THE MATERIAL CULTURE IN THE ISTANBUL HOUSES THROUGH THE EYES
OF BRITISH TRAVELER JULIA PARDOE (d.1862)
by
ABSTRACT
THE MATERIAL CULTURE IN THE ISTANBUL HOUSES THROUGH THE EYES
OF BRITISH TRAVELER JULIA PARDOE (d.1862)
Keywords: Ottoman material culture, 19th century travel writings, middle-class travelers,
Ottoman houses, decoration, interior design
This thesis focuses on the domestic interiors and material worlds of Istnabul houses
through Julia Pardoe’s travel account “The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of
the Turks, in 1836”. She traveled to Ottoman lands in 1836 and wrote of her
experiences and observations in her account. Firstly, the thesis will present that Julia
Pardoe's account was one of the early examples of 19th-century travel writings. It will
analyze how travel writing was transformed in the 19th century by middle class women
travelers through their critical approach to previous travelers and through their
constructing of a new perspective and discourses. Secondly, the life of householders she
visited will be evaluated to understand the atmosphere in these houses. This also allows
us to position them within social hierarchy as either royal, high-ranking or upper middle
class. Lastly, these houses will be analyzed on the basis of Pardoe’s detailed
descriptions, considering the main issues of material culture such as comfort, heating,
luxury, decoration and design. Also, how homeowners from different strata of society
presented status, power and wealth through decorating their houses will be put forth.
v
ÖZET
İNGİLİZ SEYYAH JULİA PARDOE'NUN (d.1862) GÖZÜNDEN İSTANBUL
EVLERİNDE MADDİ KÜLTÜR
9. yüzyıl seyahatname yazımı, Orta sınıf
seyyahlar, Osmanlı evi, mimari, iç dizayn
Bu tez, Julia Pardoe’nun “The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks,
in 1836” adlı eseri bağlamında 19. yüzyıl İstanbul evinin maddi dünyasını
inceleyecektir. Pardoe 1836'da Osmanlı başkentine seyahat etmiş ve bu eserde
gözlemlerini ve deneyimlerini yazmıştır. İlk olarak eserin 19. yüzyılda değişen
seyahatname yazımının ilk örneklerinden biri olduğu ortaya konulacaktır.19. yüzyılda
orta sınıf kadın seyyahların önceki seyyahların önyargılarına karşı kritik bir yaklaşım
sergilemesi ve yeni bir perspektif geliştirmeleri sebebiyle 19 yüzyılda seyahat
yazımında nasıl bir dönüşüm olduğu analiz edilecektir. İkinci olarak, ziyaret edilen
kişilerin evlerindeki atmosferi anlamak için bu kişilere odaklanılacaktır. Bu söz konusu
ev sahiplerini ve evlerini toplumsal hiyerarşide (hanedan ailesinden, üst düzey elit
tabakadan veya üst orta sınıftan) bir yere oturtmamızı da sağlayacaktır. Son olarak,
Pardoe'nun tasvirleri üzerinden bu evler maddi kültürün temel meseleleri olan ısınma,
konfor, lüks, dekorasyon gibi meseleler göz önünde bulundurularak değerlendirilecektir.
Ayrıca, bu kişilerin dekorasyon ve objeler yoluyla nasıl zenginlik, statü ve güçlerini
gösterdikleri ortaya konmaya çalışılacaktır.
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor Tülay Artan for her guidance in all
phases of the thesis and for her constant encouragement.
I am also grateful to my mother Hülya Çıtlak and my father Osman Çıtlak for their
moral support and encouragement. I thank my sisters Aslıhan Çıtlak and Gülnihal Çıtlak
and brother Abdullah Çıtlak for their endless support.
I also like to thank my friends Kübra Yüce, Sümeyye Turgut, Merve Zeynep Koç,
Osman Akar, Ayşenur Korkmaz and Ayşe Velioğlu for their support and help.
I thank my husband Seyfullah Altuntaş who was with me during each day of the
research and writing process.
