being published, or that many of the general public would see it; I merely intended it for those who passed through or resided at Constantinople during the Crimean War; but from the many applications for copies, I am induced to have more printed, and to make this alteration, which it is thought will agree better with the reading, I have no pre tensions to writing, and when I assure you this is, my maiden attempt, perhaps, you may say Well, it is not so bad for a beginner. In my opinion a person about to write his first book, resembles one about to pop the question he is so bewildered to know how to commence; whereas practised writers or widowers do not feel so much concern except when pounds, shillings, and pence are in question. Some may say that it is all very well, but why do you make the alteration if it is not with the idea of making money? Decidedly it is; everyone wishes his undertaking to become as successful as possible; and although I may feel as desirous as my neighbours to pocket the cash, still I assure you my chief object is to try to prop up a readable sketch of a life in the Seraglios - which sketch I give not from heresay or sur mise, but from facts experienced both by Brown and myself. I am sorry I have described Brown's visit in the shape of a dream, but I thought it would be better to draw a veil of mystery over a portion of that midnight adventure when he really did visit the fair Belinda - not encumbered with slum ber, but with his eyes open to the fate which awaited him did the eunuchs but perceive him. For a trifling consideration an interpreter accompanied him, and thus it is I give so detailed an account of their conversation on the roof of the Seraglio not only Brown buti'your humble servant receivedletters from the ladies of the Seraglio, which a gentleman, who is now at the War Office, can certify, as our Greek Interpreter to whom I entrusted the interpretation of a few of the letters, informed him of it; this gentleman having held a high position at the Bosphorus, in the Civil Department. If any one should doubt my statement, they can, by enquiry, easily get to know who he is. There is also a person at the Tower, who is aware of it. I mention this merely to contradict the assertions of those inexperienced persons who state that it was or is impossible to carry on any correspondence with inmates of Seraglios. I am glad of this opportunity to contradict such statements, as in the absence of contradiction, some persons might fancy Brown's visit to the Seraglio, and other incidents to which I refer, were imaginary ideas, merely made up as home-spun yarns. I am aware, that, had a clever writer the opportunity which I had, he would be able to draw such a picture of Harem life, that would both surprise and amuse those not acquainted with eastern customs. I could not pourtray the thrilling as well as enchan ting scenes connected with these abodes of loneliness and intrigue the principal one, namely, the old Seraglio, which is the theme of my narrative, has latterly been consumed by fire. I wish it had occurred while we were there, we might at least have had an1 opportunity of assisting the ladies to escape from the flames. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

Download or read book Slavery in Turkey The Sultan s Harem A paper read before the Anthropological Society of London written by Frederick MILLINGEN (called also Osman Bey and Vladimir Andreevich.) and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: