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Tag Archives: Grand Seraglio
messy antics
Passion unchained. Does absolute power equate with absolute bliss? For the Sultan’s of the Ottoman Empire for the most part; the effort to reconcile two antagonistic ideas seemed to almost take a perverse pleasure. Seraglio life could be characterized as … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Georges Antoine Rochegrosse, Grand Seraglio, Jean Claude Flechet, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Michel Baudier, Ottaviano Bon, Ottoman Turkey history, Sir Paul Rycaut, Sultan Ibrahim I
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caucasian cream of the crop
In selecting a concubine, a Sultan held a regular weekly levee at which the virgins of the harem were brought in for his inspection; he dropped a hankerchief at the feet of the one who pleased him most, indicating she … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Alan Aldiss, Antonio Maria Fabres y Costa, Evliya Effendi, Georges Jules Victor Clairin, Grand Seraglio, Jean Claude Flechet, John Mole, Khurrem roxelana, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Baltimore, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Michel Baudier, Ottaviano Bon, Paul Alexandre Alfred Leroy, Roxelana and Suleiman, Sultan Ibrahim I, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, Thomas Dallam
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a happy home
The inner and residential part of the Seraglio was called the House of Happiness. It was hard to imagine who was happy there. Certainly not the fifteen hundred women of the harem. For most of them life was like that … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Evliya Effendi, Georges Jules Victor Clairin, Giles Milton, Grand Seraglio, J.A.D. Ingres, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Moritz Stifter, Ottoman Empire harem, Ottoman Empire History, Roxelana and Suleiman, Selim the Sot, Seraglio First Mistress of the Coffee, Seraglio House of Happiness, Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror
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dinner is served: lonely at the top in the HMS Sultan
The social life in the Grand Seraglio was not all it had been cracked up to be. The power exercised there by the Sultan was absolute to be sure. But did it bring bliss? … When the Sultan got back … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Evliya Effendi, Franz Xavier Simm, Grand Seraglio, Jean-Claude Flachat, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Baltimore, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Ottaviano Bon, Ottoman Empire Sultans, Suleiman the Magnificent
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wild and wooly: oh effendi!
the Turks. The young turks,the old turks, they were all wild; from the quiet tranquility of the garden to the live action slicing and dicing of the human body, there was rarely a dull moment in the Ottoman Turkish empire. … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged 10cc sheet music, eric stewart 10cc, Evliya Effendi, Grand Seraglio, Grand Seraglio Istanbul, hatice Muazzez Sultan, Ibrahim Ottoman Sultan, Jean Chartier illustration, Jean Froissart Chronicles, kevin godley, Kiusem Queen Mother Ottoman Sultan, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Murad IV Ottoman Sultan, Osman and Mustafa, Ottoman Empire, Siege of Constantinople, Sultan Osman, the 10cc fan club
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who’s the fairest sultan of all
The Grand Seraglio. As opposed to Seraglio Minor. Yes that Grand Seraglio with the violence, the death and the sex fueled only the passion thatsix thousand concubines can command and the wayward restlessness of the Janissary guards. Frontier justice and … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Ahmed I and Mustafa, Grand Seraglio, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Baltimore, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Michel Baudier, Mustafa the cage, Ottaviano Bon, Radu the Handsome, Sultan Ahmed I, sultan murad IV, Sultan Osman
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within these walls what secrets…
The Grand Seraglio. Within its walls the Turkist Sultans sought an answer to a an old question: Can absolute power bring absolute bliss? Within the confines of what is today the Topakapi Museum, the Sultan’s residence the answer between the … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Gentile Bellini, Grand Seraglio, Janissary Corps, john frederick lewis, Lady Mary Whortley, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Mahmud II, Michel Baudier, Murad IV, Ottaviano Bon, Pierre Auguste Renoir
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vintage violence
Janissaries were uneducated except in violence and were fanatically conservative. In 1763, when Lord Baltimore passed through Constantinople, he observed that the Corps was still carrying bows and arrows, sabers and lances, having never got used to firearms. Sultan Selim … Continue reading
in and around the seraglio
….Turkey is putting up good economic numbers, and flourishing without the militarily imposed corruption that the Kemalist guarantors of secularism wallowed in as the price of preserving modern Turkey. Tiresome though Turkey’s anti-Israel posturing and pandering to the Arabs is, … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Byzantine Empire, capture of Constantinople, Conrad Black, Gentile Bellini, Grand Seraglio, Islamic Art, King Henry VIII, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Mehmet II, Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Empire Art, Ottoman style portraiture, Selim II The Sot, Siblizade Ahmed, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent
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