Inside the Seraglio

Inside the Seraglio PDF Author: John Freely
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857728709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This is the story of the House of Osman, the imperial dynasty that ruled the Ottoman Empire for more than seven centuries, an empire that once stretched from central Europe to North Africa and from Persia to the Adriatic. The capital of this empire was Istanbul, ancient Byzantium, a city that stands astride Europe and Asia on the Bosphorus. And it was in the great palace of Topkapi Sarayi that the sultans of this empire ruled. Inside the Seraglio - a classic of Ottoman history - takes us behind the gilded doors of the Topkapi and into the heart of the palace: the harem, where the sultan would surround himself with his wives, concubines, eunuchs, pages, dwarfs and mutes and where all the tempestuous events of empire were so often played out. This is the history of a remarkable palace in all its colour and opulence and the story of its influence on a great empire.

Inside the Seraglio

Inside the Seraglio PDF Author: John Freely
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857728709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This is the story of the House of Osman, the imperial dynasty that ruled the Ottoman Empire for more than seven centuries, an empire that once stretched from central Europe to North Africa and from Persia to the Adriatic. The capital of this empire was Istanbul, ancient Byzantium, a city that stands astride Europe and Asia on the Bosphorus. And it was in the great palace of Topkapi Sarayi that the sultans of this empire ruled. Inside the Seraglio - a classic of Ottoman history - takes us behind the gilded doors of the Topkapi and into the heart of the palace: the harem, where the sultan would surround himself with his wives, concubines, eunuchs, pages, dwarfs and mutes and where all the tempestuous events of empire were so often played out. This is the history of a remarkable palace in all its colour and opulence and the story of its influence on a great empire.

Inside the Seraglio

Inside the Seraglio PDF Author: John Freely
Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks
ISBN: 9781784535353
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Originally published: London: Viking, 1999.

Seraglio

Seraglio PDF Author: Janet Wallach
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780385490467
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Transporting readers to the menacing yet majestic world of eighteenth-century Turkey, biographer and Middle East expert Janet Wallach brilliantly re-imagines the life of Aimee Dubucq, cousin of Empress Josephine, in her first novel "Seraglio. At the age of thirteen, when en route from France to her home in Martinique, Aimee Dubucq is kidnapped by Algerian pirates. Blonde and blue-eyed, the genteel young girl is a valuable commodity, and she is soon placed in service in the Seraglio - the Ottoman Sultan's private world - in Topkapi Palace. As Dubucq, renamed Nakshidil ("embroidered on the heart") discovers the erotic secrets that win favor of kings and deftly learns the affairs of the empire, she struggles to retain her former identity, including her Catholic faith. Overtime Nakshidil becomes the intimate of several powerful sultans: wife to one, lover and confidante to another, and adoptive mother to a third. Her life often treads the tenuous line between sumptuous pleasures and mere survival until her final years when she is awarded control of the harem as the valide, mother of the Sultan. With phenomenal research and a mesmerizing voice, Janet Wallach provides a powerful and passionate glimpse of East-West history through one woman's distinctly European eyes.

The Harem

The Harem PDF Author: N. M. Penzer
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486147584
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This survey features photographs and floor plans of Topkapi Palace as well as profiles of the harem's women, their eunuch guards, and court manners, dress, and politics. 42 black-and-white illustrations.

The Steel Seraglio

The Steel Seraglio PDF Author: Mike Carey
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504065484
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
“A confident One Thousand and One Nights for our present . . . Furious pop entertainment—full of sex, passion, violence, and magic.” —Slant magazine This is the story of the legendary City of Women, told through the tales of those who founded it, championed it, and made it flourish. When the city of Bessa undergoes a violent coup, its lazy, laissez-faire ruler, Bokhari Al-Bokhari, is replaced by the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. With little use for the pleasures of the flesh, Hakkim sends his predecessor’s 365 concubines to a neighboring sultan as a gift. But when the new sultan discovers the concubines are harboring Al-Bokhari’s youngest son—a child who might grow up to challenge his rule—he repents of his mercy and sends his soldiers to slaughter the seraglio down to the last woman and child. What he doesn’t count on is a concubine trained in the art of murder—or the courage and fortitude of the women who will rise up with her to forge their own city out of the unforgiving desert. It’s an undertaking beset with challenges: hunger and thirst, Hakkim’s relentless hate, and the struggle to make a place for themselves in a world determined to underestimate and undermine them. Through a mosaic of voices and tales, we learn of the women’s miraculous rise, their time of prosperity—and how they carried with them the seed of their own destruction. “A thrilling tale.” —Publishers Weekly “A masterful, engaging and utterly fascinating story by three wonderful writers.” —SFRevu.com “The Steel Seraglio brings its alternate world of struggle, politics and magic very much to life.” —Locus

Pawn in Frankincense

Pawn in Frankincense PDF Author: Dorothy Dunnett
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030776236X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 679

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Book Description
In this fourth book in the legendary Lymond Chronicles, Francis Crawford of Lymond desperately searches the Ottoman empire for his kidnapped child. Somewhere within the bejeweled labyrinth of the Ottoman empire, a child is hidden. Now his father, Francis Crawford of Lymond, soldier of fortune and the exiled heir of Scottish nobility, is searching for him while ostensibly engaged on a mission to the Turkish Sultan. At stake is the political order of three continents, for Lymond's child is a pawn in a cutthroat game whose gambits include treason, enslavement, and murder. In that game's final move, which is played inside the harem of the Topkapi palace, Lymond will come face to face with his most implacable enemy and the dreadful ambiguities of his own nature. With a Foreword by the author.

Tales from the Expat Harem

Tales from the Expat Harem PDF Author: Anastasia M. Ashman
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN: 9781580051552
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
An anthology of personal writings in which twenty-nine women who have lived in Turkey over the last forty years chronicle their experiences and share their impressions of the country.

The Seraglio

The Seraglio PDF Author: James Merrill
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN:
Category : Fathers and sons
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description


The Singing Turk

The Singing Turk PDF Author: Larry Wolff
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804799652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of the eighteenth century, European opera houses were staging operas featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini created a series of works, including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the great nemesis of Christian Europe, became so popular in the opera house and what they illustrate about European–Ottoman international relations. After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, the Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood that Turkish issues were also European issues, and the political absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about politics in Europe, from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon. While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim Turks were, to some degree, different from themselves, this difference was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.

Mozart's the Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail)

Mozart's the Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail) PDF Author: Burton D. Fisher
Publisher: Opera Journeys Publishing
ISBN: 1102009199
Category : Operas
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Burton D. Fisher's extremely popular Mini Guides feature Principal Characters in the Opera, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, and an insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis of the opera.