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reallifesultanas · 3 years

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The myths around Kösem Sultan's execution / A Köszem szultána halála körüli legendák

One of the most frequently discussed topics about the Sultanate of Women is the brutal execution of Kösem Sultan. Usually, the casual people think that she was assassinated by her son-in-law Turhan Hatice Sultan during a long power struggle. We have plenty of accounts of the events, but there are quite a few of them that are contemporary. In this post, I would like to summarize what we know, who were the characters of the events, and what might have happened that night. In the comments section or in Tellonyme, I look forward to everyone's opinion and comment about the topic so that we can discuss it! :) If you don't know Kösem Sultan, you can read her biography HERE.

What do we know for sure?

- After Ibrahim's dethronement and execution, Kösem Sultan became a regent to her grandson Mehmed IV. - Turhan, Mehmed’s mother, and Kösem Sultan were on different sides during the political games. - Kösem Sultan was killed by her enemies on September 2, 1651. - Turhan Hatice became the new regent, Kösem Sultan's executioners were not punished, but her supporters were soon killed.

Backstory

Kösem Sultan came to power for the second time in February 1640. Along with her crazy son, Ibrahim I, she began to rule the Ottoman Empire as regent. Everyone loved her, she had a huge experience in rule, she did a lot of charity. Everything seemed perfect, but her son, Ibrahim, soon came under the influence of bad advisers. Cinci Hoca was a religious leader in occult sciences who took advantage of the Sultan’s mental problems and seriously influenced him. As a result, the Sultan executed his Grand Vizier in 1644 and exiled his mother. He originally intended to send his mother to the island of Rhodes, but eventually, his concubines persuaded him to send her only to another palace. Kösem Sultan spent the next few years there in exile, but during that time she corresponded regularly with the statesmen and tried to keep everything under control. She probably wrote her well-known letter to Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha here, saying, "In the end, he will not leave you or me alive and we will lose control of the state again, thereby destroying our society." The situation deteriorated to the point that in 1647 Kösem Sultan and the new Grand Vizier, Salih Pasha and Seyhülislam Abdürrahim Efendi tried to dethrone Ibrahim but they failed. The next year, both the Janissaries and the Ulema joined the rebellion, and on August 8, 1648, the mad sultan was easily dethroned and imprisoned and his followers were removed from positions.

Ibrahim was succeeded by his son, Mehmed, who was barely 6 years old, andso he needed a regent. The statesmen asked Kösem Sultan for the honorary task. The position of regent was usually held by teachers, pashas, or mothers (in the case of Mehmed II, the Grand Vizier was regent; in Ahmed I, his mother and teacher; in Murad IV, and Ibrahim's case their mother), so Kösem Sultan was the first grandmother to become regent. According to the most accepted opinions, this happened because Mehmed’s mother, Turhan Hatice, was not even 25 years old at the time, too young and inexperienced to run the empire. Anyhow Kösem Sultan started her third regency and she constantly disregarded Mehmed’s mother, Turhan. Because of Turhan’s youth, she might truly would not have been the best regent, yet she had every right to control the harem. Kösem Sultan, however, did not allow this to the young woman either. So Turhan, in vain was the mother of the reigning sultan, all her duties were ruled by Kösem Sultan. Kösem Sultan gained more and more enemies both in the divan and the harem, so both places split into two sides: Kösem Sultan and her supporters and Turhan Sultan and her supporters.

Two opposite sides and characters

Kösem Sultan and her supporters

Kösem Sultan ruled the empire as a regent for decades, and when she was not a regent, she followed events as valide sultan. Earlier in her life, she worked together with most of the pashas. During her first regency, she said that she, as the representative of the ruler, intended to be there at the divan meetings in person. This was not allowed by the pashas and so she was forced to accept. During her third regency, however, she was not bowing before anyone’s will. She had lost all her sons, buried at least one daughter, sacrificed her whole life for the empire, so then she refused to compromise on anything anymore. She wished to rule the empire as an absolute monarch. And in the divan she dismissed everyone who disagreed with her. More and more people began to debate her right for ruling. One of her well-known divan speeches happed around this time. Kösem Sultan accused the Grand Vizier Sofu Ahmed Pasha of wanting to kill her, then she continued: “Thank God I survived four rulers and I ruled for a long time myself. The world will neither collapse nor reform with my death.”

Kösem Sultan went too far. She didn't just change the pashas she did not like but replaced them with Janissary officers. The Janissaries have served her with allegiance since the first regency of Kösem Sultan. Back then, in 1623, she went against everyone and gave the Janissaries a huge amount of money after Murad IV's accession to the throne. Although there were rebellions and disagreements, basically the Janissaries - but at least some of their corps - were loyal to Kösem Sultan. Representation of the Janissaries has been a thing for centuries, but to make Janissaries — or simply soldiers — vizieres was too much. Pashas learnt a lot and bore a lot to reach the highest possible positions and they were aware of how to be good veziers. This was their only aim and Kösem put Janissary officers there instead of educated statesmen. Everyone in the divan felt that Kösem Sultan wanted to build a military rule so that she could lead the empire in a way she liked. Thus, by 1651, only a few corps of Janissaries were actually on the side of Kösem in political terms. Although the people still loved her for her generous charity, in political terms their support did not mean much.

In addition to the growing tension with the pashas, Kösem Sultan had a rival in the harem also. Although most sources treat it as a fact that the relationship of Kösem Sultan and Turhan was terrible, there is no evidence to that effect. The relationship between the two of them only began to deteriorate over time, but in general, it can be said that Kösem Sultan just did not care about Turhan at all. She certainly looked down on her and didn't think much about Turhan. Kösem Sultan, although she had her own harem staff, did not have the most influential eunuch. Moreover, some said most of her servants also found her unworthy after realizing the way she treated Turhan. Perhaps it is no coincidence that so many sources mention a servant named Meleki Hatun, who famously switched sides and betrayed Kösem Sultan and began to strengthen Turhan’s side.

Turhan Hatice Sultan and her supporters

Turhan Hatice had more allies and so was in a better position in the harem than Kösem Sultan. She received help from an influential eunuch, Suleiman Agha. Suleiman aga was the leader of the harem agas, an ambitious eunuch with great power and contact system, with significant political influence. The harem was actually torn in two, thanks to the supporters of Kösem Sultan and Turhan Hatice. Both sides had their own chief eunuchs, which caused immense chaos within the harem, people did not know whose instructions to follow. And although the title of Valide Sultan belonged to Turhan Hatice as the mother of the sultan, the vernacular referred to her only as “small valide,” while Kösem Sultan was called “big valide”. Suleiman Agha's support, however, was worth its weight in gold. The eunuch looked primarily at his own interests throughout his life, and he had a great understanding of how to exploit and influence people. This is precisely why the possibility arises that it was Suleiman who set Turhan up and turned her against Kösem Sultan. Perhaps it was Suleiman who - hoping for his own rise from the young valide - persuaded her to take what was her right. In addition, Suleiman Agha was very liked by the young sultan, becoming a kind of father figure for the boy. Of course, it is not my intention to underestimate the role of Turhan in the events, but at the same time, I feel that the role of Suleiman Agha is actually underrated and I would like to make that clear. I’m not saying Turhan was a naive girl led by the evil Suleiman Agha, I just think that without Suleiman’s support and incitement, Turhan probably wouldn’t have, or much later, confronted Kösem Sultan.

In addition to Suleiman, three other major eunuchs also sided with Turhan: Hoca Reyhan Agha, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Agha, and Ali Agha. Hoca Reyhan Agha was closest to Turhan as his associate and religious leader, but Lala Hajji Aga was also a long-term partner in Turhan’s life. In addition to the eunuchs, we must also mention Meleki Hatun, whose legend is well known. According to this, she was the one who betrayed the plan of Kösem Sultan to Turhan, thus saving the little Sultan Mehmed from death and dethronement. However, the reality is probably less romantic. It is unlikely that a previously insignificant, never-ever mentioned servant like Meleki would have known about Kösem Sultan's plans and so could betray her. Certainly, Meleki was given a bigger role in the legend than she actually had. Maybe Meleki has agreed to be a scapegoat, testifying against Kösem Sultan if she gets goods in return. Given what a huge fortune Meleki gained after Kösem Sultan’s death, we can’t rule out this option either. Even if Meleki brought supporters for Turhan within the harem, she could have had quite a bit of an impact on the whole event. In addition to Turhan, the key figure was Suleiman Agha, who also had a close relationship with the divan, so he could easily connect members of the divan who were dissatisfied with Kösem Sultan. The most influential supporter was none other than the Grand Vizier, Siyavuş Pasha, but practically the entire divan turned against Kösem Sultan so far. It should also be mentioned that although most formations of the Janissaries were impartial or were on Kösem Sultan's side, the Sipahies tended to the group of Turhan and her supporters.

What led to the tragic night?

Before turning to the immediate causes, we need to jump back a bit in time to better understand Kösem Sultan's behavior. As is well known, Ibrahim I was succeeded by his son, Mehmed, barely 6 years old, who needed a regent. The statesmen asked Kösem Sultan for the honorary task. However, the request was rather strange. Why is that? The regent position was usually held by teachers, pashas, or mothers, and Kösem Sultan was none. Moreover, Kösem Sultan rejected the request for the first time on the grounds that she no longer has the strength to rule further.

Why did Kösem Sultan take on the task? Did she really want to retire?

To understand Kösem Sultan's thoughts, we need to jump a little further back in time. Kösem Sultan was in exile for years during Ibrahim's reign. From her exile, she repeatedly attempted a coup against her own son. From one of her surviving letters in exile, it is clear that she was part of the coup that eventually dethroned her son. Outwardly, however, she showed a very different picture. After Ibrahim was shut down, they wanted to put his son, Mehmed, on the throne. Kösem Sultan then met with the statesmen at Topkapi Palace to discuss with them what Ibrahim's fate should be. They negotiated for hours, but Kösem Sultan all along refused to give Ibrahim's eldest son to the statemen. The statesmen had to publicly convince Kösem Sultan for hours. Kösem Sultan who had previously done everything to dethrone her son is now standing by his son. Why? Of course, we will never know exactly what happened in her mind. However, it seems probable, that Kösem Sultan wanted to keep the image of a loving mother in front of the soldiers and the people. If she would just agree to Ibrahim's dethronement and Mehmed's enthronement that would be strange from a loving mother. Therefore, she held a sham debate with the pashas not to lose the sympathy of the people, but at the same time to keep the empire safe. Kösem Sultan was an experienced politician who was able to rule for years, and her loving and caring mother image was essential to that. Thus, with Kösem Sultan's consent, Sultan Ibrahim was eventually closed up and Mehmed has proclaimed their new sultan. Perhaps the first rejection of regency in 1648 was also part of a play like this. Kösem Sultan maybe felt the people expect this of her, so she offered to retire, while maybe in the background she had already agreed with the pashas.

And why did the members of the divan let Kösem Sultan to be the regent? After all, any of the members of the divan or even Mehmed's teacher could have applied for the task. And that would give huge power to them. So why did they give this opportunity to Kösem Sultan?

Ibrahim I was executed on August 18, 1648. Some say Kösem Sultan gave her consent to the execution but it cannot be ruled out that the execution took place behind her back. As I mentioned above, the mother of the dethroned or assassinated sultans has traditionally retreated to the Old Palace, where they lived their remaining years politically inactive. In her case, however, this did not happen. This raises the possibility that Kösem Sultan was unaware of Ibrahim’s execution and the pashas tried to reconcile the shattered woman with this gesture. Maybe Kösem gave her consent, knew what will happen, but still in the end she couldn't bear the pain. Either way, after the execution Kösem Sultan has changed. She turned against the pashas with whom she had always cooperated before. Whichever version is true, we can clearly see that the Kösem Sultan who became a regent to Mehmed IV, was no longer the same woman who had previously been considered the beloved mother of the empire.

But who ordered the execution of Ibrahim? Do we know? No, we do not know. Actually any of the statesmen could do it, but either Suleiman Agha or Turhan Sultan could make the little sultan to sign the fetwa petition and then send it to the Seyhülislam to authorize. Anyhow, the fetwa was authorized with full right, as Ibrahim was very harmful to the empire.

The murder

As can be seen from the above summary, Kösem Sultan was trying to build an absolute monarchy in which no one but a few Janissary corpses supported her, so a huge team gathered against her. According to the well-known version, over time, the strife between Kösem Sultan and the statesmen escalated to the point that, with the support of Turhan Hatice, the statesmen tried to remove her from her position. Kösem Sultan in response to this planned to dethrone Sultan Mehmed and put her other grandson on the throne instead. To do this, she wanted to let the Janissaries into the palace so that they could carry out the coup at night, which is why she left the gate to the harem open for the night. However, Kösem Sultan's plan was revealed to her enemies. According to some it was a servant named Meleki Hatun, who betrayed Kösem and told her plans to Turhan. Thus, as soon as the men of Kösem Sultan opened the gate on September 2, 1651, the men of Turhan Hatice, led by Chief Eunuch Suleiman Agha, closed it and sent an execution squad to the residence of Kösem Sultan. When she heard knocking on her door Kösem Sultan thought that her own allies had come, so she shouted at them, “Have you come?”. However, instead of the voice of the Janissaries, she heard the voice of the eunuch Suleiman Agha, which made her panic and flee. It’s not exactly known if she did get out of her apartment and if yes then how because the descriptions don’t match. Some said she hid in a closet inside her apartment, others said she tried to get to the Janissaries, but she couldn’t get through the closed gate, so she finally hid in the room next to the gate.

The execution squad, which consisted of several eunuchs (Suleiman Agha, Hoca Reyhan Agha, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Agha, and Ali Agha, as well as some unknown eunuchs) continued the search. Kösem Sultan hid in a closet from which the edge of her dress protruded, revealing her hiding place. When they found her, she threw money at her executioners, trying to pay them off, but she had no chance against Turhan's loyal men. Legend has it that while the men tried to capture and strangle the valide sultan they ripped out her diamond earrings - which she had received from Sultan Ahmed - from her ears; torn apart her clothes as they tried to take away the precious ornaments from her. Kösem Sultan beyond her sixties fought very hard but in the end, the eunuchs overcame her. Some say she was strangled with her own hair, others said with a curtain. She survived the first strangulation attempt but did not survive the second.

However, there are several points in the story above that raise doubts:

- Kösem Sultan's problem was not Mehmed but was the pashas, Turhan and Suleiman Agha. Then why didn't she get rid of them? Wouldn’t it have been easier and more logical to kill these people than to dethrone one child sultan for the benefit of another child? Of course, we can justify this with the fact that Kösem Sultan was no longer sane, so let’s not even look for logic in her actions. However, it may also raise the possibility that perhaps Kösem Sultan was completely or at least partially innocent throughout the series of events. She may not have planned anything with the Janissaries, the whole plan was only invented by Turhan and her men to legitimize their own actions. However, it contradicts that the Janissaries were indeed preparing to gather on the tragic night, and it is unlikely that Turhan and her team could successfully cheat the Janissaries without Kösem Sultan realizing it. It is possible that Kösem Sultan was indeed prepared for a minor coup, but it was perhaps not directed against Mehmed. Kösem Sultan had to realize that besides the pashas, Suleiman Aga was behind the "rebellious" behavior of Turhan and Mehmed. I think Kösem Sultan planned a smaller coup in which she would have got rid of the eunuchs and servants she didn’t like and would have scared Mehmed and Turhan. This would have ensured her own power and that neither Turhan nor Mehmed would question her anymore.

- Why was Kösem Sultan killed in such a strange way? After all, the lawful, usual method of execution was by an execution squad with Seyhülislam fetwa and silk/bow string. (It is important to note, however, that female members of the dynasty have not been executed before, women have typically been punished only with exile.) Kösem Sultan in contrast was killed by inexperienced eunuchs, with a kind of fake fetwa, and by her own hair or a curtain. The question arises that perhaps the execution of Kösem Sultan was not even planned. If the execution would be planned, executioners could clearly kill her after a legal fetwa. About the fetwa... There was, of course, a fetwa, but the temporality is somewhat disturbed by the fact that the Seyhülislam was replaced by one of Turhan's trusted men just when the execution took place. Precisely because of this, and because of the unusual brutality of the execution, there is a possibility that perhaps the execution of Kösem Sultan was not originally planned, only things slipped out of control, and in the heat of the moment, the Eunuchs executed Kösem Sultan. In retrospect, to legalize the events, they produced a fetwa with the new Seyhülislam.

- But then who and why did finally decide that Kösem Sultan should die? Turhan was not present at the events, and since the murder was not planned in advance - based on the fetwa and executioners - I would remove her from the list of suspects. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that Turhan Hatice Sultan and Suleiman Agha talked about this possibility also. It is more probable, however, that they originally merely wanted to scare Kösem Sultan, to show her that she had been exposed, that time had passed over her. In my opinion, Turhan hoped that Kösem Sultan would admit her defeat and simply retire to the Old Palace. It would have been too risky to kill a venerate and beloved valide, especially knowing that none of the female members of the dynasty had ever been executed before. They probably wanted to resign her, but so far there was nothing to lose for Kösem Sultan. The only thing that still made her vivid was power, so she certainly objected to the idea of forced retreat. When Suleiman Agha realized that Kösem Sultan was not listening to them, perhaps out of fear, he decided they had to kill her. After all, if the enraged Kösem Sultan had come out of the palace, Suleiman and the other eunuchs would have found themselves headless at once. Although there is no evidence of it, my personal opinion is that Suleiman may have wanted this from the first minute, as he knew full well that Kösem Sultan would never retire. Either way, the eunuchs eventually defeated and executed the elderly valide in a way that could not be called professional at all.

- Can we completely rule out that Kösem Sultan was executed with a truly legal fetwa and by an execution squad? Unfortunately, this cannot be ruled out either. The English ambassador, for example, reported that an execution squad had killed Kösem Sultan after a fetwa requested by the young sultan. He said that the execution happened in front of Mehmed eyes. We must admit though that the English ambassador was not among the best-informed ones. It is likely that everyone at the time believed that the fetwa was pre-issued. Only later, after historians’ research, it became very possible that the fetwa was presumably made after the execution of Kösem Sultan. It is not seems reasonable that Kösem Sultan would have been executed before the eyes of her 10-year-old grandson, Mehmed. Turhan tried very hard to protect her son, unlikely to have exposed him to such a trauma. Mustafa Naima agrees with the English ambassador that the execution was planned in advance, but he said it was not the eunuchs but an execution squad that killed Kösem Sultan. However, then why was the execution brutal? Why wasn't there a silk/bow string? Why was it performed by unfit eunuchs?

The aftermath of the murder

To prevent any resistance, during the night, Turhan Hatice and her men removed all statesmen who would have endangered them. The first man to be appointed that night was Ebu Said Efendi, the new Seyhülislam. He was the one who eventually issued the fetwa for the execution of Kösem Sultan (in retrospect). Turhan then sent a message to all statesmen and soldiers to immediately go to an audience where they would take allegiance to Sultan Mehmed. Most, out of fear or out of sincere feelings, immediately approached the Sultan, and those who did not, the new Seyhülislam issued a fetwa for them. Thus it became lawful to execute the supporters of Kösem Sultan, since they did not appear before the Sultan either. And the rebellious Janissaries were thus stigmatized as traitors and were legally executed. For commoners, they became the scapegoat for the death of Kösem Sultan. After the murder, Kösem Sultan was transported to the Old Palace, where her body was prepared for the funeral. She received an imperial funeral, and the people of Istanbul voluntarily held 3-day mourning, closing all shops and stores. Kösem Sultan has always been popular among the people, but interestingly the same people did not turn against Turhan because of the death of Kösem Sultan, in fact, Turhan became as loved and revered valide sultan just as Kösem Sultan was.

What happened to the real culprits? Turhan and Mehmed escaped, of course, but it is questionable whether they had any part in the murder at all. It is true that a rebellion in 1656 seriously shook their power, but in the end, they did not lose it. The main reasons for this were the weak Grand Veziers, the resurgent Celali rebellion, and the war with the Venetians. Due to the war people of the capital did not get enough grain, the soldiers were not properly paid, but ordinary people were also increasingly dissatisfied, especially angered by the extreme wealth of those close to the Sultan. Eventually, under the leadership of the Janissaries and Spahis, the people revolted on the fourth of March 1656. During the rebellion, several of those close to the sultan were brutally executed, the whole capital was ravaged. The mob hung all 31 people on trees next to the Blue Mosque. Among them was Meleki Hatun, whom the sultan especially loved. Although the capital has been shaken by riots in the past, such a rebellion has never happened before. Not only did the soldiers revolt, but the people also stood by the soldiers as one. Everyone closed their shops, a general strike took place during the rebellion.

Suleiman Agha was no longer in power when the rebellion took place and perhaps this held his head on his neck. After the assassination of Kösem Sultan, he became the chief black eunuch, but he could only enjoy the position until July 1652. Suleiman continued to stretch beyond his blanket, trying to change political issues that had nothing to do with him. Turhan Hatice also began to realize that Suleiman was not on their side at all, but only on his own. Of particular interest is that Lala Ibrahim Agha convinced Turhan of this, who himself took part in the execution of Kösem Sultan. Lala Ibrahim Agha was Turhan’s personal eunuch and he never longed (or wisely didn’t show her) for a higher position. Turhan was thus finally dismissed Suleiman Agha in 1652 and exiled him to Egypt. The refined eunuch even invented himself in exile, growing into an influential figure who became one of the main figures in Cairo’s local politics. He died in 1676/7.

Epilogue

We will probably never know exactly what led to the execution and how it took place. Nor was my aim with the post to present a perfect solution in the manner as Hercule Poirot usually does. I merely wished to shed light on the fact that the generally known and accepted theory should be regarded with some healthy doubts. The fact that it is the most generally accepted theory, does not mean it is the most thorough. There are plenty of question marks, dubious information which makes it clear that this whole situation was more complicated than two women fighting for domination over the harem.

Kösem Sultan was the sultana who broke the highest, who could have been at the top for a long time, but from the great heights, she finally fell down and became the only murdered valide sultana ever. Kösem Sultan had several titles during her life: Naib-i Sultanat (regent of the Ottoman Empire), Umin al-Mu'minin (mother of all muslims), Büyük Valide Sultan (great Valide Sultan), Valide-i Sehide (martyred mother), Valide-i Maktule (murdered mother), Valide-i Muazzama (magnificent mother).

Used sources: M. Kocaaslan - IV. Mehmed Saltanatında Topkapı Sarayı Haremi: İktidar, Sınırlar ve Mimari; L. Peirce - The Imperial Harem; Ö. Kumrular - Kösem Sultan: iktidar, hırs, entrika; C. Finkel - Osman’s Dream: the History of the Ottoman Empire; M. P. Pedani - Relazioni inedite; N. Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; G. Börekçi - Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I and His Immediate Predecessors; F. Davis - The Palace of Topkapi in Istanbul; Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; F. Suraiya, K. Fleet - The Cambridge History of Turkey 1453-1603; F. Suraiya - The Cambridge History of Turkey, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839; Ö. Düzbakar - Charitable Women And Their Pious Foundations In The Ottoman; G. Junne - The black eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire, Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan.

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A Nők szultánátusának egyik legtöbbször tárgyalt témája Köszem szultána brutális kivégzése. Általában a laikusok elintézik annyival, hogy Köszem szultánát menye, Turhan Hatice gyilkoltatta meg hosszas hatalmi harc lezárásaként. Rengeteg beszámoló áll rendelkezésünkre az eseményekről, ám meglehetősen kevés van köztük, mely konkrétan korabeli lenne. Ebben az írásban szeretném összegezni, hogy mit tudunk, kik voltak a szereplők az eseményekben és hogy mi történhetett azon a bizonyos éjjelen. A kommentszekcióban várom mindenki véleményét, megjegyzését a témáról, hogy meg tudjuk vitatni a posztot! :) Aki nem ismerné Köszem szultánát, az ITT tudja elolvasni életrajzát.

Mit tudunk biztosan?

- Köszem I. Ibrahim trónfosztása és kivégzése után régens lett unokája IV. Mehmed mellett. - Turhan, Mehmed anyja és Köszem külöböző oldalon álltak a politikai játszmák során. - Köszemet 1651. szeptember 2-án meggyilkolták ellenségei. - Turhan Hatice lett az új régens, Köszem gyilkosai nem lettek megbüntetve, támogatóitól azonban rövidesen megszabadultak.

Előzmények

Köszem szultána 1640 februárjában másodjára került hatalomra. Zavart elméjú fia, I. Ibrahim mellett régensként kezdte irányítani az Oszmán Birodalmat. Köszemet mindenki szerette, az uralkodásban hatalmas tapasztalata volt, rengeteget jótékonykodott. Minden tökéletesnek tűnt, azonban fia, Ibrahim hamarosan rossz emberek befolyása alá került. Cinci Hoca okkult tudományokkal foglalkozó vallási vezető volt, aki kihasználta a szultán mentális problémáit és komolyan befolyásolta őt. Ennek az lett az eredménye, hogy a szultán 1644-ben a nagyvezírét kivégeztette, édesanyját pedig száműzte. Eredetileg Rodosz szigetére szándékozta küldeni anyját, de végül ágyasai meggyőzték, hogy csak egy másik palotába küldje. Köszem elkövetkezendő éveit ott töltötte száműzetésben, ám ezalatt az idő alatt is rendszeresen levelezett az államférfiakkal és igyekezett kézben tartani mindent. Valószínűleg itt írta meg jól ismert levelét is Hezarpare Ahmed Pasának, mely így szólt: “Végül sem titeket, sem engem nem hagyna életben és újra elveszítenénk az uralmat az állam felett, ezzel pedig lerombolnánk társadalmunkat.” Odáig fajult a helyzet, hogy 1647-ben Köszem szultána és az új nagyvezír, Salih Pasa és a Seyhülislam Abdürrahim Efendi megpróbálták trónfosztani Ibrahimot, azonban lebuktak. A következő évben a janicsárok és az ulema is csatlakozott a lázadáshoz és 1648 augusztus 8-án könnyűszerrel trónfosztották és bebörtönözték az őrült szultánt, követőit pedig eltávolították a pozíciókból.

Ibrahimot a trónon fia, az alig 6 éves Mehmed követte, aki mellett szükség volt egy régensre. Az államférfiak Köszemet kérték fel a megtisztelő feladatra. A régensi pozíciót általában tanítók, pasák vagy édesanyák látták el (II. Mehmed esetében a nagyvezír volt régens, I. Ahmednél anyja és tanítója, IV. Muradnál és I. Ibrahimnál anyjuk), így Köszem volt az első nagymama, akiből régens lehetett. Erre a legelfogadottabb vélemények szerint azért kerülhetett sor, mert Mehmed édesanyja, Turhan Hatice még 25 éves sem volt ekkor, túl fiatal és tapasztalatlan volt a birodalom irányításához. Köszem tehát belekezdett harmadik régensségébe és folyamatosan semmibe vette Mehmed édesanyját, Turhant. Turhan fiatalsága okán talán tényleg nem lett volna jó régens, ugyanakkor a hárem irányításához minden joga megvolt. Köszem viszont ezt sem engedte meg a fiatal nőnek. Turhan tehát hiába volt a regnáló szultán anyja, minden feladatkörét Köszem uralta. Emellett Köszem a divánban is egyre több ellenségre tett szert, így a hárem és a divan is két oldalra szakadt: Köszem támogatóira és Turhan támogatóira.

Két, szemben álló oldal és a szereplők

Köszem oldala

Köszem évtizedeken át uralta régensként a birodalmat, amikor pedig nem régens volt, valideként követte figyelemmel az eseményeket. Életének korábbi szakaszában a legtöbb pasa mellette állt, ami nem volt elmondható harmadik régensségéről. Köszem első régenssége alatt is jelezte, hogy ő, mint az uralkodó reprezentálása ott kíván lenni a divan gyűléseken személyesen. Ezt akkor a pasák nem engedték meg neki, amit ő kénytelen-kelletlen el is fogadott. Harmadik régenssége során azonban szó sem lehetett arról, hogy meghajoljon bárki akarata előtt. Elveszítette összes fiát, legalább egy lányát is eltemette már, egész életét a birodalomnak áldozta, nem volt hajlandó többé bármiben is kompromisszumot kötni. Gyakorlatilag egyeduralkodóként kívánta irányítani a birodalmat. A divanban pedig aki nem értett vele egyet, azt eltiporta és menesztette. Köszem jogát az uralkodáshoz egyre többen kezdték el vitatni, egyik ilyen divan vita során hangzott el a jól ismert beszéde is. Ekkor Köszem megvádolta a nagyvezír Sofu Ahmed Pasát azzal, hogy meg akarta őt öletni, majd így folytatta: “Istennek hála négy uralkodót segítettem és én magam is hosszú ideig uralkodtam. A világ nem fog sem összeomlani sem megreformálódni a halálommal.”

Köszem azonban nem elégedett meg a pasák megalázásával, tanácsaik el nem fogadásával. Még csak nem is neki tetsző más pasákra cserélte le őket, hanem janicsárokat kezdett vezíri rangra emelni. A janicsárok Köszem első régenssége óta hűséggel szolgálták az asszonyt, amiért az mindenkivel szembe menve 1623-ban hatalmas trónralépési jussot adott a janicsároknak IV. Murad trónralépése után. Bár voltak lázadások és egyet nem értések, alapvetően a janicsárok - de legalábbis néhány hadtestük - hűségesek voltak Köszemhez. A janicsárok képviselete évszázadok óta működött, azonban az, hogy janicsárokat - vagy egyszerűen katonákat - tegyenek vezírré a kitanult államférfiak helyett, több volt a soknál. Mindenki úgy érezte a divanban, hogy Köszem egy katonai uralmat kíván kiépíteni, hogy a neki tetsző módon vezethesse a birodalmat. Így Köszem oldalán 1651-re tulajdonképpen csak a janicsárok néhány hadteste állt politikai értelemben. Bár a nép továbbra is szerette őt bőkezű jótékonykodása miatt, politikai értelemben az ő támogatásuk nem jelentett sokat.

Amellett, hogy a pasákkal egyre nőtt a feszültség, Köszem a háremben is riválisra akadt. Bár a legtöbb forrás tényként kezeli, hogy Köszem és menye, Turhan viszonya tragikus volt, nincs erre utaló bizonyíték. Kettejük viszonya csak az idő előrehaladtával kezdett megromlani, általánosan azonban inkább az mondható el, hogy Köszem egyáltalán nem foglalkozott menyével. Mindenbizonnyal lenézte és nem tartotta sokra Turhant, így komolyan sem vette a nőt. Köszemnek bár megvolt a saját hárem személyzete, a legbefolyásosabb eunuch nem volt a kezében. Mindemellett egyesek szerint szolgálói nagyrésze is méltatlannak találta, ahogy Köszem Turhannal bánt. Talán nem véletlen, hogy oly sok forrás említi a Meleki Hatun nevű szolgálót, aki híresen oldalt váltott és Köszemet elárulva Turhan oldalát kezdte erősíteni.

Turhan Hatice oldala

Turhan Hatice a háremben jobban állt, mint Köszem. Segítséget kapott egy befolyásos eunuchtól, Szulejmán agától. Szulejmán aga volt a hárem agák vezetője, aki nagy hatalommal és kapcsolatrendszerrel rendelkező, ambíciózus eunuch volt, jelentős politikai befolyással. A hárem tulajdonképpen két oldalra szakadt, Köszem és Turhan Hatice támogatóira. Mind a két oldalnak megvolt a saját főeunuchja, ami hatalmas káoszt okozott a háremen belül, az emberek nem tudták, kinek az utasításait kövessék. És bár a valide szultána titulus a szultán anyjaként Turhan Haticét illette meg, a köznyelv csak “kis valide”-ként hivatkozott rá, míg Köszem volt a “nagy valide”. Szulejmán Aga támogatása ugyanakkor aranyat ért. Az eunuch első sorban a saját érdekeit nézte egész élete során, azonban remekül értett ahhoz, hogyan használjon ki és vezessen meg embereket. Épp emiatt felmerül annak a lehetősége is, hogy Szulejmán volt az, aki Turhant felbújtotta és Köszem ellen hangolta. Talán Szulejmán volt az, aki saját felemelkedését remélve a fiatal validétől, meggyőzte arról, hogy vegye el ami a saját jussa. Emellett Szulejmán Aga az ifjú szultánnal is megkedveltette magát, egyfajta apafigurává vált a fiú számára. Természetesen nem célom alábecsülni Turhan szerepét az eseményekben, ugyanakkor úgy érzem, hogy Szulejmán Aga szerepe ténylegesen alábecsült és ezt szeretném mindneképpen érzékeltetni. Nem azt mondom, hogy Turhan egy naíva volt, akit megvezetett a csúf, rossz Szulejmán Aga, csupán azt gondolom, hogy Szulejmán támogatása és felbújtása nélkül, Turhan valószínűleg nem, vagy sokkal később szállt volna szembe Köszemmel.

Szulejmán mellett három másik jelentősebb eunuch is Turhan oldalán állt, Hoca Reyhan Aga, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Aga és Ali Aga. Hoca Reyhan Aga állt legközelebb Turhanhoz, mint társalkodója és vallási vezetője, de Lala Hajji Aga is hosszútávú partner volt Turhan életében. Az eunuchok mellett meg kell említenünk Meleki Hatunt is, akinek legendája jól ismert. Eszerint ő volt az, aki Köszem tervét elárulta Turhannak, ezzel megmentve a kis Mehmed szultánt a haláltól és trónfosztástól. A valóság azonban valószínűleg kevésbé romantikus. Valószínűtlen, hogy egy korábban sosem említett, jelentéktelen szolgáló, mint Meleki tudott volna Köszem terveiről és el tudta volna árulni. Minden bizonnyal Melekit csupán oldalváltása miatt ruházták fel nagyobb szereppel, mint ami valójában volt. Talán Meleki elvállalta, hogy lesz bűnbak, tanúskodik Köszem ellen, ha cserébe javakat kap. Legalábbis tekintettel arra, hogy Meleki milyen hatalmas vagyonra tett szert Köszem halála után, nem zárhatjuk ki ezt az opciót sem. Meleki ha a háremen belül hozott is támogatókat Turhan számára, az egész eseményre meglehetősen kevés ráhatása lehetett. A kulcs figura Turhan mellett Szulejmán aga volt, akinek komoly kapcsolata volt a divánnal is, így könnyedén tudta csapatukhoz kapcsolni a divan Köszemmel elégedetlen tagjait is. A legbefolyásosabb támogató nem volt más, mint a Nagyvezír, Siyavuş Pasa, de gyakorlatilag szinte a teljes divan Köszem ellen fordult eddigre. Azt is meg kell említeni, hogy bár a jancsiárok legtöbb alakulata pártatlan vagy Köszem párti volt, a szpáhik inkább húztak a Turhan támogatói csoport felé.

Mi vezetett a tragikus éjszakához?

Mielőtt a közvetlen okokra rátérnék, kicsit vissza kell ugranunk az időben, hogy jobban megérthessük Köszem viselkedését. Mint ismert, trónfosztása után, I. Ibrahimot a trónon fia, az alig 6 éves Mehmed követte, aki mellett szükség volt egy régensre. Az államférfiak Köszemet kérték fel a megtisztelő feladatra. Ugyanakkor a felkérés meglehetősen furcsa volt. Miért is? A régensi pozíciót általában tanítók, pasák vagy édesanyák látták el, Köszem pedig egyik sem volt. Sőt, Köszem a felkérést először elutasította arra hivatkozva, hogy már nincs ereje tovább uralkodni.

Miért vállalta el Köszem mégis a feladatot? Valóban vissza akart vonulni?

Ahhoz, hogy megértsük Köszem gondolatait, még egy kicsit visszább kell ugranunk az időben. Köszem Ibrahim uralkodása során száműzetésben volt éveken át. Száműzetéséből pedig többször kísérelt meg puccsot saját fia ellen. Egyik száműzetésben írt levele alapján egyértelmű, hogy részese volt a puccsnak, mely végül fiát trónfosztotta. Kifelé azonban egészen más képet mutatott. Miután Ibrahimot elzárták, trónra szerették volna léptetni fiát, Mehmedet. Köszem szultána ekkor találkozott a Topkapi Palotában az államférfiakkal, hogy megvitassa velük mi legyen Ibrahim sorsa. Órákon át tárgyaltak, Köszem azonban végig megtagadta, hogy kiadja Ibrahim legidősebb fiát, Mehmedet. Így pedig nem lehetett őt kikiáltani szultánnak. Az államférfiaknak órákon keresztül kellett nyilvánsoan győzködniük Köszemet. Az a Köszem, aki korábban mindent elkövetett fia trónfosztásáért, most fia mellett állt ki. Miért? Természetesen sosem fogjuk megtudni, hogy Köszem fejében pontosan mi játszódott le. Valószínűnek tűnik azonban, hogy Köszem szerette volna megtartani a katonák és nép előtt a szerető anya képét, melybe nem fért bele saját fiának trónfosztása. Ezért egy álvitát tartott a pasákkal, hogy ne veszítse el a nép szimpátiáját, de ugyanakkor a birodalomnak is jót tegyen. Köszem tapasztalt politikus volt, aki éveken át tudott vezető szerepben maradni, ehhez pedig nélkülözhetetlen volt az imázs is. Így végül Köszem beleegyezésével elzárták Ibrahim szultánt, Mehmedet pedig új szultánjukká kiáltották ki. Talán a régensség első elutasítása is egy ehhez hasonló színjáték része volt. Köszem talán úgy érezte, hogy a nép ezt várja tőle, ezért felajánlotta visszavonulását, miközben talán a háttérben már régen megegyezett a pasákkal.

És a divan tagjai miért hagyták, hogy Köszem legyen a régens? Hiszen a divan tagjai közül akárki vagy akár Mehmed tanítója is jelentkezhetett volna a feladatra. Ez pedig hatalmas befolyást tett volna a férfiak kezébe. Miért engedték hát akkor át ezt a lehetőséget Köszemnek?

I. Ibrahimot 1648. augusztus 18-án kivégezték. Egyesek szerint Köszem szultána beleegyezését adta fia kivégzésébe, ám az sem zárható ki, hogy a kivégzés a háta mögött történt meg. Mint már fentebb említettem a trónfosztott vagy meggyilkolt szultánok édesanyja a tradíció szerint a Régi Palotába vonult vissza, ahol politikamentesen élték hátralévő éveiket. Köszem esetében azonban nem ez történt. Ez felveti annak eshetőségét, hogy Köszem nem tudott Ibrahim kivégzéséről és a pasák ezzel a gesztussal igyekeztek kiengesztelni az összetört nőt. De akkor ki rendelte el Ibrahim kivégzését? Gyakorlatilag bárki megtehette az államférfiak közül, de akár Szulejmán aga vagy Turhan is aláírathatta a fetwa kérvényt a kis szultánnal, melyet aztán a Seyhülislam teljes joggal engedélyezett, hiszen Ibrahim nagyon kártékony volt a birodalomra nézve. Akárhogyan is, Köszem a kivégzés után megváltozott. Vagy azért fordult a pasák ellen - akikkel korábban mindig együttműködő volt -, mert azok átverték őt Ibrahim kivégzésével kapcsolatban; vagy egyszerűen anyai szíve nem bírta elviselni, hogy beleegyezését adta fia kivégzésébe és megbomlott az elméje. Bármelyik verzió is igaz, azt tisztán látjuk, hogy az a Köszem, aki IV. Mehmed mellett régens lett, már nem ugyanaz az ember volt, akit korábban a birodalom imádott anyjának tekintettek.

A gyilkosság

Ahogy a fenti összefoglalásból is kiderül, Köszem egyeduralmat próbált kiépíteni, melyben néhány janicsár hadtesten kívül senki nem támogatta, így hatalmas csapat gyűlt össze ellene. A jól ismert verzió szerint, idővel a viszály Köszem és az államférfiak között odáig fajtult, hogy Turhan Hatice támogatásával az államférfiak megpróbálták Köszemet eltávolítani pozíciójából. Köszem válaszul erre azt tervezte, hogy trónfosztja IV. Mehmed szultánt és helyette másik unokáját ülteti a trónra. Ehhez a janicsárokat be kívánta engedni a palotába, hogy azok az éj leple alatt elvégezzék a puccsot, emiatt nyitva hagyatta éjszakára a hárem bejáratát. Köszem terve azonban ellenségei fülébe jutott, egyesek szerint egy Meleki nevű szolgáló által. Így amint Köszem emberei 1651. szeptember 2-án, kinyitották a kaput, Turhan Hatice emberei, a főeunuch Szulejmán Aga vezetésével bezáratták azt és kivégzőosztagot küldtek Köszem szultána lakrészébe. Mikor emberei Köszem lakrészéhez érve bekopogtak az ajtón, Köszem azt hitte, hogy saját emberei jöttek, ezért kikiabált nekik, hogy “Megjöttetek?”. Erre azonban a janicsárok hangja helyett Köszem az eunuch Szulejmán Aga hangját hallotta meg, amitől bepánikolt és menekülni kezdett. Nem pontosan tudni, hogy hogy jutott ki lakrészéből vagy ki jutott e egyáltalán, mert a leírások nem egyeznek. Egyesek szerint lakrészén belül bújt el egy szekrényben, mások szerint megpróbált kijutni a janicsárokhoz, azonban a zárt kapun keresztül nem tudott, így végül a kapu melletti szobában bújt el. A kivégzőosztag, amely több eunuchból (Szulejmán Aga, Hoca Reyhan Aga, Lala Hajji Ibrahim Aga és Ali Aga, valamint néhány ismeretlen eunuch) állt folytatta a keresést. Köszem egy szekrényben rejtőzött el, melyből ruhájának széle kilógott, ezzel felfedve rejtekhelyét. Amikor megtalálták, kivégzői elé pénzt dobott, ezzel próbálva lefizetni őket, ám esélye sem volt Turhan hű embereivel szemben. A legenda szerint a férfiak próbálták lefogni a validét, miközben füléből kitépték gyémánt fülbevalóit, melyeket Ahmed szultántól kapott; ruháját is megtépkedték, ahogy próbálták leszedni róla az értékes díszeket. Köszem túl a hatvanon is erősen ellenállt kivégzőinek, ám végül felülkerekedtek rajta. Egyesek szerint saját hajával, mások szerint egy függönnyel fojtották meg. Az első fojtogatási kísérlet után még magához tért, a másodikat azonban már nem élte túl.

Van azonban több olyan pont a fenti történetben, ami kétségeket ébreszt:

- Köszem problémája nem Mehmed volt, hanem a pasák, Turhan és Szulejmán Aga. Miért nem tőlük szabadult meg? Nem lett volna egyszerűbb és jogszerűbb meggyilkoltatni ezeket az embereket, mint trónfosztani az egyik gyermek szultánt egy másik gyermek javára? Természetesen megindokolhatjuk annyival a dolgot, hogy Köszem nem volt már épelméjű, így ne is keressünk logikát cselekedeteiben. Ugyanakkor felmerülhet az is, hogy talán Köszem teljesen vagy legalább részben ártatlan volt az egész eseménysorozatban. Elképzelhető, hogy nem tervezett semmit a janicsárokkal, az egész terv csak Turhan és emberei által lett kitalálva, hogy legitimizálják saját tetteiket. Ennek azonban ellent mond, hogy a janicsárok a tragikus éjszakán valóban gyülekezni készültek, az pedig nem valószínű, hogy Turhan és csapata sikerrel vezette meg a janicsárokat úgy, hogy Köszem erről ne szerzett volna tudomást. Lehetséges, hogy Köszem valóban készült egy kisebb puccsra, de az talán nem Mehmed ellen irányult. Köszemnek látnia kellett, hogy a pasák mellett Szulejmán Aga a fő felbújtó Turhan és Mehmed "rebellis" viselkedése mögött. Úgy vélem, Köszem egy kisebb puccsot tervezett, melyben megszabadult volna a neki nem tetsző eunuchoktól, szolgálóktól és ráijesztett volna Mehmedre és Turhanra. Ezzel biztosíthatta volna saját hatalmát és azt, hogy többé se Turhan se Mehmed ne kérdőjelezze őt meg.

- Miért gyilkolták meg Köszemet ilyen furcsa módon? Hiszen a jogszerű, szokásos kivégzési mód kivégző osztag által, Seyhülislami fetwával és selyemzsinórral történt. (Fontos ugyanakkor megjegyezni, hogy a dinasztia nő tagjain nem alkalmaztak korábban kivégzést, a nőket jellemzően száműzetéssel büntették.) Köszemet ezzel szemben képzetlen eunuchokkal, hamis fetwával és a saját hajával vagy egy függönnyel gyilkolták meg. Felmerül a kérdés, hogy talán Köszem kivégzése nem is volt eltervezve. Ha a kivégzés el lett volna tervezve, könnyedén tudtak volna kivégzőket szerezni selyemzsinórral és a fetwa kikérésének körülményei is egyértelműek lennének. Volt természetesen fetwa, de az időbeliséget kissé megzavarja a tény, hogy a régi Seyhülislamot ugyanakkor váltották le Turhan egyik megbízható emberére, mikor a kivégzés zajlott. Épp emiatt, és a kivégzés szokásostól eltérő brutalitása miatt, felmerülhet annak a lehetősége is, hogy talán Köszem kivégzése nem volt eredetileg eltervezve, csupán menet közben csúszott ki az irányítás Turhan kezéből és a pillanat hevében az eunuchok kivégezték Köszemet. Utólag pedig, hogy legalizálják az eseményeket gyártattak egy fetwát az új Seyhülislámmal.