I received a scholarship from TUBITAK’s funding program named “2210-E Doğrudan
Yurt İçi Yüksek Lisans Burs Programı” during my graduate education. Therefore, I
would like to thank Tübitak institution for supporting me financially.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 1: OTTOMAN MATERIAL CULTURE: HISTORIOGRAPHY
AND DEBATES ......................................................................................................... 4
1.1. Global Material Culture ............................................................................ 18
CHAPTER 2: JULIA PARDOE: A NEW PERSPECTIVE TO THE
OTTOMAN WORLD .............................................................................................. 21
2.1. Pardoe’s Life between Europe and The Ottoman Empire ................... 22
2.2. Opposing Orientalist Literature and the Reconstruction of New Travel
Writing: Women Travelers' Experience with the Orient ............................. 29
2.3. The Ottoman State in the Age of Reform ............................................... 37
CHAPTER 3: ISTANBUL HOUSES THROUGH THE EYES OF JULIA
PARDOE ................................................................................................................... 43
3.1. Life and Lifestyle of House Owners ........................................................ 44
3.2. The Material Culture in the Ottoman Houses ....................................... 60
3.2.1. Courtyard ............................................................................................... 60
3.2.2. Sofa (Halls) ............................................................................................. 62
3.2.3. Room (Oda) ............................................................................................. 67
3.2.3.1. Haremlik (Woman's Section) ............................................................. 67
3.2.3.2. Selamlık (Men's Section) .................................................................... 72
3.2.3.3. The Bedroom ....................................................................................... 73
3.2.3.4. Eating Room ........................................................................................ 76
3.2.3.5. Private Rooms ..................................................................................... 76
Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 82
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 85
viii
APPENDICES ........................................................................................................ 101
Appendix A: The Visited Places in Istanbul by Julia Pardoe ..................... 101
Appendix B: Furniture and Objects in the Visited Houses ........................ 102
ix
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1: Thomas Allom: “Apartment in the Palace of Eyoub, the Residence of Asme
Sultana, Constantinople” ................................................................................................ 48
Figure 2: Jean-Baptiste Eugene Napoleon Flandin: “Palais de Hezmeh—Sultane a
Eyoup, Constantinople” .................................................................................................. 49
Figure 3: W.H. Bartlett: “A Turkish Apartmant in the Fanar” ...................................... 49
Figure 4: D’ohsson: Appartement d'une dame Mahométane avec le tandour (Apartment
of a Muslim Lady with the Tandır) ................................................................................. 70
Figure 5: D’ohsson: Appartement d'un ministre de la Porte (Reception Room of a
Minister of the Porte) ...................................................................................................... 78
1
INTRODUCTION
Ottoman historians have focused on the military, economic and political history of the
Ottoman state and neglected the social, cultural and material life of Ottoman society for
a long time. This was mainly because their research was based on archival documents.
To bring these neglected issues into the realm of Ottoman studies, historians have
turned to travel literatüre written by Europeans.1 This proved to be helpful especially
because 19th century travel accounts include information about various issues such as
harem, coffee-houses, festivals and markets.
Studies based on travelogues, however, could shed only some light on Ottoman houses
as travelers do not focus on the analysis of domestic life and interiors in detail. Since
access to such spaces were forbidden to men, the absence of interior descriptions in the
male travelers’ accounts can be explained. Also, there were only a small number of
females who traveled to the Orient before the 19th century and many of them were
illiterate. In the 19th century, many educated female travelers visited the Ottoman lands
and wrote their experiences. Especially British women travelers’ accounts include
information about the domestic life of Ottoman women and their houses.
Although travelers were interested in social life in the Ottoman empire, there was still
limited information about domestic interiors and material worlds of Istanbul houses in
the early 19th century travel accounts. Many women travelers had a chance to visit only
certain houses, primarily royal palaces, and they only described the interiors in a general
sense. In this regard, Pardoe’s travel account is a very convenient source to study early
19th-century Istanbul houses because she described the interior of thirteen houses from
different stratas of society in detail.
1 Fanny Davis, The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1986).
Burcak Evren and Dilek Girgin Can, Ottoman Women and Foreign Travelers (İstanbul: Ray Sigorta, 1996). Reinhold
Schiffer, Oriental Panorama: British Travellers in 19th Century Turkey (Amsterdam; Atlanta, Ga., 1999). Billie
Melman, Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718-1918--Sexuality, Religion and Work (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).
2
The studies on Ottoman dwellings are also mainly related to royal palaces rather than
private ones or the houses of ordinary people in the available literature. The main reason
behind this is that early 19th century houses have not survived. Therefore, the
information in the archives and primary sources are very valuable to study Istanbul
houses. In this regard, this thesis aims to contribute to the field by analyzing domestic
interiors and material worlds of early 19th century Istanbul houses through Pardoe’s
travel account, The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836.2
The thesis is divided into three parts. The first chapter provides an introduction to the
historiography and debates within the study of Ottoman material culture. The first part
explores the studies related to major elements of material culture -clothing, fashion,
food, utensils, objects and furnishings- and primary sources which were used to cover
these issues. Then, in the second part, the influence of trans-cultural and global turns in
material culture studies is discussed.
The second chapter is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the life of Julia
Pardoe mainly through her poems, books and travel accounts. The second part of the
chapter focuses on how travel writing was transformed in the 19th century by middle
class women travelers. Their special interest in the social life of women and their houses,
an outcome of their middle class and Victorian sensibilities, will be analyzed to
understand the reason behind Pardoe’s visit to Ottoman houses. The last part of the
chapter discusses the Ottoman State in the age of reforms.
