Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul

by JohnFreely (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $13.59

  This is the story of the House of Osman, the Imperial dynasty that ruled the Ottoman Empire for more than seven centuries. During the first four centuries of Ottoman rule, the Sultans lived in the great palace of Topkapi Sarayi, whose gardens and pavilions still grace the Acropolis Hill above the confluence of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. This was the setting of the pleasure dome in which the Sultans took their ease when they were not off on campaign, closed off from the outside world in the inner palace of Topkapi Sarayi, the Imperial residence known as Dar-Us Saadet, the house of felicity . Full of detail and anecdotes, this book brings to life the fading memory of those who lived out their lives in fabled palaces, evoing evoking colourful times in which they lived.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $4.20

  This volume takes us behind the doors of Topkapi Sarayi and the other palaces of the Ottoman sultans who for more than six centuries ruled one of the world's most powerful empires. The heart of the palace was the Harem, the women's quarters, ruled by the Valide, or Queen Mother. Here the Sultan took his ease surrounded by his wives and concubines with their guardian black eunuchs, amused by his favourite pages, dwarfs and mutes, his younger brothers either slaughtered upon his accession or confined to the prison of the Cage. Earlier sultans like Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleyman the Magnificent lied in Topkapi Sarayi only between their campaigns of conquest, but their weak and dissolute successors such as Selim the Sot and Ibrahim the Mad spent their reigns entirely in the Harem, where some of them died of over-indulgence or were brutally murdered. such were the private lives of the |Ottoman sultans in the pleasure dome known as the House of Felicity. Described here with attention to every extraordinary detail and wit, and illustrated throughout with images of this sequestered court, is the history and life of this remarkable palace in all its colour and opulence, and the story of its influence on a great empire.