- De akkor ki és miért döntött végül úgy, hogy Köszemnek meg kell halnia? Turhan nem volt jelen az események során, és mivel a gyilkosság nem volt előre eltervezve, őt kihúznám a gyanúsítottak listájáról. Természetesen az nem zárható ki, hogy Szulejmán Agával beszéltek erről az eshetőségről is. Valószínűbb azonban, hogy eredtileg csupán rá akartak ijeszteni Köszemre, megmutatni neki, hogy leleplezték, eljárt felette az idő. Véleményem szerint Turhan azt remélte, hogy Köszem beismeri vereségét és egyszerűen visszavonul a Régi Palotába. Túl kockázatos lett volna megölni egy ennyire tisztelt és szeretett validét, úgy, hogy korábban sosem végezték ki a dinasztia egyik nőtagját sem. Nem vall épelmére szánt szándékkal előrekitervelten, ilyen módon megölni Köszemet. Valószínűleg le akarták mondatni, Köszemnek azonban eddigre már nem volt vesztenivalója. Az egyetlen dolog, ami még éltette az a hatalom volt, így minden bizonnyal ellenkezett a kényszer visszavonulás gondolatától. Mikor Szulejmán Aga felismerte, hogy Köszem nem hallgat rájuk, talán félelemből úgy döntött meg kell őt ölniük. Hiszen ha a felbőszített Köszem kijutott volna a palotából Szulejmán és a többi eunuch azon nyomban fej nélkül találta volna magát. Bár nem utal rá bizonyíték, de személyes véleményem az, hogy Szulejmán talán az első perctől kezdve ezt akarta, hiszen tudta jól, hogy Köszem sosem fog visszavonulni. Akárhogyan is az eunuchok végül professzionálisnak egyáltalán nem mondható módon legyűrték az idős validét és kivégezték.

- Teljesen kizárható, hogy legális fetwa és kivégző osztag végzett Köszemmel? Sajnos ezt sem zárhatjuk ki. Az angol követ például arról számolt be, hogy kivégző osztag ölte meg Köszemet, az ifjú szultán által kért fetwa után, Mehmed szeme láttára. Igaz, hogy az angol követ nem a legjobban informáltak közé tartozott. Valószínű, hogy mindenki úgy hitte akkoriban, hogy a fetwa előre volt kiadva, csak később, a történészek kutatásai világítottak rá arra, hogy a fetwa feltehetőleg Köszem kivégzése után készült el. Azt pedig, hogy Köszemet a 10 éves Mehmed szeme láttára végezték volna ki, nem tartom valószínűnek. Turhan nagyon erősen igyekezett óvni fiát, nem valószínű, hogy kitette volna őt egy ilyen traumának. Mustafa Naima abban egyetért az angol követtel, hogy a kivégzés előre megtervezett volt, ám szerinte nem eunuchok, hanem kivégző osztag végzett a valide szultánával. Azonban akkor miért volt brutális a kivégzés? Miért nem volt selyemzsinór? Miért alkalmatlan eunuchok vitték véghez?

A gyilkosság utóhatása

Hogy megakadályozzanak bármiféle ellenállást, Turhan Hatice és emberei az éjszaka folyamán minden olyan államférfit eltávolítottak posztjáról, aki veszélyeztette volna őket. Az első ember, akit kineveztek akkor éjjel, az Ebu Said Efendi lett, az új Seyhülislam. Ő volt az, aki végül kiadta a fetwát Köszem kivégzésére (utólagosan). Ezekután Turhan megüzente az összes államférfinak és katonának, hogy azonnal menjenek audienciára, ahol hűséget fogadnak Mehmed szultánnak. A legtöbben félelemből vagy őszinte érzések által vezérelve, azonnal a szultán elé járultak, akik pedig nem, azokra az új Seyhülislám fetwat adott ki. Így vált jogszerűvé Köszem támogatóinak kivégzése is, hiszen ők sem jelentek meg a szultán előtt. A lázadó janicsárok pedig így árulóként lettek megbélyegezve és legálisan kivégezték őket. A nép szemében végül ők lettek bűnbaknak kikiáltva Köszem haláláért. Köszemet a gyilkosság után a Régi Palotába szállították, ahol előkészítették testét a temetésre. Birodalmi temetést kapott, Isztambul népe pedig önkéntesen 3 napos gyászt tartott, bezárva minden boltot és üzletet. Köszem mindig népszerű volt az emberek között, ám érdekes módon ugyanaz a nép, nem fordult Turhan ellen Köszem halála miatt, sőt, Turhan hasonlóan szeretett és tisztelt valide szultána lett, mint amilyen Köszem volt.

Mi történt a valódi bűnösökkel? Turhan és Mehmed természetesen megúszták, ugyanakkor kérdéses, hogy a gyilkosságban egyáltalán volt e részük. Igaz egy 1656-os lázadás komolyan megrengette hatalmukat, de végül nem veszítették el azt. A lázadásnak a legnagyobb oka a gyenge nagyvezírek, az újjáéledő Celali lázadás és a velenceiekkel vívott háború voltak. A körülmények miatt nem jutott elég gabona a fővárosba, a katonák nem kaptak rendesen fizetést, de az egyszerű emberek is egyre elégedetlenebbek voltak, különösen dühítette őket a szultánhoz közelállók extrém gazdagsága. Végül a janicsárok és szpáhik vezetésével a nép fellázadt 1656 március negyedikén. A lázadás során a szultánhoz közelállók közül többeket brutálisan kivégeztek, az egész fővárost feldúlták. A csőcselék Mehmed 31 közeli emberét a Kék Mecset mellett akasztotta fel egy egy fára. Köztük volt Meleki Hatun is, akit a szultán különösen szeretett. Bár korábban is rázták meg lázadások a fővárost, ehhez fogható még sosem történt. Nem csak a katonák lázadtak fel, a nép is egy emberként állt ki a katonák mellett és állt be mögéjük. Mindenki bezárta boltjait, általános sztrájk lépett érvénybe a lázadás idejére.

Szulejmán Aga már nem volt hatalmon amikor a lázadás megtörtént és talán ez tartotta helyén a fejét. Szulejmán Köszem meggyilkolása után a fő hárem eunuch lett, ám a pozíciót csupán 1652 júliusáig élvezhette. Szulejmán tovább nyújtózkodott, mint a takarója ért, olyan politikai témákba is igyekezett beleszólni, amihez semmi köze nem volt. Turhan Hatice is kezdte felismerni, hogy Szulejmán egyáltalán nem az ő oldalukon áll, hanem csak a saját magáén. Külön érdekesség, hogy az a Lala Ibrahim Aga győzte meg erről Turhant, aki maga is részt vett Köszem kivégzésében. Lala Ibrahim Aga Turhan személyes eunuchja volt és maga sosem vágyott (vagy bölcsen nem mutatta ki) ennél magasabb pozícióra. Turhan így végül 1652-ben megfosztotta pozíciójától Szulejmán Agát és száműzte Egyiptomba. A rafinált eunuch még a száműzetésben is feltalálta magát, befolyásos személlyé nőtte ki magát, aki Kairó helyi politikájának egyik főszereplője lett. 1676/7-ben halt meg.

Epilógus

Valószínűleg sosem fogjuk pontosan megtudni, hogy mi vezetett a kivégzéshez és hogyan zajlott az le. A poszttal nem is az volt a célom, hogy egy tökéletes megoldást mutassak be Hercule Poirot módjára, csupán szerettem volna rávilágítani arra, hogy az általánosan ismert és elfogadott teória, inkább megszokásból tekintendő a legáltalánosabban elfogadottnak, nem pedig alapossága miatt. Rengeteg a kérdőjel, kétes információ és helyzet a kivégzés körülményei között, ami egyértelműsíti, hogy ez az egész helyzet bonyolultabb volt annál, minthogy két nő harcot vívott a hárem feletti uralomért.

Köszem volt az a szultána, aki a legmagasabbra tört, aki sokáig lehetett a csúcson, azonban a nagy magasságból zuhant végül alá és vált az egyetlen meggyilkolt valide szultánává. Élete során több címet is kapott: Naib-i Sultanat (az Oszmán Birodalom régense), Umin al-Mu'minin (minden muszlimok anyja), Büyük Valide Sultan (nagy valide szultána), Valide-i Sehide (a mártír anya), Valide-i Maktule (a meggyilkolt anya), Valide-i Muazzama (a csodálatos anya).

Felhasznált források: M. Kocaaslan - IV. Mehmed Saltanatında Topkapı Sarayı Haremi: İktidar, Sınırlar ve Mimari; L. Peirce - The Imperial Harem; Ö. Kumrular - Kösem Sultan: iktidar, hırs, entrika; C. Finkel - Osman’s Dream: the History of the Ottoman Empire; M. P. Pedani - Relazioni inedite; N. Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; G. Börekçi - Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I and His Immediate Predecessors; F. Davis - The Palace of Topkapi in Istanbul; Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; F. Suraiya, K. Fleet - The Cambridge History of Turkey 1453-1603; F. Suraiya - The Cambridge History of Turkey, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839; Ö. Düzbakar - Charitable Women And Their Pious Foundations In The Ottoman; G. Junne - The black eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire, Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan.

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dwellordream · 2 years

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“...Early modern England maintained a deeply ambivalent outlook toward old age, whose inception was variably set anywhere from about forty onward: gérontocratie in its formal ideology, the society simultaneously displayed a "pessimistic" or even disdainful regard for a stage of life associated with "a wretched time of physical deterioration." Moreover, women in this setting experienced if anything a compounded version of such conflicted attitudes. Freed from the substantial physical hazards of parturition and often from the dependencies and demands of earlier life stages, as Amy M. Froide has argued, single women of the day were perhaps "best positioned to enjoy a positive old age," yet those who had avoid ed marriage altogether "faced derogatory epithets such as ‘old maid’ and ‘ superannuated virgin’ that made direct reference to their advanced age."

Exploring the social impact of menopause in sixteenth-century culture, Lynn Botelho likewise refocuses the emphasis on physical appearance with which women in the era especially had to reckon: "the end of regeneration probably did not signal the beginning of old age to early modern society," she observes, "but menopause did coincide with a host of culturally significant visual changes that resulted in women being labelled old at this stage." Given the unquestionable centrality of "outwardly observable signifiers of status in early modern England," Botelho concludes that "A woman became old when she looked old." This notion takes an expressly humiliating turn in the gerontophobic, antifeminist bias informing contemporary pictorial traditions that rendered figures like Helen, Cleopatra, or even Lucretia as elderly grotesques who might never have exerted the power they did over men could they have been envisioned in their decrepitude.

Keenly sensitive to such contexts, Elizabeth as head of state appreciated how the need to manage constructions of her appearance was a matter of political order. From early in her reign, she aimed to exert as much control over this critical domain as possible, an impulse that took on ever greater urgency amid the growing generational animosities that came to mark her regimes later decades. Educated in the multiform terms of Elizabeth’s public iconography, we have yet to investigate adequately the queens complex sense of her own physical body as it aged. As a result, darker evaluations of the "Mask of Youth" convention so prominent toward the end of the reign have come to overdetermine modern judgments.

As early as 1563, after all, her council had circulated a draft of a proclamation "to prohibit all manner of other persons to draw, paint, grave, or portray her majesty's personage or visage for a time until, by some perfect pattern or example, the same may be by others followed." Our readiness to read her later self-representations as governed by vanity rather than strategy in many respects invests too literally in Ben Jonson's famous sneer that "Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass." Wallace MacCaffrey’s more generous construction of the monarch's own designs puts only a slightly more positive spin on this late "posturing": while Elizabeth's (failed) effort to institute a homogenous portrait had intended clearly "to display to her subjects an unchanging, ageless countenance," he feels that such "outward manifestations are faithful reflections of a fundamental inward reality."

Whatever else we know about this "inward reality," however, we cannot doubt the profound circumspection that Elizabeth brought to all her political endeavors, the formulation of a public image not least among these. We need to resist presumptions that the elder queen was so casually seduced by her own propaganda, and to be willing to recognize her discreet capacity to embrace the advanced age that her body duly registered, less as a physical liability than as an index of the experience that empowered her reign. Always protective of the way others saw fit to represent her for supportive or derogatory purposes, she knew what her subjects expected, and within reason was willing to honor their demands. Beyond this, answerable only to herself, she knew how to project her fully embodied sense of self with a disarming authenticity.

In age as in youth, Elizabeth had the common sense to discern that, however much control a public figure exercised over her own representation, she could never fully govern her audiences response. Over the course of her long career, she grew adept at parrying the "narrative of decline" with which she increasingly had to contend. Interestingly, the first serious critical foregrounding of public discussion about her age came in response to French marriage prospects of the late 1570s, when she belatedly appeared to entertain the Duke dAlençon, over twenty years her junior, as a serious political match. However sincerely and to whatever end Elizabeth pursued the engagement, it indisputably drew national attention specifically to the subject of her years. As far back as 1570, Alençon's older brother, who would go on to take the throne as Henry III, had rejected any suggestion of courtship with such "an old creature."

A decade later, English subjects proved no less tactless in their own violent enmity to the subsequent venture. So respectful a minister as Ralph Sadler delivered a speech in which he boldly recalls how "The inequalyte of yeres" between the parties was such that "her majestie myght be his mother," where John Stubbs in his Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf lodged an even more egregious protest against the unhealthiness of matching "youth with decrepit age." But for all her public fury at such presumptuous commentary, Elizabeth in her correspondence acknowledged the age discrepancy freely. When the French king and queen mother first proposed the marriage in the summer of 1572, Elizabeth was the first to remark repeatedly on "the youngness of the years of the Duke of Alençon being compared to ours," insisting on a personal conference before anything can proceed since "nothing can make so full a satisfaction to us for our opinion nor percase in him of us in respect of the opinion he may conceive of the excess of our years above his."

She later indulges Alençon with wry self-caricatures of "the poor old woman who honors you as much (I dare say) as any young wench whom you ever will find" (CW, 251). Even apart from her most remarkable lyric reflection, the poem "When I was fair and young," which likely dates to the period following the courtship, we have sufficient evidence that Elizabeth harbored no vain illusions about her perpetual youth. Between the demise of the Alençon affair and the year of de Maisses embassy, Elizabeth faced down an almost continuous sequence of reminders of time's corrosive force. The stress of Mary Stuarts increasingly desperate plots and eventual execution in 1587 clearly took a heavy toll, provoking Essex's prediction to James VI of Scotland "that hir Majeste could not lyve above a yere or ii by reson of sum imperfección."

She of course weathered this event and the even grander trauma of the Armada that it helped precipitate the following year, only to witness the deaths of such long-standing ministers as Leicester, Walsingham, Mildmay, and Hatton ushering in what John Guy has termed the queen's "second reign." Alongside the deaths of three more trusted members of her privy council (Puckering, Hunsdon, and Knollys) in 1596, she was then forced to suffer another, more emphatic wave of commentary on her senescence as she achieved the "critical" climacteric of her sixty-third year, when an array of well-intentioned but exasperating sermons taxed her patience. Bishop Anthony Rudd, for instance, preached before her on the way Samuel “cast a right account of his yeares, who when he was become olde, made his sonnes Iudges of Israeli, because he was not able to beare the charge."

After offering for meditation an extended catalogue of the effects of bodily decline, he startlingly presumes to ventriloquize the queen herself in reflection upon her "long temporall life": "Lord, I have now put foote within the doores of that age, in the which the Almond tree flourisheth: wherein men begin to carry a Calender in their bones, the senses begin to faile, the strength to diminish, yea al the powers of the body daily to decay." Sir John Harington reported how Elizabeth, "perceiving wherto it tended, began to be troubled with" the discourse, and rebuked the preacher that "he should have kept his arithmetick to him selfe," but also reports how she later relented, protesting annoyance "Only, to show how the good bishop was deceaved" in his ageist presumption.

John Manningham's diary adds Elizabeth's sardonic but composed remark to Rudd afterwards, "M[aste]r D[octo]r, you have made me a good funeral sermon; I may dye when I will." Cultivating the "wisdom" pose she had taken up at least since the mid-1580s, when she expressed confidently to James that "we old foxes can find shifts to save ourselves by others' malice" (CW, 262), Elizabeth had by 1597 become inured to her role as elder stateswoman. She proudly wore her "years," conjuring them as leverage over her junior subjects, as we find in her 1593 assurance to the MPs that "having my head by years and experience better stayed (whatsoever any shall suppose to the contrary) than that you may easily believe I will enter into any idle expenses, now must I give you all as great thanks as ever prince gave to loving subjects" (CW, 332).

In July 1597 she reprimanded Essex's impetuosity, reminding him how "Eyes of youth have strong sights, but commonly not so deep as those of elder age" (CW, 386), Her famous rebuttal to the Polish ambassador that same month likewise sniped at his master's youth: "seeing your king is a young man and newly chosen," she answered the emissary's presumption in perfect Latin, "that doth not so perfectly know the course of managing affairs of this nature with other princes as his elders have observed with us, so perhaps others will observe which shall succeed in his place thereafter" (CW, 332-33). At the same time—and another extreme altogether—she would remain the subject of fetish and fantasy, in spite of if not because of her age.

If she could not have known Simon Forman's notorious erotic dream of her in age, presented by A. L. Rowse as evidence of the "erotic stimulus that the menfolk derived from having a Virgin Queen upon the throne," she could not have ignored the very public allegation of the executed Jesuit Thomas Portmort that his persecutor Richard Topcliffe had claimed intimate familiarity with the queen's naked features, claiming hers "the softest belly of any womankind." She was aware, in other words, of the broadly various reactions that the sight of her body might have provoked from even so amicable and compliant a character as de Maisse.”

- Christopher Martin, “The Breast and Belly of a Queen: Elizabeth After Tilbury.” in Early Modern Women

#christopher martin #elizabethan #elizabeth i of england #renaissance #history

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ts1989fanatic · 3 years

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Every Taylor Swift Album Ranked

We revisited each of the singer’s original studio albums and ranked them from best to worst.

FEATURESEvery Taylor Swift Album Ranked

We revisited each of the singer’s original studio albums and ranked them from best to worst.

By Slant Staff on July 6, 2021

Taylor Swift started off as a country artist at a time when the genre was both less respectful and accommodating of the voices of women than at any other point in its storied history. The singer’s first four albums barely scan as country music in a meaningful way, instead embracing her preternatural gifts for pop conventions, and her output has gotten stronger the more openly she’s embraced those skills. In the 15 years since the single “Tim McGraw” launched Swift to country stardom, she’s jettisoned the genre’s ill-fitting signifiers and overcome the limitations of her early recordings—improvements captured in her “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings of those albums as a powerful statement of artistic agency.

As Swift takes an apparent break from new music to re-record those early releases, including Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and this fall’s highly anticipated Red redux, we revisited each of her original studio albums and ranked them from best to worst.

9. Taylor Swift (2006)

Though she was praised for her songwriting right out of the gate, what Swift’s self-titled debut truly shows in hindsight is how diligently she’s worked to hone her craft over the years. Some of her trademarks—her gift for melody, her third-act POV reversals—were already present here, but there’s a sloppiness to the writing that she’s long since cleaned up. Whether that’s emphasizing the wrong syllables of words because she hadn’t quite mastered the meter of language (most notable on “Teardrops on My Guitar”) or mixing metaphors (on “Picture to Burn” and the otherwise catchy “Our Song”), there’s a lack of polish and editing on Taylor Swift

8. Fearless (2008)

Nearly every track on Swift’s sophomore effort, Fearless, builds to a massive pop hook. But while her grasp of song structure at this point in her career suggested an innate talent for how to develop a melody, Fearless also highlights Swift’s then-limited repertoire and lack of creativity in constructing her narratives of doe-eyed infatuations and first loves gone wrong. It’s admirable that she tries to incorporate more sophisticated elements into a few of the songs here, but dancing with or kissing someone in the rain is a default image that crops up with nearly the same distracting frequency as references to princesses, angels, and fairy tales. Fearless, however, just as strongly made the case that Swift had the goods for a long, rich career. The bridge to “Fifteen” includes a great, revealing line about a friend’s lost innocence (“And Abigail gave everything/She had to a boy/Who changed his mind/And we both cried”), while the playful melody of “Hey Stephen” captures the essence of what makes for indelible teen-pop.

7. Speak Now (2010)

Swift’s third album, Speak Now, is problematic in precisely the same ways that its predecessors are, but there isn’t a song here that isn’t an absolute wonder of technical construction. Perhaps even more impressive is Swift’s mastery of song structure. Consider how the instrumentation drops out during the last two words of the hook in “Last Kiss,” allowing the singer’s breathy vocal delivery to bear the entirety of the song’s emotional weight, or how a simple acoustic guitar figure on “Enchanted” slowly crescendos behind each repetition of the line “I was enchanted to meet you.” Unfortunately, the greater complexity and range found in Swift’s sound and in her song constructions doesn’t necessarily translate to her songwriting. Her narrators often seem to lack insight because Swift writes with the point of view that hers is the only story to be told, which makes songs like “Dear John” and “Better Than Revenge” come across as shallow and shortsighted. And though she does vary her phrasing in ways that attempt to mask her limited voice, Swift is still noticeably off-pitch at least once on every song on the album.

6. Red (2012)

Considering that Swift’s previous material was almost always better when she tossed the ill-fitting country signifiers and focused on her uncanny gift for writing pop hooks, Red was a smart, if overdue, move for the singer. The album plays as a survey course in contemporary pop, and Swift is game to try just about anything, from the uninhibited dance-pop of standout “Starlight” to the thundering heartland rock of “Holy Ground.” The tracks that work best are those on which the production is creative and modern in ways that are in service to Swift’s songwriting. The distorted vocal effects and shifts in dynamics on “I Knew You Were Trouble” heighten the sense of frustration that drives the song, and the driving rhythm section on “Holy Ground” reflects Swift’s reminiscence of a lover who “took off faster than a green light, go.” Not all of the songs here are so keenly observed—“State of Grace” and “I Almost Do” lack the specificity that’s one of Swift’s songwriting trademarks, while the title track underwhelms with its train of pedestrian similes and metaphors—but if Red is ultimately too uneven to be a truly great pop album, its highlights were career-best work for Swift at the time.

5. Lover (2019)

Swift’s seventh album, Lover, lacks a unified sonic aesthetic, ostensibly from trying to be something to everyone. The title track, whose lilting rhythm and reverb-soaked drums and vocals are reminiscent of Mazzy Star’s ‘90s gem “Fade Into You,” and the acoustic “Soon You’ll Get Better,” a tribute to Swift’s mother, hark back to the singer’s pre-pop days, while “I Think He Knows” and “False God” evoke Carly Rae Jepsen’s brand of ‘80s R&B-inflected electro-pop. When it comes to things other than boys, though, Swift has always preferred to dip her toes in rather than get soaking wet; her transformation from country teen to pop queen was, after all, a decade in the making. Less gradual was Swift’s shift from political agnostic to liberal advocate. Her once apolitical music is, on Lover, peppered with references to America’s current state of affairs, both thinly veiled (“Death by a Thousand Cuts”) and more overt (“You Need to Calm Down”). “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” however, is her stock in trade, a richly painted narrative punctuated by cool synth washes and pep-rally chants, while “The Archer” is quintessential Swift: wistful, minimalist dream pop that displays her willingness to acknowledge and dismantle her own flaws, triggers, and neuroses.

4. Reputation (2017)

In the run-up to the release of her sixth album, Reputation, Swift was excoriated by fans and foes alike for too often playing the victim. The album’s lyrics only serve to bolster that perception: Swift comes off like a frazzled stay-at-home mom scolding her disobedient children on “Look What You Made Me Do” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.” But it’s her willingness to portray herself not as a victim, but the villain of her own story that makes Reputation such a fascinatingly thorny glimpse inside the mind of pop’s reigning princess. Swift has proven herself capable of laughing at herself, thereby defusing the criticisms often levied at her, but with Reputation she created a larger-than-life caricature of the petty, vindictive snake she’s been made out to be. By album’s end, Swift assesses her crumbling empire and tattered reputation, discovering redemption in love—only Reputation isn’t so much a rebirth as it is a retreat inward. It marks a shift from the retro-minded pop-rock of 2014’s 1989 toward a harder, more urban aesthetic, and Swift wears the stiff, clattering beats of songs like “…Ready for It?” like body armor.

3. Evermore (2020)

Evermore is at once as confident and complete a statement as Folklore. Certainly, it matters that the two albums were born of the protracted isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic and that collaborators like Bon Iver and the National’s Aaron Dessner figure prominently on both. But Evermore finds Swift digging further into her explorations of narrative voice and shifting points of view, taking bigger risks in trying to discover how the newfound breadth of her songwriting could possibly reconcile with the arc of her career. What makes Evermore an essential addition to her catalog is her willingness to tell others’ stories with the same insight and compassion with which she’s always told her own. And on this album, in particular, the stories she tells are about how her narrators’ choices impact others, often in ways that cause irreparable harm.

2. 1989 (2014)

Swift’s 1989 severed whatever vestiges of her country roots remained on 2012’s Red, replacing acoustic guitars and pedal steel with multi-layered synthscapes, drum machines, and densely packed vocal tracking. Swift, of course, got her start writing astutely observed country ballads, and these songs bolster her trademark knack for lyric-crafting with maximalist, blown-out pop production courtesy of collaborators Max Martin and Jack Antonoff. The album’s standout tracks retain the narrative detail and clever metaphor-building that distinguished Swift’s early songs, even amid the diversions wrought by the aggressive studio production on display throughout. Songs like “I Know Places” ride a reggae swagger and trap-influenced snare beats before launching into a soaring, Pat Benatar-esque chorus. It’s an effortless fusion that, like much of 1989, displays Swift’s willingness to venture outside her comfort zone without much of a safety net, and test out an array of sonic experiments that feel both retro and of the moment.

1. Folklore (2020)

Folklore is neither a culmination of Swift’s career to date nor a pivot in a new direction. She’s doing exactly what she’s always done: offering a collection of incisive, often provocative songs that incorporate authentic, first-person details and leaving others to argue over specific genre signifiers. Song for song, the album finds Swift at a new peak in her command of language. While tracks like “Cardigan” and “Invisible Strings” hinge on protracted metaphors, “Mad Woman” and “Peace” are blunt and plainspoken. In every instance, what’s noteworthy is Swift’s precision in communicating her exact intent. That she employs her long-established songwriting tropes in novel ways is truly the most significant development here. She’s mined this type of melancholy tone before, but never for the full length of an album and certainly never with such a range of perspectives. It isn’t the weight of the subject matter alone that makes Folklore feel so vital—it’s the exemplary caliber of her writing. The album finds Swift living up to all of the praise she earned for her songwriting earlier in career.

ts1989fanatic not sure I 100% agree with their ranking order and some of the snark on reputation is a little OTT but overall it’s not bad

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dailytudors · 4 years

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MARGARET BEAUFORT: DYNASTY BUILDER,RENOWNED RELIGIOUS MATRON & PROMOTER OF EDUCATION

Margaret became femme sole, title holder in her own right after her son's coronation in 1485, nearly two months after the battle of Bosworth had been fought. She was one of the most learned women of her age and translated many books and endowed many universities and patronized scholars. Bishop Fisher who later died in her grandson's reign, spoke very fondly of her and said that she was an example to behold.

Many historians are of the same mind, though there are some that still perpetuate the scathing view about Margaret that began in the 17th century.

“Margaret’s reputation among later writers has been mixed. Poet and tutor to Henry VIII, Bernard Andre described her as ‘steadfast and more stable than the weakness in women suggests’, which springs straight from contemporary gender conceptions but allows Margaret to be strong and constant as an exception to the stereotype. Her nineteenth-century biographer Charles Henry Cooper saw her as ‘the brightest example of the strong devotional feeling and active charity of the age in which she lived’, who ‘stepped widely … out of the usual sphere of her sex to encourage literature by her patronage and her bounty’ and was ‘united to the strictest piety the practice of all the moral virtues and … chastened, while she properly cherished, the grandeur of royalty by the indulgence of domestic affections and the retired exercise of a mind at once philosophic and humble’. Cooper’s contemporary Caroline Amelia Halstead echoed his view of Margaret as a role model to whom ‘the females of Britain look with duty and affection, with pride as women, with devotion as subjects’ considering her the ‘brightest ornament of her sex’. By contrast, David Starkey’s assessment typifies a more critical modern reaction to Margaret’s talents, referring to her as ‘imperious’ and ‘tight-fisted’. As Helen M. Jewell summarizes, Margaret’s most recent biographers have taken a ‘shrewder perspective, crediting her with a calculating temperament and natural astuteness, “a veteran of bruising political battles” whose life and work show “a constant blend of the practical and the pious, which argues at least an active and disciplined will. There is little doubt that Margaret was a dynamic and influential figure, a survivor whose strength and resilience increased as a result of the dangerous circumstances to which she was a witness. She was also an opportunist, biding her time until she could seize whatever chance might arise to further the fortunes of her family. In this, she was no different from the men of her era, although her sphere of influence differed greatly and the power she exercised was largely in the gift of the men of her life, her husbands and son, even at the height of her influence. As the final link in the chain of the Lancastrian women, her qualities and success underscore the journey the dynasty had taken since the marriage of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, her great-grandparents.”

- RED ROSES: BLANCE OF GAUNT TO MARGARET BEAUFORT by Amy Licence

Margaret lived a full life, outliving nearly all of her relatives, including her son -for whose safety she had sacrificed nearly everything.

Seeing her grandson, Henry VIII crowned alongside Katherine of Aragon, brought the same feelings of joy and fear of when his father was crowned King of England. But it also brought something else: A sense of relief. After all the kings that had come and went, the Tudors proved that they were not another blip in English history. They were here to stay and would remain in the public consciousness for decades to come.

#Margaret Beaufort #Tudor History #portrait

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troybeecham · 3 years

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Today, the Church remembers St. Julian of Norwich.

Ora pro nobis.

Julian of Norwich (AD 1342-c.1416) is known to us almost only through her book, The Revelations of Divine Love, which is widely acknowledged as one of the great classics of the spiritual life. She is the first woman to write a book in English which has survived.

We do not know Julian's actual name but her name is taken from St. Julian's Church in Norwich where she lived as an anchoress for most of her life. We know from the medieval literary work, The Book of Margery Kempe, that Julian was known as a spiritual counsellor. People would come to her cell in Norwich to seek advice. Considering that, in her lifetime, the Black Death swept into England, killing nearly half of the population, the endless waging of the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses, all of which led to the great Peasant’s Revolt, and all the land suffered in poverty, as well as a famine, she was a source of counsel and comfort to a great many people in pain. Yet, her writings are suffused with hope and trust in God's goodness.

The Revelations of Divine Love

Julian's Revelations of Divine Love is based on a series of sixteen visions she received on the 8th of May AD 1373. Julian was lying on, what was thought at the time, to be her deathbed when suddenly she saw Christ bleeding in front of her. She received insight into his sufferings and his love for us. Julian’s message remains one of hope and trust in God, whose compassionate love is always given to us. In this all-gracious God there can be no element of wrath. The wrath — ‘all that is contrary to peace and love — is in us and not in God. God’s saving work in Jesus of Nazareth and in the gift of God's spirit, is to slake our wrath in the power of his merciful and compassionate love'. Julian did not perceive God as blaming or judging us, but as enfolding us in love. Famously, Julian used women's experience of motherhood to explore how God loves us, refering to Jesus as our Mother.

The Writing of the Revelation of Divine Love

Julian recounts that she was thirty and a half years old when she received her visions and this is how we know that she was born in AD 1342. (A scribe editor to one of the surviving manuscripts speaks of her as a 'devout woman, who is a recluse at Norwich, and still alive, A.D. 1413'). There is further evidence to be found in a contemporary will that she was alive in 1416, and that she had a maid who lived in a room next to the cell. Apart from that, we know nothing else about Julian's life.

However, reading Revelations of Divine Love, reveals an intelligent, sensitive and very down-to-earth woman who maintains her trust in God's goodness whilst addressing doubt, fear and deep theological questions. Her trust in God made her fearless, as women were not usually thought capable of reason, learning, and certainly not to question the theological order of the Middle Ages. Her courage and faith inspired many, and still shines today.

One of her most often used quotes puts us in mind to trust in God’s love being the source and fulfillment of all creation: “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Here’s a longer quote:

“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “oned” to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.

This little thing which is created seemed to me as if it could have fallen into nothing because of its littleness. We need to have knowledge of this, so that we may delight in despising as nothing everything created, so as to love and have uncreated God. For this is the reason why our hearts and souls are not in perfect ease, because here we seek rest in this thing which is so little, in which there is no rest, and we do not know our God who is almighty, all wise and all good, for he is true rest. God wishes to be known, and it pleases him that we should rest in him; for everything which is beneath him is not sufficient for us. And this is the reason why no soul is at rest until it has despised as nothing all things which are created. When it by its will has become nothing for love, to have him who is everything, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.”

That we might grow in trust of the love of God, the God whom Jesus revealed to us as Love, blessed Julian. Amen.

Lord God, in your compassion you granted to the Lady Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

#christianity #jesus #god #saints #salvation #peace #father troy beecham #troy beecham episcopal #father troy beecham episcopal

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project-rebirth · 3 years

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Organization: NEW WORLD ORDER

Disclaimer: The subject matter in this bio may be disturbing or touchy in nature. Please do not read if you feel uncomfortable with said subject matter. To those who read, please proceed with caution.

Overview

The New World Order, or also known as Order of Terror but better know to mankind as The Bavarian Illuminati, is allegedly a secret organization controls most government affairs using the Romefeller Family as the main imperial organization base, it also one of the few known organization from Earth affiliated to Grand Multi-Universe Empire, a totalitarian superpower from another dimension.

One of the primary antagonistic factions on both the Magic and Science sides of the world, they have manipulated events from the shadows, since the Bavarian Illuminati is the true organization keeping the Romefeller family active, they are considered to be the true leaders of the Romefeller Foundation.

Its primary objective is to usher in a New World Order in which the elite within the society have complete and utter control of the planet under the control of Diabla, better known as Zayane. They have evaded disclosure of their plans and technologies through their control of the media, but very once in a while, an insider comes out to disclose their testimony of how the society advances its goals. As a conspiracy theory, the term New World Order or NWO refers to the emergence of a totalitarian world government under the thumb of the Romefeller Family. Eventually, their goals changed to extermination of human race. The Bavarian Illuminati was founded by the Magic God Merodach 1900 years ago prior the beginning of Toaru Majutsu no Index.

Despite the fact that Diabla is the current leader, it is unknown who is the true leader; Grand Demon Gaelion, the Dark Emperor of the Grand Empire that is guiding Diabla or Diabla herself.

The Bavarian Illuminati is also an underground organization that controls one-third of the world's economy. It is commanded by Diabla, who regularly send out its elite assassin squad the Numbers on missions. A select amount of prestigious figures such as politicians and businessmen have connections to the organization. Merodach was the true leader of the organization until his death 3 years ago prior the beginning of the story.

It has enormous global influence, surpassing even the power of the United Nations. This power is never used directly however, as Order of Terror prefers to subvert and manipulate other countries and the U.N. and Global Pact Defense to do its bidding.

The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history's progress. Many influential historical and contemporary figures have therefore been purported to be part of a cabal that operates through many front organizations to orchestrate significant political and financial events, ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing through controversial policies, at both national and international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination.

Before the early 2000s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two American countercultures, primarily the militantly anti-government right and secondarily that part of fundamentalist Christianity concerned with the end-time emergence of the Antichrist, which is Diabla herself. Bavarian Illuminati is composed of around 13 different families, each with it´s own goal. These families include Romefeller Family, Nevermind Family, etc. The Bavarian Illuminati are the true organization behind Romefeller Family, what explains why their military is so strong. Most Romefeller technology were created by the Bavarian Illuminati and rivals that of Academy City's due to the origins in which such technology comes from. Echidina Romefeller was once related to the organization but hates policy making and chooses to stay in the front lines using their technologies to create war, so they can gain money and profit to expand their activities.

History

The secret society was founded in 200 year A.D. by Merodach under Diabla's guidance. An ex-Illuminati programmer named Svali says that they appear to be descendants of the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians. Merodach gathered many rich families and used her powers to brainwash the main leaders of the families, including the leader of Romefeller Family to join forces. At first, their name was New World, since their goal was to unify the world; the entire world ruled by one government. However, when Merodach died by the hands of Zayane/Diabla after failing an important task, she assumed the post of leader and has been leading ever since.

Methods of Control

According to Juria Romefeller, the Order of Terror control an area through its:

Banks and financial institutions

Insiders call the Federal Reserve system the Babylonian Money Magic Slave System.

Local government: It don't has direct connection with the government of the world besides Romefeller Family and USA but it has some members hide in the government, using the corruption to let most of poor people to die.

Law: Children are encouraged to go to law school and medical school, so they can keep their activities rolling through society. More workers means more money, more organizations, more industries and more work.

Media: Others are encouraged to go to journalism school, and members help fund local papers. Creating false propaganda, keep people watching TV to keep them away from reality.

Trade: Propaganda of products in TVs, radios and internet. Encourage people to buy more. The use of capitalism in these advertisements is taken to the extreme, because when new products are created, people are encouraged to buy, buying in excess and thus making the organization richer. This money is used to create war weapons and war machines to their future reign.

Slavery: Only the poor forgotten by the law are part of this system. They are slaves of industries and factories that belongs to Romefeller Family and work for 15/7 without salary and are keep in jails to prevent them from escaping. Most of Romefeller Family's bullets are made by their slaves. The slaves only work for the military.

Organization

According to insider Kihara Maiya, the Illuminati is split into three major factions:

The Nevermind Cartel The Bolshevik Axis The Romefeller Rulers

The relations among these factions are in a state of constant flux.

The Nevermind faction typically controls modern U.S. affairs. Much of its wealth comes from the oil industry.

The Bolshevik Axis is controlled by the Romefeller family and is the oldest sector of the Order of Terror

The current Pinder, or leader, of the Bavarian Illuminati is the Romefeller family.

Romefeller meetings are arranged yearly to settle disputes within the organization.

Local Level

They have groups in every major city of the United States and France. They originally entered through Pittsburgh, PA and later built their group in Paris in 1800. The most notable HQ of Bavarian Illuminati is located in the center of Paris, France. The entire district of the Center belongs to Bavarian Illuminati, including all buildings around the main Branch of the Bavarian Illuminati.

Rituals

Recruitment

In the essence of the initiation ritual and process of becoming an Illuminati, lies a simple thesis: one have to be reborn in order to be accepted. The Myth of Creation is the essence of the process.

It all starts with God, who billions of years ago, had to “commit suicide” in order to be transformed, and reborn. The Illuminati believe that the end result transformation is you becoming a “matter”, no longer a physical subject, but a matter. But how can one die and be reborn again? The Illuminati believe that the person can only understand death if you experience it, and in a close encounter that is. By undergoing “samsara”, new recruits demonstrate their infinite power, eternal fearlessness, complete knowledge of existence and intellectual curiosity. All that is needed in order to be part of the Illuminati.

So, naturally, the initiation process includes a ritual of sacrifice. For the sacrifice, there are different rituals performed, depending of the Illuminati order. Some are extreme, and require a death of another human being, however, the sacrifice of a person must be a pure victim; pure and virgin, so that's why the victim are newborn children around 0 and 5-years old. In some cases, the inductee is required to kill somebody during the initiation process, an action that will prove his true loyalty to the Order and beliefs.

However, the more common ritual includes a sacrifice of an animal. In their belief that a person receives power from a departing spirit (the spirit of another person dying), the Order sacrifice an animal. The inductee is positioned at a bench, lying on his back, and an animal is placed on top of him. The animal is then killed, and let to bleed to death. The blood of the dying animal spills on the inductee, and the Illuminati believe that the blood is what gives power and knowledge.

Diabla's Sex Cult ritual

A cult extremely twisted and somber. The cult of sex is something bizarre that is carried out in the most remote places of society, in the forests. In this ritual, more than 100 men and 100 women participate in a massive orgy around a campfire filled with drugs.

Cultists believe that sexual rituals increase Diabla's strength, and in fact, that increases, for Diabla has strengthened herself from people's sins, including lust and greed. Most people in those rituals are members of the Order of Terror, while another part has been brainwashed or paid to be there. In this ritual, there is an extreme need for blood, so it is necessary for all women to be virgins.

After sex, the couple should dance insanely around a fire pit located in the center of the orgy, where they should shout "Heil Diabla!" Several times, this increases Diabla's political strength and intelligence. All this must be done while the person is naked. However, these rituals must be performed in all the countries of the world at the same time, only then will Diabla feel a difference in her power. After the dancing, the people need to bathe in animal blood and prey for Diabla more than 50 times, and so the ritual is complete. All people need to drugged to complete the ritual.

Sacrifice

Although Diabla feeds on the dead souls and destruction that the Order of Terror is doing on the surface of the Earth, Diabla can not become so powerful without the basics of sacrifices. To increase Diabla's spiritual energy, many cultists and members of her political party kidnap virgin men and women to use them as sacrifices. All victims must be virgins by nature.

The victim is taken to a temple of Diabla in the forest or a underground base where he or she will be sacrificed. First, all cultists must be wearing black robes and should be in a triangle position in front of the temple. The victim is tied by 5 helpers in the ritual on a piece of wood. After that, all the cultists in the place must use 20 needles to pierce the body of the victim. After all cultists have finished, the victim is bathed in human blood and then cremated alive. According to the religious of Diabla's church, this ritual is so powerful that it strengthens Diabla in double. Only one victim of this ritual makes Diabla stronger than 100,000 people being killed at the same time.

@tetsuwan-atom @xbloodsoakedx @x-ame-x-damnee-x @cantusecho @crystalmelodies @averageisms @strykingback

#Kinoverse Lore

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southeastasianists · 4 years

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The Javanese state that flourished throughout the 14th and 15th centuries is often called the ‘Majapahit Empire’. But was it really an empire, and what does the word ‘empire’ mean in premodern Southeast Asia? This article surveys the evidence that can help us answer these questions. This evidence includes a handful of government inscriptions from east Java, Bali and Sumatra, two Javanese chronicles called the Deśavarṇana and the Pararaton, the official records of the Ming court, and the account of a Portuguese apothecary who visited Java in the early 16th century.

The Shadow of Singhasari (1255–92)

Before Majapahit was established as its new capital in 1293, the kingdom of Java had already begun to exercise its authority on other islands. Majapahit’s predecessor court, Singhasari, had begun to extend its influence beyond Java during the reign of Rājasa (1222–47). According to the Mūla Malurung inscription issued in 1255: ‘His Majesty [Rājasa] served as a single parasol for the world, the whole island of Java as well as the other islands’, the parasol being a common symbol of sovereignty in Southeast Asia and the Indian ocean world.

This rather nebulous assertion of authority was made concrete by a mighty Singhasari king called Kṛtanagara (1268–92). Two chronicle sources pay close attention to Kṛtanagara’s career: the 14th-century Deśavarṇana and the 16th-century Pararaton. Both of them depict Kṛtanagara as a militant ruler whose successful wars against Sumatra (1275) and Bali (1284) brought these regions under his personal dominion. Kṛtanagara was said to be an adept of Tantric practices, many of them aimed at boosting his supernatural powers. The Deśavarṇana describes his military victory over the Sumatran kingdom of Malayu as being ‘a result of his divine manifestation’ (41.5d).

Kṛtanagara’s success in subjugating various kings outside Java is illustrated by the Padang Roco inscription in central Sumatra (issued in 1286), which refers to him as the ‘great king of kings’ (mahārājādhirāja). He was apparently the overlord of the Sumatran king Maulivarmadeva, who in this inscription is merely a ‘great king’ (mahārāja). Historians today suspect that Kṛtanagara’s disruption of the power balances in the archipelago earned him the enmity of Kublai Khan, the Yuan Emperor in China.

These sources show that the Javanese king Kṛtanagara had been recognised as the overlord of certain kings on other islands in the late 13th century. The legacy of Kṛtanagara’s expansionist policies would be taken up by his Majapahit successors in the 14th century.

Majapahit’s Modest Beginnings (1293–1309)

Majapahit became the capital of Java in 1293, after a convoluted power struggle between several Javanese factions, an army from the neighbouring island of Madura, and even an expedition sent from China by the Khan. The eventual victor was a new king called Vijaya, who cut a rather less impressive figure than his predecessor Kṛtanagara.

The Kudadu inscription (issued in 1294) claims that Vijaya is simply ‘the lord of the whole island of Java’ (1b). The Sukhāmṛta inscription, issued two years later, again describes Vijaya as ‘the lord of all Java’, but more importantly, it describes Kṛtanagara as having once been ‘the king of the kings of Java, extending as far as the kings of the other islands’ (6b.2). The difference is clear. Kṛtanagara was the conqueror who defeated and ruled over foreign kings, while Vijaya controlled only Java.

The Balawi inscription (issued in 1305) describes Vijaya as ‘the sole ruler of the whole of the circle of Java’ and ‘the one whose throne is ornamented by the hair of the kings of the outer islands’ (1b.5). In this inscription, Vijaya compares his four wives (Kṛtanagara’s daughters) to four islands: ‘in their character they are just like Bali, Malayu, Madura, and Tanjung Pura’ (2a.2). We know from the usage in the later Deśavarṇana that Malayu is being used here as shorthand for the island of Sumatra, and Tanjung Pura for Borneo. The Balawi inscription also reiterates the fact that it was Kṛtanagara, not Vijaya, who ‘had his lotus feet kissed’ by kings of the other islands, ‘especially by the king of Bali’ (2a.4).

The shadow of Singhasari loomed large over the first Majapahit king. We see from these inscriptions that Vijaya’s own claim to sovereignty over the other islands was vague, and that he preferred to look back to the imposing precedent set by Kṛtanagara’s overseas campaigns.

We also know that Vijaya’s claim to rule ‘all of Java’ was an exaggeration. The later historical sources (Pararaton, Rangga Lawe and Sorāndaka) narrate how Vijaya spent most of his reign trying to deal with uprisings by his former comrades who had become dissatisfied with his leadership. Shortly after 1300, the king was forced to give up half of his Javanese territory to a Madura-based ruler called Vīrarāja, an erstwhile ally who had helped to put him on the throne in the first place. Vijaya died in 1309, with much of his own kingdom in open rebellion against him, having no real capacity to continue Kṛtanagara’s imperialist agenda in the archipelago.

Consolidating the Heartland (1309–28)

Vijaya’s successor Jayanagara spent the years between 1309 and 1323 dealing with the challenges to Majapahit authority in Java itself. Little is known about Java’s relationship with other islands during this time. The next important piece of evidence for our inquiry is the Tuhañaru inscription (issued in 1323), which describes ‘the whole span of the island of Java, with its dependencies the islands of Madura, Tanjung Pura etcetera, which produces the effort and sacrifice of all people, who constantly pay homage to and worship the King’ (4a.3). This inscription articulates the relationship between Java and other islands as one of ‘dependency’ involving obedience and homage to the Majapahit king. But it is still worryingly vague on which islands were included among these dependencies. Who exactly fell into the category of ‘et cetera’?

The chronicles show that Jayanagara’s reign was mostly preoccupied with domesticating eastern Java under Majapahit rule, a task he had largely completed by his early death in 1328. As the young king slowly consolidated Majapahit’s grip on the Javanese heartland, he became confident enough to start calling himself a ‘king of kings’ of Sumatra, Borneo, Madura and Bali, just as Kṛtanagara had done and Vijaya had not. What did Jayanagara’s claims of overlordship mean in practice? As yet, we have no evidence of specific military or diplomatic actions taken by the Majapahit court to enforce its theoretical sovereignty over the other islands.

One Oath To Rule Them All (1331–57)

Things changed drastically when a queen called Gitārja and her prime minister Gajah Mada took control of Majapahit in 1329. According to the Pararaton (p. 28), Gajah Mada swore an oath in 1331 to ‘defeat the outer islands: Gurun, Seran, Tañjung Pura, Haru, Pahang, Ḍompo, Bali, Suṇḍa, Palembang, Tumasik’. This is the famous Palapa Oath that Indonesian schoolchildren learn about. It is often paraphrased in Indonesian as a promise to ‘unite the archipelago’ (menyatukan tanah air), but that is not an accurate translation, because the Old Javanese text simply means ‘the other islands are defeated’ (kālah nūṣāntara). The places mentioned in the oath are very far-flung: Pahang is on the Malaysian peninsula, while Ḍompo is on the island of Sumbawa.

The Pararaton was compiled sometime in early 16th century, so it is not a contemporary source for Gajah Mada’s oath. We can’t know whether he really said such a thing. But the list of military targets in the oath matches closely the list of tributaries claimed by Majapahit in the Deśavarṇana. An interesting detail given in the Pararaton is that when Gajah Mada made this oath, the other ministers laughed in his face. Even if this is just a creative embellishment, it illustrates how extravagant the project must have sounded to his contemporaries.

We know that Gajah Mada’s words were followed up with action. The Deśavarṇana (49.4a) states that Java attacked Bali in 1343 and deposed its monarch. North Sumatran inscriptions and chronicles suggest that the same thing happened at Pasai shortly before 1345. Javanese foreign policy during the 1330s and 1340s seems to have consisted of something like this:

1) demand obedience and tribute from kings on other islands,

2) launch a military strike on those who refused the demand,

3) replace them with rulers who would be more loyal,

4) withdraw the military force until the next time it was needed.

From what we can tell from the chronicles, Gajah Mada’s military campaigns were more successful and wide-ranging than those of Kṛtanagara. Majapahit’s overseas power had finally eclipsed that of Singhasari.

In Praise of the Majapahit Emperor (1365)

The definitive claim of Majapahit dominance over the archipelago is found in the Deśavarṇana. This text is a blend of chronicle, royalist propaganda, and personal memoir, written by a Buddhist cleric in 1365. The poem dedicates Cantos 12–16 to listing the overseas dependencies claimed by Java at the time. The Majapahit court is compared to the sun and moon, while the subordinate courts in Java and ‘all the peripheral countries on the other islands’ are like planets; they ‘seek shelter in and humbly approach’ the king (12.6).

Cantos 13–14 name these peripheral countries and group them into four: the Sumatran countries that ‘are dependent on’ Malayu, the Borneo countries dependent on Tanjung Pura, the Malay peninsula countries dependent on Pahang, and the miscellaneous countries to the east. The places mentioned go as far north as Langkasuka (modern-day Pattani), as far west as Lamuri (Aceh), and as far east as Wwanin (generally thought to be somewhere on the coast of West Papua). An extremely extensive area.

All these regions described as ‘being protected’ (15.1a), ‘paying homage’ (15.3a), ‘bringing gifts that appear every month’ (15.3b), ‘being guarded’ (16.5a), and ‘obedient to all the commands’ (16.5b) of the Javanese king. Majapahit’s method of enforcing this obedience is explained: ‘any that transgressed his commands was attacked and wiped out completely by groups of naval officers, who are variously decorated’ (16.5c–d).

When the other countries did comply with Majapahit’s demand for tribute, Javanese scholars and officers were sent specially to collect the tribute from these places (15.3). There is a statement that religious scholars were sent in order to ‘establish the doctrine’ of Śiva and Buddha in the outer islands, ‘so that there would not be deviation’ (16.1). Does this suggest a sort of religious domination too?

The Deśavarṇana is a dependable eyewitness account of the times, but its main purpose is to flatter the Majapahit king. How seriously can we take its enormous list of countries that were supposedly ‘obedient to all the commands’ of Java?

Ādityavarman’s Autonomy (1347–75)

There are some holes in the Deśavarṇana’s story of Majapahit supremacy. Enter Ādityavarman, a Javanese prince with possible Malay lineage who served as senior minister at Majapahit in the 1330s and early 1340s, apparently outranking Gajah Mada himself during this period. According to an inscription written on a statue of Manjuśrī dated 1343, Ādityavarman was a Buddhist and was a descendant of Kṛtanagara.

After years of service to Majapahit, Ādityavarman did something odd in 1347. He suddenly appeared in central Sumatra declaring himself the ‘great king of kings’, precisely the title Kṛtanagara had used as overlord of that region in 1286. Ādityavarman continued to issue inscriptions in Sumatra on his own authority up until 1375, apparently not acknowledging any loyalty to Java. During this time, he claimed descent from the old Sumatran Mauli dynasty, whom Kṛtanagara had subjugated back in 1275. One of Ādityavarman’s major inscriptions, the Amoghapaśa inscription (1347), is written on the back of a statue dedicated by Kṛtanagara in 1286. And just like Kṛtanagara, Ādityavarman was also interested in Tantric rituals to concentrate his mystical power.

The Deśavarṇana completely ignores Ādityavarman’s claims of autonomy. Instead it reports that his kingdom paid tribute to Majapahit, just like all the other countries in Sumatra. This discrepancy shows that the Deśavarṇana is prone to exaggerating the extent of Java’s hegemony, just as we saw in the inscriptions of Vijaya and Jayanagara in the early 14th century. It means that we can’t take its list of tributaries at face value, but neither can we reject the text’s claims completely.

The Massacre of the Sundanese (1357)

The massacre of the Sundanese, often referred to as the Bubat War, shows another side to Java’s strategy of domination. It is important to note before we start this section that the Majapahit sources almost always list Sunda as one of the ‘other islands’ and not a part of the island of Java. This confirms our impression that when Majapahit documents say ‘Java’, they mean only ‘where the Javanese speakers live’, i.e. central and east Java, whereas ‘Sunda’ means ‘where the Sundanese speakers live’, i.e. west Java.

According to the Pararaton (pp. 28–9), the Sundanese royal family was invited to Majapahit in 1357. They had come to attend a wedding between a Sundanese princess and the Javanese king Hayam Wuruk. Instead they were ambushed and killed by their Javanese hosts. The pretext for this massacre was a miscommunication: the Sundanese had come on the impression that Hayam Wuruk would take the Sundanese princess as his primary wife and acknowledge the equal status of the Sundanese dynasty to that of Majapahit, while the Javanese assumed the princess was being offered as tribute and would have concubine status.

The decision to kill the Sundanese was taken by Gajah Mada and the king’s uncle Kudāmṛta. Gajah Mada evidently viewed the destruction of the Sundanese royal family as fulfilling his promise to ‘defeat Sunda’. After the massacre, he declared that the Palapa Oath was a mission accomplished.

This story is found in the later Javanese sources Pararaton, Kidung Sunda, and Tatwa Sunda, and is also mentioned briefly in the Sundanese history Carita Parahyangan. Strangely, it is absent from all the 14th-century primary sources, such the Deśavarṇana and the inscriptions. Nevertheless, it is an integral part of the story of Gajah Mada’s oath to defeat the kingdoms of the archipelago. The incident shows that Majapahit supremacy was not easily accepted by other kingdoms, but remained an ongoing source of conflict throughout the 14th century.

The Character of Javanese Hegemony

How did Majapahit actually assert its dominance in the mid 14th century? It is plausible that Java could make long-distance naval strikes against other islands in the archipelago, as described in the Deśavarṇana. It is also likely that those countries sent tribute to Majapahit as a formal acknowledgement of superiority. But Java did not annex those countries, which are always called ‘other islands’ separate to Java. Madura was the only significant island ‘not included among the overseas palaces’, but rather, it was administratively ‘united with the land of Java’ (Deśavarṇana 15.2).

Bali was another somewhat special case. According to later Balinese tradition, Javanese nobles were sent to administer the island after the Majapahit invasion of 1343. The Batur inscription, issued in north Bali in 1384, records that a dispute between one of these nobles and a local community of blacksmiths was referred to the Majapahit court for adjudication.

The Javanese also had the final say in matters pertaining to southern Sumatra. In 1397 the Ming court in China was having difficulties with the Sumatran country they called San-fo-qi, and asked the Javanese to settle the matter because ‘San-fo-qi is subject to Java’ (Ming Shi-lu, 18 September 1397). This is further evidence for the Majapahit court being acknowledged as the highest political authority in this central part of the Indonesian archipelago.

The Majapahit rulers preferred to install obedient local rulers in distant islands, rather than administering them directly. They were sometimes asked to intervene in some domestic problem, suggesting the Majapahit court was seen as having overall responsibility for settling disputes in the region. When these local rulers asserted their autonomy, such as at Pasai and in Bali in the 1340s, or at Palembang in the 1390s, the Javanese deposed them and put in someone they liked better. But this was not always possible. Ādityavarman in central Sumatra seems to have been able to avoid any punishment for defying Majapahit, and it was only after his death in 1375 that the Javanese attempted to reimpose their authority in his kingdom.

Memories of Majapahit

The Malay regions preserved traditions about Majapahit domination for a long time. Between 1513 and 1515, the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires recorded oral histories about the foundation of Melaka, the leading Malay kingdom at the turn of the 16th century. Pires’ notes were compiled in a document called the Suma Oriental, which has proved an invaluable source for the history of Southeast Asia in this period.

Pires’ sources claimed that around 1400, a Majapahit king called ‘Batara Tamarill’ had as his vassals the kings of Palembang and of Singapore. The son of the Palembang king married into the Majapahit royal family, but ‘when he realised how nobly he was married and how great was his power in the neighbouring islands which were under his brother-in-law’s jurisdiction, he rose against the vassalage and obedience’ (Pires, p. 231). The king of Majapahit sent a punishing expedition that took control of the island of Bangka and then drove his disobedient vassal out of Palembang and forced him to flee to Singapore, after which he ended up founding the Melaka kingdom. This event shows that as late as 1397, Majapahit was still effectively able to enforce its claims over its overseas dependencies.

But the evidence for Javanese hegemony peters out in the 15th century. The Javanese kings continued to refer to themselves as ‘king of kings’ in inscriptions dated 1447, 1473 and 1486, but they no longer talked about the other islands specifically. No further military adventures are mentioned in the chronicles. In the latter half of the 15th century, Javanese shipping slowly passed out of Majapahit’s control and into the hands of the autonomous Muslim-ruled towns on the north coast of Java.

Pires was told that Java ‘used to rule as far as the Moluccas and over a great part of the west, and … almost all of Sumatra, until about a hundred years ago [i.e. until the 1410s], when its power began to diminish’ (p. 174). This account is broadly consistent with what we know from the other sources about Majapahit’s claims of hegemony in the period 1330–1400 and its apparent weakening in the 15th century.

What’s in an Empire?

After all this, can we say that Majapahit was really an empire? The answer depends on what we mean by the word. If being an empire means the direct administration of provinces, permanent military occupation, and the imposition of political and cultural norms over a wide area, then Majapahit was probably not an empire. Javanese rule over the other islands was too intermittent and too indirect to qualify by those criteria.

But if being an empire means the projection of military power at will, formal acknowledgement of overlordship by vassals and third parties, and the regular delivery of tribute to the centre, then Java’s relationship to the archipelago can well be considered an imperial one, especially during the late Singhasari (1268–92) and middle Majapahit (1330–1400) periods. At other times, such as early Majapahit period (1293–1330) and the late Majapahit period (after 1400), the Javanese dream of an overseas empire is much less credible.

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constantinopolitan · 4 years

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Worldbuilding: The Beginnings and Workings of the Kranakan Old Kingdom

Where exactly Ishak Kranabus came from is lost to us. His background was undoubtedly Duselite, and later Kranakan historians claim that he was the seventeenth in a line of great warriors, but the fact that he rose so fast in Nyrachian imperial service perhaps suggests that his family had been serving the Nyrachian city states for some time. Whatever the case, he was probably either not yet born or else a very small child when Palmatian the Conqueror united the city states, and he really only rose to power under Palmatian’s second son Thalios I in the 20sBB. Thalios named Ishak as governor of the south-western corner of the Nyrachian Empire, the region known as Ardis. Ardis was and is rather a bleak and windswept region, located to the north of the great plateau of Rumel Hazed and south of the Skuthorpe Sea. The region had been lightly settled by Nyrachians around the end of the third century BB, but its unfertile soils and position off the main trade routes ensured that the region always remained relatively backward, with its cities considerably smaller than those that were rising along the coasts of the Skuthorpe Sea at the same time. It is not really known when Ardis was conquered. Indeed, it is quite possible that the region was never formally brought under imperial rule at all, and simply gravitated towards the empire until being formally brought in by Thalios. Whatever the case, it soon acquired a considerably greater importance as the meeting point between Nyrachian civilisation, and the wild barbarian west. By the time of the Emperor’s death in 16BE, Ishak was firmly entrenched as margrave of his own military “Kranaka” fortress-city, Kranaka Kranabus[1] , on the River Manok. Ishak did not stand alone. Around him were a number of important lieutenants, whose names would later ring loud in the annals of Kranakan history, as the ancestors of the great landed families of the Old Kingdom. Many stories are told of these “Companions of Ishak”, and all are deeply romanticised- here, it must be emphasised again, we have no contemporary accounts whatsoever, and are largely reliant on Varsil Risdos. Nonetheless, it is perhaps worth taking a quick look at these men, and what we are told of them. Foremost amongst Ishak’s allies was Petreas Lailogras. Later tradition makes Petreas an ethnic Armatian, but we have no real way to assess this claim[2]. In any case, Petreas was perhaps a few years younger than Ishak, but quickly established himself as the margave’s most trusted lieutenant. Lailogras was apparently an energetic and active military figure, and a master horseman. It is to Lailogras that the later longstanding Kranakan tradition of professionalised military schooling for young men was long traditionally attributed by later Kranakan historians- even at the very end of the Illustrian empire, fifteen centuries later, Lailogras was venerated as the “father of the army”. Lailogras would be exceptionally long lived, and would play a critical role in the transformation of the province of Ardis into the Kranakan Old Kingdom. Perhaps next in Ishak’s confidence was Samil Alrikas, reputedly the margrave’s cousin. We do, unusually, have some documentary evidence for Alrikas’ career, in the form of a Nyrachian military seal of the sort given to Duselite garrison commanders in the lakelands itself, dated Year Four of the Emperor Thalios, that is, 30/29BE.[3] Samil was certainly a military man, but his later reputation is one of a man of great personal piety, and he is credited with bringing the light of Vaneric to the hitherto heathen Kranakan military elite. Much would be made of this by the fourth century Alrikid kings. Others may be touched on more briefly. Espor and Dekror, the progenitors of the later Esporeans and Dekrids, were apparently a pair of brothers who had never seen direct service under the emperors, but came straight from the west into Ishak’s service as a young man. Maralus and Chairus were leading local gentry of Ustraine, most prominent of the Nyrachian towns of Ardis. And Garvann Asabantris was a legal advisor to Ishak, as well as purportedly a wizard[4]. We have very little information about how the courts of other Nyrachian margraves operated, so the governance structures put in place by Ishak and his allies cannot really be compared. We may perhaps raise an eyebrow at the notion they truly were as exceptionally wise and ground-breaking as the Kranakans would later claim, but they certainly did not closely resemble the strictly hierarchical and lineated imperial court at Vanerica, and do betray significant Duselite influence. Let us briefly examine the supreme decision making body of Ishak and his successors, the Twelve[5]. Duselite influence was most clearly seen in the presence of women on the Twelve, something that would have been seen as rather shocking in contemporary Nyrachia. The four female members were, in order of seniority, as follows. - The high priestess of Vaneric of Kranaka Kranabus, who would crown the king, name his heirs, and whose permission needed to be sought for all military business. - The most senior female member of the blood royal- note, not the queen. This position would be occupied for life, and accordingly royal sisters could not be displaced by royal daughters. - The wife of the Master of the Oxenstall- see below. - One heiress of the great families, to serve for one year before her wedding, elected to her position by all women of the great houses. Next came the king’s four closest advisers, able to be chosen and dismissed at the royal will. Again, in order of seniority, these were as follows. - Master of the Oxenstall, the effective “deputy king”, leader of court ceremonial and order, and most senior military commander of the kingdom. Also known as Master Chamberlain, and Keeper of the Grand Seal. - The most senior male member of the blood royal. Unlike his female counterpart, this office could be and was replaceable when sons were born. - The Keeper of the Royal Inkstand, a ceremonial position with poorly defined, but extensive civilian responsibilities. - Master of the Records, chief judge of the kingdom, and supreme legal authority behind the king. Finally, four men were acclaimed by the great families and their military retinues at an annual ceremony. These were as follows. - The First Lord of the Gerouseia- see below. - Master Treasurer- a vital office, determining the levels of taxation to be levied on the properties of the great families. This became a serial bone of contention in the later second and early third centuries until the decisive reign of Heiral II. - The Stablemaster, in charge of assessing the military levies owed by the great houses to the Oxenstall. - Lord Advocate, something of a deputy to the First Lord of the Gerouseia, with especial responsibility for representing the legal interests of the great houses. Much mention has here been made of the Gerouseia, which certainly existed under the Old Kingdom, but did not attain its later powers until the fifth century. In short, it was an extensive council made up of all men above a certain level of military experience and property qualification over the age of sixty. Whilst the Gerouseia had few formal powers beyond the ability to elect four representatives to the Twelve, it could and did make “recommendations” that conveyed considerable moral authority, notably in the acclamation of an heir and selection of a high priestess. “Recommendations” of the Gerouseia essentially formed the policy platforms of its four representatives on the Twelve, meaning these men needed the ability to master and marshal coalitions of support on the body to make a success of their term of office. Finally, a note on the general populace. Nyrachian Emperors often emphasised their rule on behalf of the people of Nyrachia as a whole, even if in a hierarchical sense. There was no such ideology amongst the Kranakans. A collective sense of “Kranakan” identity did quickly develop under Ishak and his son Saraka in the years between 20BE and 20AB, but it did not begin to extend to the general populace until the third century. This was the great innovation of the Esporean kings in the golden age of the Old Kingdom, but in the first and second centuries, the Kranakan state is best understood as the military rule and exploitation of a narrow elite atop a very large, disenfranchised, populace. _________________________________________ [1] The term “Kranaka” is Duselite in origin, though adopted into Old Nyrachian. The word means something like “defensive shield place”. Ishak Kranabus’ name Is linked to this “akh” means “shield” in Duselite, and “Kran” means defender. [2] Revisionist historians of recent decades have made much of the trumpeting of Petreas’ roots by later members of the House of Lailogras who had important commercial interests in occupied Nyrachia, on the border with the Confederacy, but this is not in itself sufficient to totally dismiss Armatian roots for Petreas. Certainly, Armatian knights were used in the western campaigns of Astrapian and Thalios, and there is no inherent reason to dismiss the notion that some may have been garrisoned in Ardis. [3] Though, of course, there remains the possibility that the Alrikid clan was already established by this date, and the seal refers to another Samil Alrikas. Samil was an extremely common Kranakan name, as we shall see. [4] Risdos spends far more time in his accounts on the “wizard” aspect of Asabantris’ character than the legal ones. [5] Multiple learned works have been written on the origin of the Body- suffice it to say it is unlikely it existed in the format it would attain in the reign of Samil I under Ishak, but Risdos, writing probably in the 40s AB, does not treat any constituent parts of the Twelve as being particularly innovative in his time.

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wordacrosstime · 4 years

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Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being

[Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. Ted Hughes. 1992. Faber & Faber Ltd, London. 504 pages]

I do not think it an accident that Ted Hughes was brave enough to tackle this subject. An award-winning poet himself, Hughes was husband to the poet Sylvia Plath, and seems equally at home in drama and mythology. Plath’s artistry and suffering must have informed and influenced Hughes, whose book tracing about a dozen Shakespearean works focuses on the tragic hero’s terrible relationship to women. This deeply disturbing and yet mythological theme in these plays, Hughes reduces to a Tragic Equation and compares this Tragic Equation in terms of psychology and even psychobiology, a term new to me. It is interesting that Hughes does not describe his Goddess Of Complete Being as a Supreme Being, but rather more like the Mother Earth, or Mother Nature Herself, or even Plath’s White Goddess, all of which Hughes mentions as examples of female divinity. For Hughes the ultimate truth is bound up not with spirits hovering magically in the forest air, but to be found in the bosom of women. Not that Hughes’s equation is formulated from a woman’s point of view; no, rather from the point of view of the boys who become men, that is warriors, monarchs, poets, and playwrights. Hughes draws our attention to the one thing the tragic heroes have in common in the Shakespearean tragedies, behaviour towards women that is brutish, if not violent. This is a brave thesis, and probably not one that would have been published if proposed by a woman. He calls this theory the Tragic Equation.

The Tragic Equation begins, according to Hughes, when the adolescent who is precariously independent from the Mother Goddess and the paralysing force of her love, as a aavaictime of new and uncontrollable sexual energy searching for union with an unknown female, and in Elizabethan society that female is bound to be fairly unknown. Hughes declares the origin of this Tragic Equation is the severing of the emotional bonds with the mother. This emotional recoil which coincides with the first sexual urgings, he believes results, for the man of leisure and intelligence, in a ‘madness’. He convinced me that this ‘madness’ is substantiated throughout the oeuvre. We cannot deny the fact that the infant male, for many years, is in the powerful kingdom of the female, who has miraculous powers to give birth to a human being, must be affected in his search for his male identity. For Hughes this is an adequate reason to explain distrust and hatred of women that Shakespeare’s tragic heroes experience before their final downfall. So it is a kind of revenge Tragic Equation, where the female ends up banished, abandoned or dead, which brings the hero to his knees.

Hughes begins his thesis with the two poems,Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Hughes feels that these two poems are the beginning of the tragic hero who features in the rest of Shakespeare’s works. These heroes, according to Hughes, are tortured by their blind lust, either unconsciously or consciously, and are really seeking a kind of divine love. He makes a good case for his thesis as he convincingly traces the love affairs from the bestial in Venus and Adonis, right through to The Tempest. Interestingly, the process begins with the lust of a woman, the Goddess Venus, who is blamed for lust in general. This lust is transferred, as it must be for the Tragic Equation, to the rapist Taquin. In the male, bestial lust quickly becomes violent. I think Hughes convincingly traces, through the works, the fate of love from its source in confused bestiality to the pursuit of a woman who ideally embodies divine love.

I think contemporary psychology theory agrees with him, and that at the mercy the natural surging of his hormones, the young man is in an unstable emotion state and can reject the object of his desire who is always a young virtuous woman. This is the woman who our tragic hero desperately wants, but can easily hate. Hughes quotes a number of tragic heroes as victims of this ‘irrational madness’, the foremost being Hamlet, and the most irrational being Leontes in A Winter’s Tale, but there are many instances of the hero abusing his most loved woman. Hughes thinks this is purely a psychobiological trait, mythologized through the centuries. He does not relate it to being an English subject in the reign of a powerful queen.

For all lovers of Shakespeare Hughes’s book is delightful reading except for the number of folkloric references which are confusing. Hughes desire is clear; to trace a path from bestial to divine love in the entire Shakespearean oeuvre and he begins this journey with the boar as symbolic of male desire. The book cover is a drawing of a boar. In Hughes’s Tragic Equation, the hero who chases the chaste woman, invariably comes to a sad end himself, and I find this supported by at least ten of the plays in the Shakespearean oeuvre. Hughes also insists that the plays portray a penitent hero who can transcend his madness and trade in his lust in order to reach a more spiritual love. Unfortunately, while this may be neat and psychologically sound, Hughes then goes on to confuse the boar with the Queen of Hell. This particular myth, or effigy I found difficult to accept since there’s only one character who could rightly be called that, Lady Macbeth. What is easier to accept is the raw youth at the mercy of his hormones in All’s Well That Ends Well, evolving into the wise old man, Prospero, at the end of the cycle who cares for his daughter so lovingly.

While agreeing in general with Hughes’s thesis, that the plays represent a growth towards spirituality, I think Hughes relies on psychology more than sociology or political impetus. Sociologically there is a very potent reason for the overbearing mother and her frustrated sexuality, namely, the oppression of women in the sixteenth century, especially aristocratic and landed-gentry women. They were inevitably bartered away and invariably ended up with an arranged and loveless marriage. Thus the problem of imposed ‘madness’ but Hughes does not credit this new interest in the relationship between men and women with the powerful rulers who are women. This very emphasis and criticism of male behaviour must have been inspired by the very powerful female monarchs of that era. There was the first ever queen of England, Queen Mary, a hated first English Queen, Mary Queen of Scots, who claimed to be queen of Scotland, England and France, and of course the omnipotent Elizabeth the First. Subjected to such powerful women must have been the source of much internal and external conflict. All three women must have ushered in a new sensibility, not necessarily in the portrayal of women but in the portrayal of men’s behaviour towards women who, for the first time had political clout. Hughes makes no reference to the possible influence of these monarchs. He also omits to note that these inner conflicts about the opposite sex, however common they are among the commoners and even aristocracy, are never described as the fatal flaw of the reigning monarch, or the paternal Dukes that pepper the plays. Perhaps Elizabeth would have more than frowned on portraying royalty with this fatal flaw. The most insidious male monarch who subdues a woman is, of course, Richard the Third, who is deliberately being maligned. Prince Hamlet is a great example, of someone who cannot become a monarch after his ‘madness’. The Winter’s Tale proves to be the exception, but that is because he becomes a penitent and is forgiven by the statue of his victim wife. Towards the end of the cycle, King Lear’s aggression is relatively mild against Cordelia, and he too repents.

Hughes does, however, make some historical explanation for the sudden emergence of scholarship of such profound depth and meaning. He credits the conflict between the Papal Church, personified perhaps by the Virgin Mary, and the rapacious Henry VIII. Hughes neglects to mention the protestations of Luther which made the intelligentsia (not the monarchs) question the Divine Right of Kings. These are powerfully conflicting elements which reach right down through every strata of society, and were represented in the person of Elizabeth the First; a rebel female and ‘unnaturally’ a scholar, who used the divine right of kings to rule. Hughes does mention that Queen Elizabeth had a keen interest in what was being dramatised because she was aware of the support she needed and appreciated the theatre as an instrument of propaganda. She headed an aristocratic class with leisure to reflect on the nature of women, and to believe that it was patriotic to do so. England was finally emerging from the brutality of the Roman Empire although English scholars had no desire to avoid the civilizing influence of Italian thought, language and painting. Dante and Boccaccio were influential. Elizabeth the First spoke Italian fluently and probably read Castiglione’s prescription for the perfect courtier and Machiavelli in the original. Even Mary Queen of Scots had her Florio.

When Hughes drew my attention to the Tragic Equation and even to his theories of psychobiology, it made me realize that the aristocratic, and characters who feature as leaders and celebrities in the plays, were probably always raised in dysfunctional family circumstances. Interestingly, they have this in common with the aristocrats of the day who supported the theatre and followed the Shakespearean oeuvre and argument on behalf of the conflicted tragic heroes. At the mercy of suppressed mothers, they must have felt like tragic heroes themselves.

Hughes does not need to mention the fact that Shakespeare is very popular today, but I think it is pertinent. Violence towards women is still with us and the reason why is still a subject of contention and endless theorizing. Jonathan Fast explores this violence in young males in his two books, Ceremonial Violence, A Psychological Explanation of School Shootings, and Beyond Bullying, Breaking the Cycle of Shame, Bullying and Violence. Interestingly this shame is not racial, or even competitively nurtured, no, it is learned in the heart of the dysfunctional (to a nth degree) family. Apparently Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother made him eat all the food she cooked, rotten or not. . Feminists may run from facts like these, by pointing out to the use and abuse of women which is responsible for such dysfunctional families. I agree with this position. Family dysfunction can easily be socially approved, such as in the suppression of women’s sexuality and ambition. I’m sure women’s liberation and the respect women are now acquiring in the public and private sector, will go a long way to reducing the effect of this trauma.

Hughes’s analysis of the tragic hero was long-winded but still left me wanting more, and a little sceptical of his need for formulas and theories. He focuses on the dramatic characters’ violence, rather than their passion for words and joy of life, notably absent from this didactical tome. But I want to thank Hughes for pointing out the ‘scurvy’ males in the Shakespearean oeuvre, and tracing the cycle of plays where the hero evolves towards some veneration, it not worship, of a divine being that is female in nature like the goddesses in The Tempest’s marriage ceremony.

[images copyright to publisher & photographer]

Eliza Wyatt

Words Across Time

17 March 2020

wordsacrosstime

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fideidefenswhore · 2 years

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i don’t really get being outraged that so much tudor stuff is anne boleyn-centric, even if you personally really dislike her i think it makes complete sense if you think about it for longer than five seconds.

#that quote inspired some rage but DM was correct in that she literally is the only one of the six consorts whose time in power was referred #to as her 'reign' by contemporaries...

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an-incurable-affection-blog · 5 years

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Ivanhoe

Sir Walter Scott. 1819. “Romanticism and Gothic” list.

“Rebecca and the Wounded Ivanhoe” by Eugene Delacroix.

“The knights are dust, And their good swords are rust, And their souls are with the saints, we trust.”

In the style of Sir Walter Scott, whose books and chapters open with epigraphs, I begin with a quote that Scott adapts from Coleridge’s “The Knight’s Tomb” (although in Ivanhoe we find this in the main body of the text).

The quote is just one of countless places where the narrator calls attention to the fact that the book is set in an earlier age (the reign of Richard I, in the 12th century) than its time of publication (1819). Whereas a contemporary historical novel typically presents a self-contained story, without extradiegetic references to its nature as a period piece, Ivanhoe scuttles between its setting and (Scott’s) present-day: for example, to contrast what a certain building looked like in the period with how it does now; or contrast the customs of the time with current customs, sometimes to help readers understand an event (“And as there were no forks in those days, his clutches were instantly in the bowels of the pasty”), sometimes just because; or offer reasons why we should believe in the plausibility of his fictions, naming his historical sources. As the first historical novelist, Scott seems to feel called upon to explain and justify his new genre even within the text itself. In their context, the Coleridge lines are trotted out to justify why the narrative declines to include lengthy descriptions of the devices and colors of the knights at a particular tournament⁠—contrary, the narrator explains, to “my Saxon authority (in the Wardour Manuscript).”

Of course, no work of fiction needs to justify why it includes certain details and leaves out others—it is the author’s job to decide what material is relevant, and there are far too many choices involved to justify each one. But the narrator brings up his reasoning behind not describing knights’ heraldry—namely, because they’re all dead now—to play up the theme of nostalgia, a staple of the Romanticist movement. Not only are we, in the nineteenth century, looking back at knights (how nostalgic), but remember, readers, they no longer exist (aw!).

But the Romanticist project here is ambivalent, with the narrator both criticizing (explicitly) and glorifying (usually more implicitly) the Age of Chivalry. The narrator frequently opines on “the disgraceful license by which that age was stained,” and how “fiction itself can hardly reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period,” and so on. “In our own days...morals are better understood” (he’s no relativist). But on the other hand, as Richard the Lionheart comments upon hearing the Saxon noble Athelstane detail how he escaped from a crypt, “beshrew me but such a tale is as well worth listening to as a romance.” That’s because it’s a tale within a romance, and romances, the implied author seems to agree, are well worth listening to. “The horrors” are seductive. The horrors are romantic. (Cf. the Gothic.)

The title may be Ivanhoe, after its chivalric Saxon hero Wilfred of Ivanhoe, but the real hero(ine), arguably, is the beautiful and long-suffering Jewess Rebecca. Here we can see the real divergence of this 19th-century Romantic work from its medieval-romance inspiration. In what can be read as an implicit criticism of medieval romance and the age that gave rise to it, the show, I think, is stolen from the titular knight-errant by a Jewish woman.

The only character with no flaws or foibles, Rebecca is even more perfect than the heroine we would expect to star in this romance—Ivanhoe’s lady-love, the Saxon princess Rowena. As the similarity of their names suggests, Rebecca and Rowena are doubles. They appear in back-to-back chapters, simultaneously unfolding chapters that feature them, imprisoned in separate rooms of the same castle, spurning the sexual advances of their respective captors. Heroines locked up in castle chambers, besieged by would-be rapists and the threat of forced marriages; heroines demonstrating their noble character by rejecting wicked seducers—all tropes. Less predictable is the use of these tropes as a means of contrasting the situations of women from different classes, and with a Jewish woman emerging as the superior character, no less.

Both women do triumph in their goal of averting the fates their captors intend. But Rowena, normally haughty, crumples in a flood of tears when she realizes De Bracy’s power to force her hand in marriage. (Luckily for her, De Bracy is soft at heart—this would not have worked on Rebecca’s admirer, the still more wicked Brian de Bois-Guilbert.) Rebecca, though bearing herself with “courtesy” and a “proud humility” (in contrast to Rowena’s haughtiness), shows herself to have more spirit and strength of character. As a member of a despised race, Rebecca is approached with an offer far less honorable than marriage. (Also, Bois-Guilbert’s vows as a Knight Templar forbid his marriage to anyone.) Instead, the Knight wants to make her his mistress. In such a station she will be showered with riches and glory, he promises. She answers with true fighting words: “I spit at thee, and I defy thee.” In a classic (literally, going back to classical mythology) heroine move, Rebecca threatens to commit suicide, jumping to the ledge of the high turret and warning him not to come a step closer. This both dissuades Bois-Guilbert from his original intent and heightens his passion for her: “Rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonor must have a proud and a powerful soul. Mine thou must be!...It must be with thine own consent, on thine own terms.”

Thus Rebecca finds herself at the center of a Gothic-heroine-threatened-with-rape-in-castle-chamber scene turned into a Samuel Richardson-style seduction narrative—that gives way, at this part, to a Gothic castle siege passage. Whereas Rowena’s persecutor uses the interruption presented by the siege as an excuse to desist in his ill-fated suit, the Richardsonian plot starring Rebecca continues as a dominating strand of the novel, another respect in which her character appropriates the literary territory of the highborn Englishwoman. Before Brian de Bois-Guilbert closes his first scene with Rebecca to go defend the castle, he established himself as that tantalizing character-type, the potentially reformable rake. “I am not naturally that which you have seen me—hard, selfish, relentless. It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it...” He came home from knight-errantry, he explains, to find that the lady-love whose fame he spread far and wide had married another man. Here the reader can glimpse the possibility for Rebecca to be a Mary (another Jewess) to the former lady’s Eve, the means to redemption for a man who was led by a woman into corruption. Whether the Knight Templar will turn out like Richardson’s reformable Mr. B or the irredeemable Lovelace remains to be seen.

In another aspect of Rebecca’s and Rowena’s doubleness, Rebecca’s (rejected) lover is antagonist to Rowena’s (accepted) lover, the hero Ivanhoe. Brian de Bois-Guilbert is the ultimate 12th-century bad boy: he has “slain three hundred Saracens with his own hands,” and he slays with the ladies, too. He is described, in the Ann Radcliffe tradition, with all the dark fascination of a Gothic villain:

“His expression was calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not fear, upon strangers. High features, naturally strong and powerfully expressive...keen, piercing, dark eyes, told in every glance a history of difficulties subdued and dangers dared...a deep scar on his brow gave additional sternness to his countenance and sinister expression to one of his eyes...”

and so on. One of the most interesting things about the novel for me is the way that Bois-Guilbert—over and above whatever is appealing about bad boys—is a strangely sympathetic character, more so than Ivanhoe, and to what degree that was built into the narrative intentionally. When the narrator weighs in with moral judgments (as he often does), it can offer insight into what his take might be on those scenes unaccompanied by commentary. So for example, when the narrator calls “the character of a knight of romance” (here, describing King Richard) “brilliant, but useless,” it implies an author for whom Rebecca is a mouthpiece when she comes down on the anti-chivalry side of a debate with Ivanhoe. So the narrator—and most modern people—likely agree with Rebecca’s opinion of the laws of chivalry as “an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory,” to which a highly miffed Ivanhoe responds that she can’t understand because she is not a noble Christian maiden (unlike Rowena, is the unspoken subtext).

Applying this to the case of Bois-Guilbert, the villain, we might conclude, to our confusion, that his views of race are closer to the narrator’s (more progressive). I have already discussed the novel’s treatment of Rebecca, one of two major Jewish characters; the other, her father Isaac, conforms to some offensive Jewish stereotypes (stingy, money-hoarding, obsequious etc.) but is ultimately portrayed as good-hearted. Moreover, anytime the narrator draws on negative stereotypes he accompanies it with vindications of the Jewish people based on their historic oppression. As in other areas, the storytelling is here flavored with a decidedly 19th-century sensibility (even perhaps progressive for 1819, when Jews still could not hold public office in England). The narrator repeatedly describes the anti-Semitism of his characters as “prejudiced” and “bigoted.” All the characters seem to feel Rebecca’s beauty and greatness, but Bois-Guilbert is the only one who sees her as an equal, without qualifying her noble traits in terms of her Jewishness. Her race seems to be a non-issue for him. Contrasted with Ivanhoe, whose admiring male gaze turns into a demeanor of cold courtesy when he learns Rebecca’s descent, the medieval villain looks more and more like a hero for the 21st century. Could he be Scott’s real hero?

Moving forward, the evidence piles in favor of Rebecca as the real star (despite her complete lack of mention on the back cover of my 1994 Penguin Classics edition). The penultimate chapter, the novel’s denouement, decides Rebecca’s fate in the Richardsonian narrative. The two chapters prior, separating the conclusion from when we last left Rebecca, in danger of being burned at the stake as a Jewish sorceress, are sort of like...okay, Ivanhoe, Rowena, Richard the Lionheart, blah blah blah. Every chapter in Ivanhoe is fun, and there’s a surprise in these chapters, but it’s ultimately an example of Scott’s mastery of the suspense trick of drawing out a cliffhanging moment by switching to a different plot, one that is slower and more predictable and less emotionally captivating. It’s all great reading, but whether or how Rebecca will be saved is what we really want to know, what we will read through anything to find out. Rebecca’s importance—and Rowena’s as her foil—is also borne out by Scott’s choice to close the novel on their farewell scene.

The penultimate chapter contains Rebecca’s trial by combat. Rebecca’s life is at stake, but the real trial is Brian de Bois-Guilbert’s. Since backing off the whole raping Rebecca idea, he has saved her life and then put it at risk again. Bois-Guilbert’s rescue of Rebecca from the burning castle of Torquilstone, by the way, is an example of Scott’s practically cinematic sense of humor and flair for dialogue. Essentially, the Knight Templar appears in the room where Rebecca has been nursing Ivanhoe, when they’re all about to go up in flames; Rebecca is more fiery than the fire (“Rather will I perish in the flames than accept safety from thee!”); Bois-Guilbert picks her up and carries her off anyway (“Thou shalt not choose, Rebecca; once didst thou foil me, but never mortal did so twice”); Ivanhoe, unable to move, yells hilariously impotent threats of rage from his sickbed: “Hound of the Temple—stain to thine order—set free the damsel! Traitor of Bois-Guilbert, it is Ivanhoe commands thee! Villain, I will have thy heart’s blood!” The perfectly timed next sentence: “‘I had not found thee, Wilfred,’ said the Black Knight, who at that instant entered the apartment, ‘but for thy shouts.’”

After this daring rescue, in which the Knight Templar uses his shield to protect Rebecca at the risk of his own life as they gallop on his horse through the flying arrows of the battle, he spirits her to the prefectory of his Temple with the purpose of keeping her captive until she feels forced to “consent” to sex with him. As one might expect in the case of two equally indomitable people with a difference in values, this isn’t going well, until it goes even worse: the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, a stickler for all those pesky rules about not drinking and fucking, makes a surprise visit and finds out about Rebecca. The leader of the prefectory, who knew about Rebecca and was cool with it but has to save face for himself and his most important Knight, convinces the Grand Master that the Jewess has literally bewitched Bois-Guilbert (an easy sell). So in all fairness, she should really be burned to death and he should be given a few Hail Marys. Learning of this horrific prospect, Bois-Guilbert returns to Rebecca with his final offer: he will leave England, abandoning the Knights Templar in all its attendant glory and ambitious prospects, in order to save her, on the condition that she accompany him to start a new life back in the Middle East, where he can conquer everything (his reigning passion) there instead; if not, he’s not giving up his whole life for nothing, and she will see that “my vengeance will equal my love.” For the third time, Rebecca’s answer is that she’d rather die. Bois-Guilbert despairs, wavers, makes a plot to save her without compromising his position—he gets her, when inevitably convicted, to request a trial by combat, imagining that he can be her champion in disguise. Then he is required to fight for the Knights Templar against her champion (if she can even find a champion). Brian de Bois-Guilbert is like the third best knight in the world, so that’s probably a death sentence for Rebecca. He offers to save her again when she’s at the stake, with no champion for her yet appearing and time running out, and is again rebuffed. Ivanhoe rolls up at the last minute to be Rebecca’s champion, still really wounded, and his horse is totally exhausted. Under these conditions, the Knight Templar knocks Ivanhoe off his horse, as everyone expects. But no one, not the live audience, certainly not me, expects Brian de Bois-Guilbert to fall off his horse for no reason, practically untouched, and die. The Grand Master says, “This is indeed the judgment of God.” True to genre, the narrator replaces divine intervention in human affairs with a very Romantic and scarcely more probable explanation: “he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions.”

Rebecca’s would-be seducer dies of being unable to decide whether he is a Mr. B or a Lovelace. Some readers may be left in similar indecision about how to judge him. Not so Rebecca, who has actually loved Ivanhoe the whole time, "imput[ing] no fault to [him] for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion.” Rebecca is very unusual among Romantic heroines from the long 18th century in that her love goes unrequited. She may meet the type’s standards of perfection notwithstanding her Jewishness, but ultimately she cannot escape its limitations to claim her full literary-generic inheritance, the hero’s adoration. Happily ever after goes to the less deserving Rowena, and Ivanhoe only has the decency to recall Rebecca’s beauty and magnanimity “more frequently than [Rowena] might altogether have approved.” Rebecca must withdraw and devote her life to God. In this genre, there is no such thing as second love, and that is one of many points on which the narrator remains silent.

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reallifesultanas · 3 years

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Portrait of Sultan Mustafa I / I. Musztafa portréja

Background and childhood

Mustafa's date of birth is disputed, but he was most likely born in Istanbul around 1600 as the son of Sultan Mehmed III and his favorite concubine Halime. He was the full-brother of Prince Mahmud. There are those who date his birth after 1590, but this is unlikely, as the contemporary ambassadors clearly referred to Prince Mustafa in the summer of 1603 as a toddler. This was the period when his brother, Mahmoud, was executed by their own father, and Halime's life was saved only by the youth of Prince Mustafa, according to the Venetian ambassador. Halime lived in exile in the Old Palace after the death of Mahmud. According to some sources, Prince Mustafa also accompanied her, while others said he remained in the Topkapi Palace with a wet-nurse.

Severe changes soon took place in Mustafa's life. His father died suddenly in December 1603, and his older half-brother, 13-year-old Prince Ahmed, ascended the throne. The law of fratricide clearly states that when a prince becomes a sultan, he must execute his brothers in order to maintain order. Ahmed’s case, however, was special as he was still just an uncircumcised child who had never ruled a province, had no experience of any kind and had no heirs yet. Before Ahmed, the sultans usually already had several heirs when they ascended the throne, so there was no need to fear inheritance. In Ahmed's case, on the other hand, the survival of the dynasty was at risk, so his advisers suggested that he should not execute his younger brother, Prince Mustafa, until he had his own heirs. The grimace of fate is that despite Mustafa's survival, there was a serious threat to heredity, for, in the spring of 1604, both Ahmed and Mustafa caught the often deadly smallpox. Eventually, however, fortunately, they both recovered, though they had smallpox-scars on themselves for the rest of their lives.

Wherever Mustafa lived until then, according to reports, with Ahmed's accession to the throne, he was permanently separated from his mother, Halime, and received his own residence in the harem in Topkapi Palace. Ahmed's mother, Handan Sultan, though, spent a lot of time with the child, as she certainly felt sorry for the motherless prince and regularly took him for a walk in the imperial garden. Mustafa’s survival was to the liking of the people, as the law of fratricide was watched with increasing disgust and shock in previous years and so the people of Istanbul were glad that a change had finally taken place. However, Mustafa's existence also posed a continuous threat to Ahmed, as he was a potential rival.

We know that Ahmed thought a lot about what he should do with Mustafa. This was especially exacerbated when his own children were born. Ahmed tried to execute his brother at least twice. For the first time, however, shortly after he issued the order, a huge storm ensued, which Ahmed interpreted as a sign from Allah and recalled the executioners. For the second time after the command was issued, unbearable stomach pain struck him, which he also interpreted as a sign of Allah. An important factor in keeping Mustafa alive was Ahmed’s favorite concubine, Mahpeyker Kösem. Kösem had several sons, but she was not the mother of the eldest prince, so it was important to her that the law of fratricide be abolished forever. And the key to this was Mustafa's survival, so Kösem in every possible way tried to convince Ahmed. Either way, Ahmed finally gave up on executing his brother, Mustafa. This may have been due to the fact that Mustafa had epilepsy and, according to some, his mental problems were clear as a child. Others say both epilepsy and his mental problems are due to Ahmed kept him locked up and not allowed a proper education for him.

Sultan Mustafa Han Hazretleri

Ahmed struggled with his poor health throughout his reign, but by the second half of the 1610s, his illness became more and more serious, until he finally died in November 1617. His death forced religious and political leaders into an unprecedented situation. The two possible heirs were Mustafa as the oldest male in the dynasty and the 13-year-old son of Ahmed, Prince Osman. Mustafa was unfit because of his mental condition, and Osman both because of his age and because he had lost his mother years earlier, so there was no one who could help the prince. Of the two unsuitable candidates, Mustafa eventually emerged victoriously. Why? Both the people and the leaders wanted to put an end to the law of fratricide forever, and this was only possible if they changed the inheritance. A great supporter of this was Seyhülislam Esad Efendi himself and the chief eunuch, Haci Mustafa Agha, who was even more powerful and had more wealth and influence than the sultan. The two men eventually convinced every skeptic that Mustafa was the better choice and that his mental state was only a consequence of the confinement, he would improve if he could meet people. Presumably, Haci Agha, who knew exactly Mustafa's true condition and that it will not improve, simply lied to achieve his goal. With this little lie, he made Mustafa's mother, Halime Sultan, his own trustee, whom he later betrayed.

Soon, however, Mustafa's mental state became clear to all, as did that his condition would not improve and the Sultan was unfit to rule. His few loyal advisers informed the Sultan's mother, Halime, that a coup was being made against her son, the head of which was Haci Mustafa Agha, who had helped Mustafa to the throne. Halime unfortunately blindly trusted the eunuch and did not take the threat seriously. One day, however, Haci Agha closed Sultan Mustafa to his apartment instead of escorting him to the divan. Prince Osman was presented to the divan instead and they made him the new sultan. Thus, barely three months after his accession to the throne, Mustafa was dethroned and replaced by Ahmed's firstborn son. Mustafa, however, was not executed because of his mental problems but was locked back in his apartment, where he had spent his entire life, and his mother was exiled again to the Old Palace, but at that time she was able to retain her rank and high salary and was treated with respect.

Confusing times

Osman's rule was not in the least peaceful. The soldiers hated him and the people also turned against him more and more when he executed his half-brother, the eldest son of Kösem, Prince Mehmed. On top of all this, a mini ice age also reached the imperial capital, which was valued by the people as the punishment of Allah, for the execution of the innocent Prince Mehmed. Thus essentially they made Osman responsible for the particularly cold winter.

People's dissatisfaction increased, and Halime Sultan took advantage of this so allied with the Janissaries, who deeply despised Osman. Halime also found an important ally at this time in her own brother-in-law, Davud Pasha, whom Osman particularly hated and made his life very difficult during his reign. The end of this multifaceted alliance in 1622 was a Janissary revolt. The Janissaries broke into the Topkapi Palace and tried to find Mustafa's hideout. When they realized that the only entrance to his apartment was from the harem, they tried to find a solution. Although the Janissaries were wild and in many ways unpredictable, they also obeyed certain laws, so it did not occur to them to enter the Sultan’s harem. Eventually, a hole was punched in the roof of the apartment, and Mustafa was released by descending on a rope made of curtains. The former sultan was in a very bad condition, for he had not received food or water for days. In the chaos, they just simply forgot about him.

Second Reign

As soon as Mustafa was released, the Janissaries brought him to his mother, Halime Sultan, to the Old Palace, so that mother and son could meet again after a long time. When the family gathered, they, along with the Janissaries and Davud Pasha, the Janissaries forced the ulema to do a coronation for Mustafa. Later they went to the Mosque of the Janissaries, to where Mustafa could enter as the new sultan. Meanwhile, Osman II was dethroned and captured. Halime and Davud first wanted to secretly execute Osman in the Janissary Mosque, but this was prevented by some Janissaries. Although everyone agreed with the dethronement, the execution of a sultan would have been a serious act. Halime and Davud eventually won and Osman was taken to Yedikule Prison, where he was executed and humiliated.

The mental health of Sultan Mustafa had not improved anything since the first reign, but Halime and Davud were able to rule in his name. Although they did not rule badly, the execution of Osman provided a great excuse for the outbreak of various rebels. Such was the rebellion of Abaza Mehmed Pasha, who refused to accept Mustafa as his sultan and marched into the capital, demanding the removal of Mustafa and the punishment of those guilty of the execution of Osman II. Eventually, he partially achieved what he wanted, Davud Pasha was executed in January 1623 because he was found responsible for the brutal execution of Osman.

In the case of Mustafa, no progress had been made for some time, but in the late summer of 1623, everyone began to realize that with such a sultan as Mustafa and Halime, the empire was not stable. Eventually, the leaders made his dethronement to conditional. They told to Halime Sultan that they will ask the Sultan two simple questions, "Whose son are you?" and "What day is it today?". If he can answer these, he will remain a sultan, if not then he will be dethroned. In the end, Halime did not let her son be examined but offered that she and Mustafa will resign but in exchange, she asked for saving Mustafa's life. The leaders and the mother of the new sultan, Murad, Kösem Sultan accepted the condition.

Mustafa was finally dethroned and locked back in his apartment in September 1623, after sixteen months of "reign," but this time forever. Halime was sent to the Old Palace again, but this time she did not receive a special benefit, she lived her remaining time there forgotten. The fact that Halime did not allow Mustafa to be examined with two such easy questions paints a very specific picture of the Sultan’s mental state. However, we do not know whether Mustafa's illness was a consequence of confinement or had genetic causes.

His last years

Mustafa was kept locked up in his apartment in Topkapi Palace for the rest of his life. He died in January 1639, by natural causes (presumably as a result of an epileptic seizure). His death put the current sultan, Murad IV in a very unusual situation. As a former sultan, they could not bury him just next to anyone (and there was no empty place in any of the mausoleums anyway), but during his short and weightless reign, Mustafa did not build a tomb for himself, and Murad was not in a position to build a mausoleum for him, so they simply did not know where to bury the former sultan. Mustafa's body lay for hours before Evliya Çelebi's father, the palace's goldsmith, resolved the crisis. There was an oil storage room in Aya Sofya that no one had used for centuries, and Evliya’s father suggested they should make it as Mustafa's tomb. Eventually, it happened, Mustafa was buried there, his body was buried with soil from the imperial garden, and later his mother was buried next to him also.

Legacy

Mustafa is often referred to with the "crazy" prefix, as is his nephew, later Ibrahim I. However, we have to separate the two of them. While Ibrahim was a dangerous, paranoid lunatic, Mustafa never harmed anyone. Mustafa was more of a child trapped in an adult body with a confused mind and possibly epilepsy. This is well supported by some of his recorded actions. Sultan Mustafa often filled his pockets with gold and silver coins, which he then scattered in front of birds, fish, or people who met him; and at other times, when his vezirs gathered around him for a meeting, he ran among them and flicked off their turbans. In addition to these, the fact that Mustafa communicated face to face with anyone, even though the Sultan seldom spoke to his subjects, doesn't even matter.

Although Mustafa could not become an influential sultan because of his mental condition, he was still one of the most significant sultans in Ottoman history. He was twice made a sultan, twice dethroned; he was the first to ascend the throne as a sultan's brother; he was the first sultan to survive his dethronement. Although, after such a life, many think that it would have been better for him if Ahmed had killed him, it is important to see that Mustafa’s suffering was not in vain. The law of fratricide gradually disappeared, and although many princes lived their lives closed up to their apartments, like Mustafa, their fate gradually turned better. Mustafa did not even have teachers, sometimes they forgot to give him something to drink or eat; the next locked-up princes could already receive a regular education; and later princes even could entertain themselves with infertile concubines; and finally, they could live, marry, and have a child completely freely. It was a long and slow process, but without Mustafa's long, suffering, the empire would probably never have gotten here or only much later.

Used sources: C. Finkel - Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire; L. Peirce - The imperial harem; M. P. Pedani - Safiye's household and Venetian diplomacy; G. Börekçi - Factions and favourites at the courts of Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-17) and his immediate predecessors; Necdet Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; G. Börekçi - A Queen Mother at Work: On Handan Sultan and Her Regency during the Early Reign of Ahmed I; S. Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; F. Suraiya, K. Fleet - The Cambridge History of Turkey 1453-1603; G. Piterberg - An Ottoman Tragedy, History and Historiography at Play; F. Suraiya - The Cambridge History of Turkey, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839

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Háttere és gyermekkora

Musztafa születési ideje vitatott, de legnagyobb valószínűséggel 1600 körül jött világra Isztambulban III. Mehmed szultán és kedvenc ágyasa, Halime második közös fiaként, Mahmud herceg édesöccseként. Akadnak olyanok, akik születését 1590 utánra teszik, ám ez nem valószínű, hiszen a korabeli követek egyértelműen karonülő gyermekként utaltak Musztafa hercegre 1603 nyarán. Ez volt az az időszak, mikor édesbátyját, Mahmudot saját apjuk kivégeztette, Halime életét pedig csak Musztafa herceg fiatalsága mentette meg a velencei követ szerint. Halime, Mahmud halála után a Régi Palotában élt száműzetésben. Egyes források szerint Musztafa herceg is vele tartott, mások szerint szoptatósdajkával a Topkapi Palotában maradt.

Musztafa életében hamarosan súlyos válozások történtek. Apja 1603 decemberében hirtelen elhalálozott, a trónra pedig idősebb féltestvére, a 13 éves Ahmed herceg került. A testvérgyilkosság törvénye egyértelműen kimondja, hogy amikor egy hercegből szultán lesz, a rend fenntartása érdekében testvéreit ki kell végeztetnie. Ahmed esete azonban különleges volt, hiszen még körülmetéletlen gyermek volt csupán, aki sosem uralkodott tartományban, aki nem rendelkezett semmiféle tapasztalattal és akinek még nem volt egyetlen örököse sem. Ahmed előtt a szultánok trónralépésükkör általában már több örökössel is rendelkeztek, így az örökösödéstől nem kellett félni. Ahmed esetében viszont a birodalom túlélése forgott kockán, így tanácsadói azt javasolták neki, hogy amíg nem nemz örökösöket hagyja életben öccse, Musztafa herceg életét. A sors fintora, hogy Musztafa életben maradása ellenére is komoly veszély leselkedett az örökösödésre, ugyanis 1604 tavaszán, mind Ahmed, mind Musztafa elkapta a sok esetben halálos himlőt. Végül azonban szerencsére mindketten felgyógyultak, igaz a himlő nyomait életük végéig magukon viselték.

Bárhol is élt addig Musztafa, követi beszámolók szerint Ahmed trónralépésével véglegesen elválasztották édesanyjától, Halimétől és a Topkapi Palotában a hárem mellett kapott saját lakrészt. A gyermekkel sok időt töltött együtt Ahmed édesanyja, Handan szultána, aki minden bizonnyal megsajnálta az anyátlan kisherceget és rendszeresen vitte a birodalmi kertbe sétálni. Musztafa életben maradása a nép kedvére volt, hiszen a testvérgyilkosság törvényét egyre nagyobb undorral és döbbenettel figyelték a korábbi években és örültek annak, hogy végre változás történt e téren. Ugyanakkor Musztafa léte veszélyt is jelentett Ahmed számára, hiszen egy potenciális vetélytárs volt.

Tudjuk, hogy Ahmed nagyon sokat gondolkozott azon, hogy mit kellene tennie Musztafával. Ez különösen fokozódott, mikor megszülettek saját gyermekei. Ahmed legalább két alkalommal próbálta meg kivégeztetni öccsét. Az első alkalommal azonban nemsokkal azután, hogy kiadta a parancsot, hatalmas vihar kerekedett, amelyet Ahmed Allah jeleként értelmezett és visszahívta a kivégzőket. Második alkalommal a parancs kiadása után elviselhetetlen gyomor fájdalom tört rá, melyet szintén Allah jeleként értelmezett. Fontos tényező volt Musztafa életben tartásában, Ahmed kedvenc ágyasa, Mahpeyker Köszem. Köszemnek több fia volt, azonban a legidősebb hercegnek nem ő volt az anyja, így számára mindennél fontosabb volt, hogy a testvérgyilkosság törvénye örökre megszűnjön. Ehhez pedig a kulcs Musztafa életben maradása volt, így Köszem minden létező módon igyekezett Ahmedet meggyőzni erről. Akárhogyan is, Ahmed végül örökre letett Musztafa herceg kivégzéséről. Ebben talán közrejátszott a tény is, hogy Musztafa epilepsziás volt és egyesek szerint már gyermekként egyértelmű volt mentális visszamaradottsága is. Mások szerint mind az epilepszia, mind visszamaradottsága annak köszönhető, hogy Ahmed elzárva tartotta és nem engedélyezte megfelelő oktatását sem.

Szultán Musztafa Han Hazretleri

Ahmed uralkodása alatt végig küzdött gyenge egészségével, az 1610-es évek második felére azonban betegsége egyre jobban elhatalmasodott rajta, míg végül 1617 novemberében meghalt. A halála sosem tapasztalt döntéshelyzetbe kényszerítette a vallási és politikai vezetőket. A két lehetséges örökös Musztafa volt, mint a legidősebb férfi a dinasztiában és Oszmán herceg, Ahmed 13 éves fia. Musztafa mentális állapota miatt volt alkalmatlan, Oszmán pedig egyrészt kora miatt, másrészt pedig amiatt, mert édesanyját évekkel korábban elveszítette, így nem volt aki tudta volna segíteni a herceget. Két alkalmatlan jelölt közül végül Musztafa került ki győztesen. Hogy miért? A nép és a vezetők is örökre le akartak számolni a testvérgyilkosság törvényével, erre pedig csak akkor volt lehetőség, ha az örökösödésen változtatnak. Nagy támogatója volt ennek maga a Seyhülislam Esad Efendi és a fő eunuch, Haci Musztafa Aga, aki még a szultánnál is hatalmasabb vagyonnal és befolyással rendelkezett. A két férfi végül meggyőzött minden kétkedőt, hogy Musztafa a jobb választás és, hogy mentális állapota csak az elzárás következménye, javulni fog ha emberekkel találkozhat. Feltehetőleg Haci Aga, aki pontosan tudta Musztafa valódi állapotát és azt, hogy nem fog javulni, egyszerűen csak hazudott célja elérése érdekében. Ezzel a kis hazugsággal egyébként lekötelezettjévé tette Musztafa édesanyját, Halime szultánát, akit később kijátszott, hiába bízott benne a nő.

Hamarosan azonban Musztafa mentális állapota mindenki számára világos lett, mint ahogyan az is, hogy állapota nem fog javulni és a szultán alkalmatlan az uralkodásra. Kevés hű tanácsadója tájékoztatta Halime szultánát arról, hogy fia ellen puccs készül, melynek feje a Musztafát trónra segítő Haci Musztafa Aga, Halime azonban vakon megbízott az eunuchban és nem vette komolyan a fenyegetést. Egy gyűlési napon azonban Haci Aga elzárta Musztafa szultánt, ahelyett, hogy a divánba kísérte volna és helyette Oszmán herceget vezette be. Így alig három hónappal trónralépése után Musztafát trónfosztották és helyébe Ahmed elsőszülött fiát, II. Oszmánt ültették. Musztafát azonban elmeállapotára való tekintettel nem végeztették ki, hanem visszazárták lakrészébe, ahol egész addigi életét töltötte, anyját pedig újra a Régi Palotába száműzték, azonban ekkor megtarthatta rangját és magas fizetését, tisztelettel bántak vele.

Zavaros idők

Oszmán uralkodása nem volt a legkevésbé sem békés. A katonák gyűlölték Oszmánt és a nép is egyre jobban ellene fordult, mikor kivégeztette öccsét, Köszem legidőseb fiát, Mehmed herceget. Mindezeket tetézve egy mini jégkorszak is elérte a birodalmi fővárost, melyet az emberek Allah büntetéseként értékeltek, Mehmed herceg kivégzéséért, így lényegében Oszmánt tették felelőssé a különösen hideg tél miatt.

Az emberek elégedetlensége fokozódott, Halime szultána pedig ezt kihasználva szövetkezett az Oszmánt mélységesen megvető janicsárokkal. Szintén fontos szövetségesre lelt Halime ekkor saját sógorában, Davud Pasában, akit Oszmán különösen gyűlölt és nagyon megnehezítette életét uralkodása során. Ennek a sokrétű szövetségnek a vége 1622-ben egy janicsárlázadás lett. A janicsárok a palotába betörve igyekeztek megtalálni Musztafa rejtekhelyét. Mikor rájöttek, hogy a lakosztály egyetlen bejárata a hárem felől nyílik összedugták a fejüket, hogy megoldást keressenek. A janicsárok bár vadak voltak és sok szempontból kiszámíthatatlan népség, bizonyos törvényeket ők is betartottak, így fel sem merült bennük, hogy a szultán háremébe belépjenek. Végül a lakosztály tetején ütöttek lyukat és egy függönyből fabrikált kötélen leereszkedve szabadították ki Musztafát. A volt szultán igen rossz állapotban volt, ugyanis napok óta nem kapott sem élelmet sem vizet. A zavaros időben egyszerűen megfeledkeztek róla.

Második uralkodás

Amint Musztafa kiszabadult, a janicsárok fogták és vele együtt visszaindultak a barakkjaikba. Útközben a Régi Palotából Halime szultánát is elhozták, így anya és fia hosszú idő után újra találkozhatott egymással. Mikor a család összegyűlt, a janicsárokkal és Davud Pasával együtt a janicsárok mecsetjébe mentek, ahol Musztafát kiáltották ki szultánjukká, Oszmánt pedig időközben trónfosztották és fogjul ejtették. Oszmánt Halime és Davud először titokban a janicsárok mecsetjében akarta kivégeztetni ám ezt a janicsárok egy része megakadályozta. Bár a trónfosztással mindenki egyetértett, egy szultán kivégzése súlyos tett lett volna. Halime és Davud végül győztek és Oszmánt a Yedikule börtönbe vitték, ahol kivégezték és meggyalázták.

Musztafa szultán mentális és egészségi állapota nem javult semmit az első uralkodáshoz képest, azonban Halime és Davud helyette tudtak uralkodni. Bár nem uralkodtak rosszul, Oszmán kivégzése remek ürügyet adott különböző lázadsok kirobbanásának. Ilyen volt Abaza Mehmed Pasa lázadása, aki elutasította, hogy Musztafát szultánjaként elfogadja és a fővárosba masírozott, Musztafa trónfosztását és az Oszmán halálában vétkesek büntetését követelve. Végül részben elérte amit akart, Davud Pasát 1623 januárjában kivégezték, mert őt találták felelősnek Oszmán brutális kivégzésében.

Musztafa esetében egy ideig nem történt előrelépés, azonban 1623 kora őszén kezdte mindenki belátni, hogy Musztafa és Halime irányítása alatt a birodalom nem áll stabil lábakon. Végül a vezetők egy feltételhez kötötték a trónfosztását. Azt mondták Halime szultánának, hogy két egyszerű kérdést tesznek fel a szultánnak: "Kinek a fia vagy te?" és "Milyen nap van ma?". Ha ezekre tud válaszolni, szultán marad, ha nem akkor trónfosztják. Halime végül nem várta meg, hogy fiát megvizsgálják, hanem maga ajánlotta fel lemondásukat azért az egy dologért cserébe, hogy Musztafa életét megkímélik. A vezetők és az új szultán, a gyermek IV. Murad édesanyja, Köszem szultána elfogadták a feltételt.