The last chapter, the main part of the thesis, first analyzes the lives and lifestyles of the
house-owners whom Pardoe visited.3 This also allows us to locate them and their houses
within the social hierarchy of the Ottoman society -- as either royal, high-ranking or
upper middle class. It is still difficult to analyze social classes within the context of
2 There are some articles related to Pardoe’s travel account. These articles are not based on academic research, they
simple introduce the book itself. For instance; Arzu Baykara, “Julia Pardoe, Sultanlar Şehri Istanbul,” Tarih
İncelemeri Dergisi, vol: XXV, No:1, (July 2010): 379-381; Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy, “Julia Pardoe'nun Sultan'ın
Şehri ve 1836 yılında Türklerin Yaşamı,” accessed Dec. 25, 2016,
https://www.scribd.com/document/15671776/JULIA-PARDOE-NUN-SULTAN-IN-%C5%9EEHR%C4%B0-VE-
1836-YILINDA-TURKLER%C4%B0N-YA%C5%9EAMLARI, Okan Büyüktapu, “Julia Pardoe-Seyyahların
Gözünden İstanbul,” Frakkal 3 aylık Edebiyat Kültür Dergisi, no:5, 2015-1, 48-65.
3 There are descriptions related to Ottoman material culture such as clothing, utensils and food kinds in Julia Pardoe’s
travel account. In the third chapter, they will be given as footnotes. They will not be analyzed within the text because
the main focus of the thesis is domestic interiors and material worlds of the Istanbul houses.
3
Ottoman society due to the lacuna in the secondary literature and this issue is beyond
the scope of this thesis. In this thesis, the palace, which belongs to the dynasty member,
is categorized as a royal house. The houses of administrative elites are classified as
high-ranking elites’ houses. The houses of the people doing commercial activities and
some non-Muslim notables are also classified as upper middle class houses.
The second part of the last chapter probes into the architecture, interior designs, objects
and furniture of their houses based on Miss Pardoe’s descriptions and perspective. In
this part, issues such as how she perceived Ottoman houses, how furniture and objects
were arranged in these houses, how comfort and heating were provided during the age,
how luxury was presented in an Ottoman house, how power was displayed through
decorations and whether imported objects were available in these houses are disccused.
4
CHAPTER 1: OTTOMAN MATERIAL CULTURE: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND
DEBATES
Material culture studies is an interdisciplinary field, so it can be defined in various ways.
However, the term 'material culture' itself reveals that material things are integral parts
of culture, and the dimension of social existence cannot be fully understood without
materiality. The attribution of a cultural meaning to materials developed in the 1970s
under the effect of the material-cultural turn. Material-cultural turn assigns a cultural
meaning to objects rather than a structural or semiotic one. In this way, objects
“frequently do some sort of cultural work related to representing the contours of culture,
including matters of social difference, establishing social identity or managing social
status.”4 It is an object-based branch of cultural history, which is based on the
meaningfulness of the object and object-human relations.
Daniel Miller was the first to present a culture-based approach to material culture. The
first sentence of his work Material Culture and Mass Consumption (1997) starts with
the claim that “the book sets out to investigate the relationship between society and
material culture.”5 Moreover, he “mainly switches the frame of analysis from the
economic realm of objectification, to the process of consumer objectification.”6 Arjun
Appadurai, Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, focusing on the nature of commodity
and consumption, have followed Miller. Appadurai's edited book The Social Life of the
Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1992) deals with the relationship
between objects and things and how people define themselves through things and how
the exchange of commodities constitutes the cultural meaning of things.7 Appadurai
concentrated on the political aspect of this process. In this regard, he tried to show how
the value and exchange of commodities was managed by power, and how they became
4 Ian Woodward, Understanding Material Culture (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2007), 86-7.
5 Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Social Archeology) (Oxford; New York: 1997), 3.
6 Ian Woodward, Understanding Material Culture..., 99.
7 Arjun Appadurai(ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 3.
5
the criteria of good taste and expertise. Douglas and Isherwood's study The World of
Goods: Towards and Anthropology of Consumption (1996) is an attempt to “build a
bridge between economics and anthropology.”8 Firstly, they focus on the economic
aspects of consumption and criticize the restriction of consumption to purposes like
physical welfare, material welfare and display. They urge to reader to “... forget the idea
of consumer irrationality. Forget that commodities are good for eating, clothing and
shelter; forget their usefulness and try instead the idea that commodities are good for
thinking; treat them as a nonverbal medium for the human creative faculty.”9 Moreover,
they contextualize consumption within the cultural and social process. In this context,
“behaving as an economic agent means making rational choices”10 and goods become
markers of rational choices. They present “most systematic treatment of nature of goods
as cultural props.”11 They assert that “goods are neutral, their uses are social; they can
be used as fences or bridges.”12 Therefore, goods or consumer objects help redefine
social categories13, define social relations 14 and assign a hierarchical value to things
and people. Consumers do not only shop or satisfy their own needs, but they attribute
meaning to the objects and affirm social relationships as well. Therefore, objects
acquire emotional significance.
Ottoman historians followed the footsteps of consumption studies in Europe through
exploring inventories of various kinds in this context. They dealt with consumption
much earlier than material culture. Consumption in the Ottoman context can be “studied
as an economic matter, socially embedded activity and demonstration of political
power.”15 In this regard, Donald Quataert's edited volume Consumption Studies and the
History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An Introduction (1999) was one of the first
to compile several articles dealing with Ottoman consumption, such as “the rise of mass
fashion dress, changing fashions in clothing, the trans-cultural significance of tulip
consumption, the rise of print advertising, the use of food as a marker of elite status, and
8 Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods. Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (Routledge,
1996), xxiv.
9 Ibid., 40-1.
10 Ibid., ix.
11 Ian Woodward, “Sociology, Consumption and the Study of Material Culture,” in Advances in Sociology Research,
vol. 2, ed. Leopold M. Stoneham (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2005), 92.
12 Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods..., xv.
13 Ibid., 45.
14 Ibid., 102.
15 Suraiya Faroqhi, “Research on the History of Ottoman Consumption: A Preliminary Exploration of Sources and
Models,” in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An Introduction, ed. Donald
Qataert (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 22.
6
the emergence of photographs as a consumer commodity.”16 All these articles proved
that consuming is not limited to economic phenomena, but is also related to the social
and cultural realm by presenting “cultural preferences, project self-image, and compete
for status.” 17 Eminegül Karababa's studies that are based on Bursa probate inventories
were mainly from a social-cultural perspective.18 She emphasized the involvement of
various occupational and status groups to the consumption process through various
ways and the inter-class mobility between these groups.
Concentrating on consumption in material culture studies has involved various issues
relative to the history of objects and things in Europe since the 1970s. Research on
European material culture has explored and discussed the phenomenon from the
perspectives of archeology, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, economy and
history. However, academic research on Ottoman material culture began belatedly with
a limited number of studies. It has been studied extensively only in the last few decades.
European material culture, on the other hand, has been enjoying a numerous collections
and their inventories to be explored. Historical objects displayed in museums, memoirs
reflective of private domestic lives has attracted the attention of a large circle of
academics, interested in cultural objects from early modern and modern European
history. The rapid development of museology in Europe played an essential role in
providing materials for the studies of material culture. Conversely, in the Ottoman
context, objects or their visual representations did not survive as much. Given the
limited number of visual materials, academic research has relied more on archival
documents. The evasive descriptions of objects in archival documents and first-person
narratives allow researchers in the field of Ottoman material culture to maintain their
studies. The exploration of such documents promises to contribute to the expansion of
the field.
Among many types of archival documents, dowry registers (çeyiz defterleri) of
Ottoman-high- ranking women, is one of various inventories. They provide crucial
information for Ottoman women's history. Selma Delibaş studied the dowry registers of
16 Donald Quataert, ed., Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An Introduction
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), Back page.
17 Suraiya Faroqhi, Research on the History..., 15.
18 Eminegül Karababa, “Investigating Early Modern Ottoman Consumer Culture in the Light of Bursa Probate
Inventories,” The Economic History Review 65, no. 1 (2012): 194–219. Eminegül Karababa, “Origins of a Consumer
Culture in an Early Modern Context: Ottoman Bursa,” (Unpublished Dissertation, Bilkent University, 2006).
7
an Ottoman princess named Behice Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Abdulmecid I.19
Hatice Aynur made a similar study of the dowry registers of another Ottoman princess,
Saliha Sultan, the daughter of Mahmud II.20 Besides the dowry registers, there are
imperial kitchen registers (Matbah-ı Amire defterleri), which give information about the
food, drinks, and utensils used in the Ottoman imperial kitchen.21
There are also Ottoman probate inventories, such as kassam, tereke, muhallefat or
metrukat (inheritance registers and records) that can be used to study material culture.
Ottomanists have mainly focused on terekes, which shed light on the lives of highranking
elites and give detailed information on their properties. The numbers of terekes
recorded were limited in the 16th and 17th centuries. Their numbers increased in the 18th
century because many estates were confiscated by the Ottoman government and
transferred to the state revenues. In the 1950s, Halil Inalcık and Lajos Fekete were the
first historians to explore such inventories and use them as sources in their studies of the
economic and social history of the Ottoman Empire. Inalcık specifically studied the
estate inventories of Bursa and commercial textile production.22 Fekete examined the
terekes of an Ottoman Effendi who died in Buda in the late 16th century, giving a
detailed analysis of the materials that belonged to him.23
In the 1960s, