Safiye's Household and Venetian Diplomacy

Maria Pia PEDANI 9 SAFIYE'S HOUSEHOLD AND VENETIAN DIPLOMACY I n the first half of the nineteenth century, historians discovered the importance of the papers produced by the councils and offices of the Republic of Venice and kept in the Venetian State Archives, in the ancient Frari convent, since 1822. Emanuele Antonio Cicogna in 1825 and Leopold Ranke in 1829 are usually considered the first scholars to have consulted these documents after having obtained permission to see them from the emperor Francis I. At that time without this special permission historians could not enter the Frari Archives. Even the famous collection of Venetian ambassadors’ reports, edited by Eugenio Alberi, Nicolò Barozzi and Guglielmo Berchet, had to be made on the basis of copies kept in private collections and in other Italian archives and libraries. For this reason the editors, and many scholars after them, did not realise that further reports existed in the Venetian State Archives and that some ambassadors and secretaries even composed two different reports, one for the public and one for the Senate1. Maria Pia Pedani est professeur d’histoire du Proche-Orient à l’Université “∞Ca’ Foscari∞” de Venise, San Polo 2035, Venise, Italie. 1 Le relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato raccolte, annotate ed edite da Euge- nio ALBÉRI, s. III, 3 vol., Firenze 1840-1855 (the editor of the reports in vol. III/3 was Vincenzo Lazari, director of the Correr Museum in Venice)∞; Le relazioni degli stati europei lette al Senato dagli ambasciatori veneziani nel secolo decimosettimo, raccolte ed annotate da Nicolò BAROZZI e Guglielmo BERCHET, Turchia, 2 vol., Venezia 1871- 1872. An anastatic copy of these reports, together with further materials published else- where, was edited by Luigi FIRPO, Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti al Senato, a cura di Luigi FIRPO, vol. XIII, Costantinopoli (1590-1793), Torino 1984∞; Relezioni di ambasciatori veneti al Senato, a cura di Maria Pia PEDANI FABRIS, vol. XIV, Costantinopoli (1512- Turcica, 32, 2000, pp. 9-32 10 MARIA PIA PEDANI In the same century the historiography of the Ottoman Empire also took advantage from the Frari documents. In this field, the first to use them was Joseph von Hammer. The ten volumes of his Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches were published in Pest between 1827 and 1835. In the preface the author declares that he freely consulted the Venetian documents, kept partly in Vienna and partly in Venice. The reason for Ham- mer’s free access to the Archives is explained in the preface to the par- tial Italian translation of his work by Samuele Romanin (1828-1831)∞: Hammer could use these documents without any special permission because he was an official interpreter of the Imperial Court2. Almost two centuries having elapsed since those days, the reader may wonder if the Venetian documents have still something to reveal to historians. But recent problematiques have changed our point of view, and a modern scholar will be interested in subjects neglected by his prede- cessors. To mention one obvious example, the history of women was neglected during the nineteenth century. Yet in the history of the Ottoman Empire this subject is really of the greatest importance∞: at the end of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth century high-ranking women enjoyed a degree of political power greater than ever before or after. It was the so-called “∞sultanate of women∞”∞; this term first appeared in the early 1920s, being the title of a work by Ahmed Refik3. His negative account deeply influenced subsequent read- ings even if, recently, new researches have questioned previous blanket denunciations of the kadınlar saltanatı4. As far as women’s history is concerned, Emilio Spagni, Susan Skilliter and Benjamin Arbel have investigated Venetian papers for the period 1574-1583, when the valide 1789), Relazioni inedite, Padova 1996∞; vol. XII (1496-1585) is in press. On Venetian ambassadors’ reports cf. Paolo PRETO, “∞Le relazioni dei baili veneziani a Costantinop- oli∞”, Il Veltro, 23/2-4 (1979), p. 125-131∞; Gülru NECIPOGLU, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power. The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Cambridge Mass.-London 1991, p. 308. 2 Joseph HAMMER, Storia dell’impero osmanlico (1300-1699), 24 vol., Venezia 1828- 1831, vol. I, p. VIII. This translation was revised and enlarged by Hammer himself. Samuele Romanin, who was then a teacher of German, became one of the most important scholars of Venetian history. 3 Ahmed REFIK, Kadınlar Saltanatı, Istanbul 1332/1913-14, 4 vol. 4 Leslie P. PIERCE, The Imperial Harem, Women and Sovereignity in the Ottoman Empire, New York-Oxford 1993∞; Suraiya FAROQHI, “∞Part II. Crisis and Change, 1590- 1699∞”, in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, Cam- bridge 1994, p. 413, 561-562, 598-602∞; Women in the Ottoman Empire. Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, ed. by M.C. ZILFI, Leiden 1997. SAFIYE'S HOUSEHOLD AND VENETIAN DIPLOMACY 11 sultan Nur Banu was the most powerful woman of the Empire. Spagni has discovered Nur Banu’s frequent contacts with Venice, Skilliter has published some of her letters, while Arbel has stressed her puzzling “∞double identity∞” (Venetian or Corfiote∞?), surely one authentic and the other fictitious, intentionally encouraged for political and personal reasons5. However the period of her daughter-in-law, Safiye, has not been suf- ficiently investigated. Safiye was Albanian and in 1563, as a young slave of thirteen, was presented to prince Murad by Hüma, the daughter of prince Mehmed, son of Süleyman the Magnificent6. Safiye became haseki of Murad III (1574-1595) and mother of Mehmed III (1595-1603) enjoying a high degree of power from Nur Banu’s death (7 December 1583) to the accession of her grandson Ahmed I to the throne7. In this period foreign ambassadors acted in an all-male environment, but they clearly understood that, if authority belonged to men, a large share of power belonged to women. For this reason they tried to estab- lish contacts with the Imperial harem and its private/domestic/female environment. They could not speak directly to the women secluded in the most secret part of the Imperial Palace, but succeeded in contacting persons with access to the harem or able to speak to the sultan in an informal way. These contacts consisted of mutes, dwarves, eunuchs and their female relatives, as well as the women-servants of the harem, that is to say for instance kethüda hatuns, harem vekilharcs or kalfas∞; some of these female servitors lived outside the Imperial Palace and could easily meet foreigners. There were also some women who attended the sultanas, acting as their contact with the world outside the harem∞; they were usually called kiras, from the Greek word meaning “∞lady∞”. 5 Emilio SPAGNI, “∞Una sultana veneziana∞”, Nuovo archivio veneto, 19 (1900), p. 241- 348∞; Ettore ROSSI, “∞La sultana Nur Banu (Cecilia Venier-Baffo) moglie di Selim II (1566-1574) e madre di Murad III (1574-1595)∞”, Oriente moderno, 33/11 (1953), p. 433- 441∞; Susan A. SKILLITER, “∞The Letters of the Venetian ‘Sultana’ Nur Banu and Her Kira to Venice∞”, in Studia turcologica memoriae Alexii Bombaci dicata, a cura di Aldo GAL- LOTTA e Ugo MARAZZI, Napoli 1982, p. 515-536∞; Benjamin ARBEL, “∞Nur Banu (c. 1530- 1583)∞: a Venetian Sultana∞?∞”, Turcica, 24 (1992), p. 241-259. 6 Le relazioni degli ambasciatori, vol. III/2, p. 166 (Tiepolo 1576). 7 Susan SKILLITER, “∞Three Letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ ∑afiye to Queen Eliz- abeth I∞”, in Documents from Islamic Chanceries, ed. by Samuel Miklos Stern, Oxford 1965, p. 119-157∞; PIERCE, op. cit., p. 94. 12 MARIA PIA PEDANI THE KIRAS Three such ladies are well known to historians∞: the first was the karaite Fatma hatun, who attended Hafsa sultan, the mother of Süley- man the Magnificent, accepted Islam in 1548 and died later the same year∞; the second was Esther Handali and the third was the Italian Jew, Esperanza Malchi8. During Nur Banu’s and Safiye’s times these kiras were the first and most important contact with the Imperial harem. They used also to buy goods for the harem. This was the main reason for establishing contact with the Venetians who were considered among the most capable mer- chants, offering the most refined and strangest objects. We may imagine the baylo Agostino Nani smiling sadly when he wrote to his lords “∞onde credono qua che el bailo de Venetia tenghi botega aperta di ogni sorte di merci∞” (“∞they believe here that the Venetian baylo has a shop full of every kind of goods∞”). The Imperial Court had just asked him to procure some “∞figurina curiosa… di quelle lavorate dalle monache∞” (probably fabric dolls “∞as those made by Venetian nuns∞”) for the sultan’s children and his dwarf9. To satisfy the harem and the most important persons of the Empire, Venice sent to Istanbul small dogs, gerfalcons, cushions, cloths, boxes of rock crystal, chairs, clocks of every dimension, even those produced in France, French sugar, glass vases, glass for windows, glass lamps, mirrors, grana cheese (called piacentino) and the softer vicentino, and also spectacles for the sternest hocas. The importation of particular goods, desired by the harem women sometimes created real diplomatic problems. Thus Safiye bought large quantities of “∞feathers∞” made of Murano glass, asking the baylo Morosini to stop the importation of these items from Venice. Their sale was resumed only after some months, when they had gone out of fashion10. 8 Johannes Heinrich MORDTMANN, “∞Die Judischen Kira im Serai der Sultane∞”, Mit- teilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen, 32 (1929), p. 1-38. 9 Venetian State Archives (hereafter ASVe), Senato, Dispacci Costantinopoli (hereafter S.

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