Musztafát végül tizenhat hónapnyi "uralkodás" után, 1623 szeptemberében újra trónfosztották és visszazárták lakosztályába, ezúttal viszont örökre. Halime a Régi Palotába került újra, ezúttal azonban nem járt neki kiemelt juttatás, elfeledetten élte le hátraélvő idejét. A tény, hogy Halime nem engedte Musztafa kivizsgálását, két ilyen egyszerű kérdéssel igen konkrét képet fest a szultán mentális állapotáról. Nem tudjuk azonban, hogy Musztafa betegsége a bezártság kvöetkezménye volt vagy genetikai okai voltak.

Utolsó évei

Musztafa hátralévő éveiben is gondoskodtak róla, bár elzárva tartották. Végül 1639 januárjában hunyt el, természetes okokból (feltehetőleg egy epilepsziás roham következtében). Halála igen szokatlan helyzet elé állította az aktuális szultánt, IV. Muradot. Mint volt szultánt nem temethették csupán valaki mellé (és egyébként sem igazán volt hely egyik mauzóleumban sem), viszont rövid és súlytalan uralkodása alatt Musztafa nem építtetett magának síremléket, Murad pedig nem volt olyan helyzetben, hogy mauzóleumot építtessen neki, így egyszerűen nem tudták, hogy hová temessék a volt szultánt. Musztafa teste órákig feküdt érintetlenül, mire Evliya Çelebi édesapja, a palota aranyművese oldotta meg a krízist. Az Aya Sofyában volt egy olajtároló terem, melyet évszázadok óta senki sem használt semmire, Evliya apja pedig azt javasolta alakítsák ezt szultáni türbévé. Végül így is lett, Musztafát ott temették el, testére a birodalmi kertből vittek földet, majd később édesanyját is mellé temették.

Megítélése

Musztafát a köznyelv gyakran illeti az "őrült" előtaggal, akárcsak unokaöccsét, későbbi I. Ibrahimot. Muszáj azonban különválasztanunk kettejüket. Míg Ibrahim veszélyes, paranoid őrült volt, Musztafa sosem ártott senkinek. Musztafa inkább volt egy felnőtt testbe szorult gyermek, zavarodott elmével és epilepsziával. Ezt remekül alátámasztja néhány feljegyzett cselekedete is. Musztafa szultán gyakran töltötte meg zsebeit arany és ezüst érmékkel, melyeket aztán a madarak, halak vagy az utcán vele összetalálkozó emberek elé szórt; máskor pedig amikor vezírei tanácskozásra gyűltek köré, szaladgált közöttük és lepöckölte turbánjaikat. Ezek mellett eltörpül az az apró tény, hogy Musztafa szemtől szemben kommunikált bárkivel, pedig a szultán csak ritkán szólt alattvalóihoz és akkor sem szabadon beszélgetett velük.

Musztafa bár mentális állapota miatt nem válhatott befolyásos szultánná, mégis az oszmán történelem egyik legjelentősebb szultánja volt. Kétszer tették meg szultánnak, kétszer trónfosztották; ő volt az első, aki a szultán testvéreként kerülhetett trónra; ő volt az első szultán, aki túlélte trónfosztását. Bár sokan gondolják, hogy egy ilyen életnél jobb lett volna ha Ahmed megöleti, fontos látnunk, hogy Musztafa szenvedései nem voltak hiábavalók. A testvérgyilkosság törvénye fokozatosan eltűnt, és bár sok herceg élte le életét egy elzárt lakosztályban, Musztafához hasonlóan, sorsuk fokozatosan jobbra fordult. MUsztafának még tanítói sem voltak, néha elfelejtettek neki inni vagy enni adni; a következő elzárt hercegek már rendes oktatásban részesülhettek; a még későbbi hercegek pedig meddő ágyasokkal is szórakoztathatták magukat; végül pedig teljesen szabadon élhettek, házasodhattak és gyermeket nemzhettek. Hosszú és lassú folyamat volt ez, de Musztafa hosszú, szenvedésekkel teli élete nélkül alighanem soha vagy sokkal később jutott volna ideáig a birodalom.

Felhasznált források: C. Finkel - Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire; L. Peirce - The imperial harem; M. P. Pedani - Safiye's household and Venetian diplomacy; G. Börekçi - Factions and favourites at the courts of Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-17) and his immediate predecessors; Necdet Sakaoğlu - Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları; G. Börekçi - A Queen Mother at Work: On Handan Sultan and Her Regency during the Early Reign of Ahmed I; S. Faroqhi - The Ottoman Empire and the World; C. Imber - The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650; F. Suraiya, K. Fleet - The Cambridge History of Turkey 1453-1603; G. Piterberg - An Ottoman Tragedy, History and Historiography at Play; F. Suraiya - The Cambridge History of Turkey, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839

#Mustafa I #deli mustafa #Osman II #halime sultan #Ahmed I #mahpeyker kösem #Kösem sultan #Murad IV #Mehmed III #handan sultan #fratricide

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“...Johanna’s date of birth is unknown, but she was likely born in 1326 or 1327, the daughter of Marie of Valois (1309–32) and Charles of Calabria (1298–1328), the son and heir of King Robert of Anjou (r. 1309–43). Charles’s death made Johanna and her sister, Mary (b. 1329), Robert’s only direct lineal heirs; Robert designated Johanna his successor in 1330. …Johanna grew up in a court noted by contemporaries for its scholarly culture—although she apparently received no formal education. Instead, she came under the tutelage of her step-grandmother, Sancia of Majorca (ca. 1285–1345), after her mother died in 1332. Sancia was famous for her piety, her devotion to the Franciscan order, and her active religious patronage, and she provided an important model for Johanna. She lived austerely even before widowhood, when she retired to a Clarissan convent, and she had more interest in contemplation and prayer than in the more worldly aspects of queenship, but she wielded great power at court and took a forceful role in the dispute about evangelical poverty.

The Angevin court was not entirely given over to piety, however. The Angevins had long patronized arts and letters, and Robert was famous for his learning. His court attracted and fostered the leading lights of fourteenth century culture, including Giotto, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. It was frequented as well by Robert’s younger brothers, Philip, prince of Taranto (1278–1331), and John of Gravina, duke of Durazzo (1294–1336), and their wives and children, including six sons whose rivalry dominated court gossip and helped shape the first two decades of Johanna’s reign. Johanna was thus the product of a court marked, on the one hand, by religious fervor and a fledgling humanist culture and, on the other, by intrigue and simmering factionalism. In 1343, Johanna succeeded Robert ahead of nine male cousins who could (and did) stake claims to her throne. She would struggle with their resentment, as with their plays for power.

From the outset, she faced criticism for the perceived iniquity of her succession, along with uncertainty about what it actually meant for her to inherit Robert’s throne. Would she truly govern? Would she incorporate her husband into her reign, or would he become the kingdom’s ruler? The conceptual and political importance of the Kingdom of Naples made such questions particularly pressing. It was the most significant European polity yet to be ruled by a woman in her own right. From their capital in Naples, the Angevins ruled the southern half of peninsular Italy, the counties of Provence and Forcalquier, and portions of the Piedmont, Albania (the duchy of Durazzo), and Greece (the Morea). Under Johanna’s forebears, the Angevin realm had approached empire; its kings exercised de facto rule over much of northern Italy while aggressively spreading their territory to the East.

Until 1282, it also included the island of Sicily; even after its loss to Aragon in the Sicilian Vespers, Angevin kings fought to reclaim the island and referred to their realm as the Kingdom of Sicily—although historians refer to the kingdom as it existed after 1282 as the Kingdom of Naples, or simply as the Regno. In addition, the Regno’s kings had claimed the symbolically potent (but territorially empty) title king of Jerusalem since 1277, when the first Angevin king, Charles I (1227–85), bought the title from Marie of Antioch. By the time of Johanna’s succession, the Regno’s rulers were as prominent as the king of France or England or the emperor himself. The competing claims of the senior branch of the Angevin family, which ruled Hungary, rendered Johanna’s succession particularly controversial.

According to the rule of primogeniture—widely accepted by the fourteenth century—Robert, the third son of Charles II (1254–1309), should not have become king. Rather, the son of his eldest brother, Charles Martel (1271–95), should have done so. However, when Charles Martel died, his young son, Charles Robert, or Carobert (1288–1342), was removed from the line of succession to protect the Regno from instability. Charles II’s second son, the future St. Louis of Toulouse (1274–97), had become a Franciscan friar and bishop and renounced his hereditary rights, so Robert succeeded Charles in Naples, while Carobert inherited the Hungarian crown. Carobert insisted that he and his sons were the Regno’s rightful rulers—a charge that his son, Louis “the Great” of Hungary (1326–82), took up in his turn.

That Robert should bequeath his kingdom to a female child when Carobert’s youth had barred him from the succession added insult to injury and was to have profound ramifications for Neapolitan history. The thorny question of the Hungarian Angevins’ rights to Naples formed the backdrop to the early years of Johanna’s reign. As a child, she was betrothed and then married to Andrew of Hungary (1328–45), the second of Carobert’s three sons, in an effort to secure peace and stability. The Hungarians saw their union as reparation for Robert’s unjust succession. Yet Johanna refused to accept Andrew as a co-ruler, and he was murdered after a protracted power struggle in 1345. The ensuing scandal, which included accusations that Johanna had first cuckolded and then murdered Andrew, would haunt her throughout her reign. It also nearly cost her kingdom: Louis of Hungary twice invaded Naples (1348–50) to avenge his brother and claim what he insisted was his birthright—an argument with which many contemporaries agreed.

Marriage, and the balance of power within marriage, posed a consistent challenge to Johanna. It had important implications for her reputation, as contemporary expectations of marriage and femininity shaped how contemporaries responded to Johanna. After Andrew’s death, she married Louis of Taranto (1320–62), another cousin with designs on her throne. Louis was the only one of Johanna’s four husbands to rule in his own name, effectively co-opting her power from 1350 to 1362 and inspiring sympathy for Johanna. Her subsequent two marriages proved less problematic for her exercise of sovereignty. Her third husband, James IV of Majorca (1336–75), was reportedly insane, and Johanna was able to enforce his secondary status and govern independently without incurring contemporaries’ ire.

Her fourth husband, Duke Otto of Brunswick-Grubenhagen (1320–98), acted as the Regno’s military leader without seeking the throne and supported Johanna loyally until her death. The latter half of Johanna’s reign differed starkly from its beginning, which was wrought with scandal, violence, and strife. Johanna emerged, over the course of the 1360s and 1370s, as a respected figure on the European political stage. She became a noted papal ally and a leader in the league that defended papal prerogatives in northern Italy. She helped to return the papacy from Avignon to Rome, and she formed friendships with the most celebrated female religious of her day, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, and Katherine of Vadstena. She emulated her grandparents in patronizing religious orders and foundations, and she helped to foster a vibrant artistic culture in Naples.

In the process, Johanna became known and acted as a legitimate, sovereign monarch. Ironically, her leading role in religious politics proved Johanna’s downfall after the Great Schism of the Western Church began in 1378. She was the first monarch to recognize Clement VII as pope. Her abjuration of Clement’s rival, Urban VI, led many of Johanna’s former allies to turn against her. It also resulted in her deposition and, ultimately, in her death, after Urban crowned her cousin, Charles of Durazzo—backed by her old enemy, Louis of Hungary—king in her place. Johanna died in prison, reportedly at Charles’s hand, in 1382. Childless, she had adopted the French prince Louis of Anjou as her heir; Louis and Charles waged a long war that permanently divided Johanna’s realm, plunging Angevin lands into disorder. Johanna’s reign ended even more bloodily than it had begun, leading many—particularly in Urbanist lands—to see violence and suffering as her legacy to her people.”

- Elizabeth Casteen, “Introduction. “ in From She-Wolf to Martyr: The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples

#johanna i of naples #history #late middle ages #italian #medieval #elizabeth casteen #from she-wolf to martyr

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bsbear · 6 years

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Yeah, it was an article today.

Thanks anon.

Pretty interesting article. Brief ML mention to be warned for those that don’t want to read about her.

Here is the article the anon is referring to:

https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/the-inequalities-plaguing-country-radio-are-somehow-even-worse-on-spotifys-major-playlists/

The promise of technology and its interfacing with music is a great equalization of the playing field, both opening up the creative possibilities for artists, and the ability to discover new music for fans. For too long the stuffy and outmoded system of radio feeding us what they wanted us to hear reigned over music like an iron fist, while artists had to sign their life away to major labels just to be heard.

Now all of this has been shattered by the advent of the digital age, and the streaming model specifically. Anyone can now distribute their music directly to the public, and the public can decide what is best and deserves to be heard as opposed to the big power brokers in charge of mainstream media calling the shots.

But not so fast.

Yes, streaming has opened up some incredible possibilities for independent artists, and has seen an equalization of the playing field to some extent. But seeing the growing importance of how streaming and curated playlists can be used to drive the consumption habits of listeners, Spotify and other companies have begun to prioritize certain artists and songs into mega playlists in an attempt to persuade the market in a certain direction in a similar behavioral pattern to radio. But unlike radio, there is no FCC policing the industry for payola and other manipulations that may give certain artists, songs, or labels an unfair advantage over the rest of the field.

Spotify, for example, has four major country music playlists which are curated by the company itself, and which land at the very top of searches when users go to look for something country to stream that isn’t a specific album, song, or artist. These four playlists are:

Hot Country (4.375 million followers)

New Boots (469,000 followers)

Wild Country (670,000 followers

Country Gold (991,000 followers)

Despite the names of these mega playlists seeming to denote dramatically different varieties in country music (and that they represent something that actually sounds like country music), all four of these playlists are basically the same. In fact the same exact issues that plague country radio, which are a complete lack of older artists or music, and extremely disproportionate representation of women, and little or no representation of independent artists or regional stars, all plague these major Spotify playlists, and in most circumstances are even worse than the representation on radio.

At the moment, two out of the four playlists feature Thomas Rhett as the cover artist, including “Country Gold,” which despite the name, doesn’t include any music from country’s golden era, it’s just a slightly different mix of the same artists on the other three major playlists, only with a few slightly older tracks.

When it comes to the “Hot Country” and “New Boots” playlists, these are strictly newer songs. But that’s somewhat understandable since they’re supposed to be playlists of new, current material. On “Wild Country,” there are couple of older tracks, like Casey Donahew’s “Country Song” from 2016. But there’s nothing even close to resembling a classic country song, or even a backlist title from 8 to 10 years ago.

The percentage of tracks that are over six-years-old on Spotify’s four major playlists is:

Hot Country 0%

New Boots 0%

Wild Country 0%

Country Gold 1.9%

One song—Eric Church’s “Springsteen”—which was released as a single in 2012, is the sole outlier that would be considered an “older” song. And for most listeners, “Springsteen” would still be considered very contemporary. The song is still heard on mainstream country radio, for example. You would think since these are simply playlists that are easy to make that maybe you could mix in a classic song or two, right? Or even just a song or two from the early 00’s? But there’s nothing.

Maybe you could mix in an independent artist that has a large following, someone like Cody Jinks, Sturgill Simpson, The Turnpike Troubadours, or Margo Price, just to give listeners a little taste of something different. But no, there’s nothing from established independent country artists on any of these major country music Spotify playlists either. It’s almost uncanny how the playlists avoid anything that wouldn’t be considered part of a very strict interpretation of the current mainstream sound, more so than even radio. With so many slots on these playlists (50+ each), and the general appetite for certain independent artists that has been proven in the marketplace (and on Spotify specifically), why not at least include one or two of them on at least one of the four major playlists?

That doesn’t mean there aren’t any artists that couldn’t be considered up-and-coming on these playlists, or that are not signed to a Nashville major label. There are actually a few such artists. But many of the up-and-coming names on Spotify’s playlists are part of some publishing house on Music Row in Nashville, have a developmental deal on a smaller label with subsidiary partnership to a major, or some other direct tie to the mainstream country music industry specifically based in Nashville.

Take for example the artist Josh Mirenda, whose song “I Got You” leads Spotify’s “New Boots” playlist, which is supposed to highlight up-and-coming artists. Unfortunately, there aren’t many boots in “I Got You,” or much that resembles actual country music at all. Like so many of mainstream country’s up-and-comers, Josh Mirenda sounds like a Sam Hunt knockoff with a very electronic sound. And though he’s not signed to a major label, he’s a songwriter for Music Row’s Warner Chappell, which is the major publishing company for the Warner Music Group. You might have recognized Mirenda’s name from the liner notes of Dierks Bentley’s “Somewhere On A Beach” and other super hits. So even though Spotify may try to pass off Mirenda as up-and-coming or independent, he’s very much a part of the Music Row machine.

“We broke 4.5 MILLION streams on ‘I Got You’ and I can’t thank you enough for the support!” Josh Mirenda posted on his Facebook page on December 19th. “If you haven’t already be sure to follow me on Spotify and lets keep this going!”

It turns out Spotify’s “New Boots” playlist is not the only one of it’s four major playlists where Josh Mirenda and “I Got You” appear. The song also shows up on the “Wild Country” playlist about halfway down. It also appears in the biggest of the Spotify country playlists, “Hot Country,” with it’s 4.375 million subscribers, even though it couldn’t be considered a current hot “hit” beyond Spotify. So with only 50 or so slots in each of these four playlists, the same guy—who many of you have probably never heard of until right now—gets bestowed three of these critical spots.

The results of this placement can be astronomical for an artist. Remember how Kane Brown shot up in the ranks of country up-and-comers by all of a sudden putting up incredible streaming numbers due to prime placement in playlists facilitated by cozy relationships between his manager and labels? Well the same can be said for a song like “I Got You,” and an artists like Josh Mirenda. Managers and publicists can tout the incredible appeal for his song, and use it to convince a label there is an organic appetite for him, or convince radio they should be playing “I Got You” if it can put together such incredible streaming numbers. But in reality, there is little or no groundswell behind the track. “I Got You” may have 4.5 million streams, but Josh Mirenda only has 2,500 likes on Facebook. He’s simply benefiting from preferential placement on Spotify’s top country playlists.

But lets not just pick on Josh Mirenda. There are plenty of other examples, like an artist named Tyler Braden, who is completely independent. Just like Josh Mirenda, you’ve probably never heard of Tyler Braden before. He’s a firefighter from Alabama, but he’s also landed his lead single “Little Red Wine” near the top of Spotify’s “New Boots” playlist. But just like Mirenda, that’s not all. “Little Red Wine” is also the very first track on the “Wild Country” playlist, giving him double the exposure.

In fact one of the remarkable things about Spotify’s playlists is how despite the scarcity of spots, certain songs and artists show up multiple times. That’s because to really sell that a certain song as creating a groundswell among fans, it can’t just be receiving hundreds of thousands of streams. It needs millions, making it necessary to place a song on multiple playlists, since placing it multiple times in the same playlist would be a little too obvious. That’s the reason Spotify has four major country music playlists, but the style of music, and often the names of the artists and the tracks specifically are virtually the same between them.

Remember the song “Meant To Be” by pop star Bebe Rexha with Florida Georgia Line that caused such a stir a couple of months ago because it was released initially to the pop market, and now all of a sudden is being called country? It’s a song that very well may shatter records since it’s gaining traction on both pop and country radio, yet has already been ensconced at the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart for 7 weeks now, and Billboard’s Country Streaming Charts for 7 weeks as well.

The impetus for adding the song to country was this huge organic groundswell we were told about based significantly on streaming numbers. We already talked about how placement of “Meant To Be” on massive and redundant YouTube playlists run by a shadowy company called Red Music out of Europe allowed for a skewing of the streaming numbers behind the song. Well of course “Meant To Be” is also benefiting from redundant placement via the Spotify playlist system as well, filling slots on Spotify’s “Hot Country,” “New Boots,” and “Wild Country” playlists, giving it triple the plays compared to most other country tracks, just like Josh Mirenda’s “I Got You.”

There is nothing “organic” about the supposed groundswell behind these tracks. There’s nothing democratic about giving the same song three slots in three separate playlists when you only have 200-something slots total, and four total playlists to distribute them to. These songs are benefiting from preferential placement on multiple Spotify playlists that are compiled to give the illusion of choice, but ultimately are just tools to help manipulate the numbers. Just like radio and much of popular country media, these top Spotify country playlists are nothing more than a promotional arm for the industry.

Meanwhile artists with a proven following and appeal—like the Turnpike Troubadours, Aaron Watson, and Cody Jinks—even major label artists like Ashley McBryde, or Caitlyn Smith who just released a brand new record, get completely ignored in lieu of male artists with no touring history, touting miniscule social media footprints, and who frankly have horrible, derivative tracks. These artist’s only claim to fame is their spectacular Spotify numbers. And this isn’t to specifically pick on Josh Mirenda, Tyler Braden, or anyone else benefiting from the system. If they can get these placements, good for them and their careers. The question is, how did they get on multiple playlists when so many other proven voices and tracksin country music are getting ignored?

This brings us to the next issue with Spotify’s major playlists, which is the lack of representation for women. The issue of too few female-led tracks on country radio has been covered ad nauseam across the internet, but somehow Spotify’s playlists even do country radio one worse. Currently in the Top 50 of mainstream country radio airplay, there are five solo performing women for a total of 10% representation. That’s a terrible percentage in itself. But wait until you see the numbers for women on these Spotify playlists.

The percentages of solo women on Spotify’s four major playlists are:

Hot Country – 3.77%

New Boots – 3.63%

Wild Country – 16.66%

Country Gold – 1.9%

That’s right, Spotify’s “Country Gold” playlist only has one song out of 51 total by a female solo artist. That’s Miranda Lambert’s “Automatic.” But get this: that same playlist has a total of 7 songs from Florida Georgia Line alone. That’s right, Florida Georgia Line itself makes up over 13% of Spotify’s “Country Gold” playlist, and all the solo women combined make up only 1.9%.

– – – – – – – – –

The promise of the streaming model is that it should better help the market decide who the best artists are, and what the most appealing songs are for a given genre or generation. Services and platforms like Spotify should aid in making that promise a reality by opening up the music, and aiding the discovery process instead of implementing the same autocratic system that plagues radio from on high and is riddled with quiet corruption due to cozy relationships with the industry. Of course Spotify also has playlists for more classic country and Americana, and one of the great things about the Spotify format is the fact that anyone can make a playlist and have it compete for listener’s attention.

But as the host of the medium, Spotify should either attempt to be significantly more even handed and representative of all the that goes into comprising “country” music, or step aside and let the market do its job. The audience Spotify is able to draw for it’s top four country music playlists is helping to redefine the sound of the genre, doubling down on the same dilemmas country radio is posing, and is doing the marketplace a disservice by delivering a facade a choice when its playlists are arguable even more homogenized than the old system of music curation Spotify and streaming is attempting to replace.

– – – – –

The percentages used in this article were taken from a snapshot of Spotify’s “Hot Country,” “New Boots,” “Wild Country,” and “Country Gold” playlists taken on 1-22-2018.

#saving country music

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