Status Updates From The Ottomans: Khans, Caesar...

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From the end of the sixteenth century, we witness an era once referred to derogatorily as the ‘sultanate of women’, in which the mother of the sultan (valide sultan), as post-sexual woman, was more influential than the sultan. She controlled the imperial household, transmitted political values, and protected and preserved the dynasty.

After Suleiman I’s passing in 1566, the Ottomans entered a new phase in the politics of reproduction. A sedentary as opposed to warrior sultanate arose, alongside the rise to influence of the women of the harem. Seniority became the new law of succession rather than military victory and fratricide. It made succession an automatic procedure. Facilitated by the fact that the successor also resided in the palace

beginning in the 1530s during the reign of Suleiman I as they battled the Habsburgs for control of the Western Mediterranean and the North African coast, the Ottomans also attempted to expel the Portuguese from the region stretching from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. This led to repeated unsuccessful attempts to capture the strategic Strait of Hormuz which controls the entrance to the Persian Gulf

the Ottoman maritime empire emerged in the same century as that of the Portuguese. Beginning with the reign of Mehmed II, sultans referred to themselves as ‘Lord of the two seas and two continents’. The sultans were the rulers of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, Europe and Asia. From Egypt to Indonesia, the Ottomans rivalled the Portuguese in the battle for the seas and played a major role in international trade

the sultan turned against the Mamluks in the south. Again, the Ottomans used gunpowder weapons (canons and muskets) to defeat a Muslim rival armed with swords, bows, and arrows—the weapons of aristocrats and men of leisure who looked down on the musket, which any untrained soldier could use.