Twenty-Five Women Who Shaped the Ottoman Empire is a tale of how women’s triumphs as well as their failures shaped a global society—not despite, but because of, gender.

The Ottoman Empire was among the longest-lived polities in history, stretching between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries across three continents, several seas, and scores of cities, deserts, mountain ranges, rivers, and forests. This volume provides a compendium of idiosyncratic life stories and explores how women from these eras and regions understood the shape of the world in which they lived, and how they brought their consciousness of their gender to their efforts to re-shape it.

Among the questions explored in the book are how women have negotiated and constructed the public and private spheres, how to define “women’s speech” in a world mediated by men and male-dominated genres and institutions, and how women experienced their bodies as sites of politically inflected reproduction, death and decay.

The book is thus an accessibly offbeat feminist overview of the field of Ottoman History that provides students, scholars, general readers, and non-specialists with insights into the lives and work of both ordinary Ottoman women and celebrated Ottoman women, women who failed despite their best efforts and women who succeeded against all odds—suicides, spies and murderers as well as queens, scientists and poets.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Beginning: Prophecy and Poetry

1.      Malhun Hatun (d. 1323): Mother of the Dynasty             

2.      Mihri Hatun (1460-1515): Distinguished Court Poet     

3.      Zeynep Hatun (fifteenth century): Elusive Touchstone of the Poet Biographers              

4.      A’isha al-Ba‘uniyya (d. 1517): Mystic, Mufti, and Spiritual Model           

Part 2: A Global Empire: Networks of Influence, Webs of Power, and “The Sultanate of Women”

5.      Hürrem Sultan (1502-1558): Roxelana, the Queen and the Witch         

6.      Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510-1569): Heroine of the Inquisition      

7.      Nurbanu Sultan (1525-1583): Architect of an Unprecedented Charitable Foundation

8.      Şakire Hatun (circa the 1570s): Plaintiff and “Warrior”

9.      Elizabeth Báthory (1560-1614): The Bloody Countess 

10.  Gülnuş Sultan (1642-1715): The Huntress Who Ushered in the Tulip Period     

Part 3: The Ottoman Baroque: Art, Revolution, and Orientalism in the Long Eighteenth Century

11.  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762): Errant Embodiment of the European Enlightenment             

12.  Dilhayat Kalfa (1710-1780): Celebrated Composer      

13.  Laskarina Bouboulina (1771-1825): Champion of the Greek Revolution            

14.  Esma İbret Hanım (b. 1780): Master Calligrapher          

15.  Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann (1819-1881): Orientalist Painter

Part 4: The Age of National Consciousness: Feminist Witnessing and Feminist Disruption           

16.  Maryana Marrash (1848-1919): Muse, Poet, and Essayist          

17.  Fatma Aliye (1862-1936): New Woman and Novelist   

18.  Zabel Yesayan (1878-1943): Genre-Defining Witness to the Armenian Genocide          

19.  Huda Sha’arawi (1879-1947): Charismatic Founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union    

20.  Celile Hikmet (1880-1956): Subversive Modernist Painter        

21.  Halide Edip (1884-1964): The Turkish Republic’s Foremost Feminist  

Part 5: The End: Making Things Fall Apart      

22.  Sarah Aaronsohn (1890-1917): A Spy in the Levant       

23.  Anastasia Golovina (1850-1933) and Safiye Ali (1894-1952): Medical Practitioners Across Borders    

24.  Sabiha Sertel (1895-1968): Dissident Publishing Phenomenon              

25.  Sabiha Gökçen (1913-2001): The World’s First Female Fighter Pilot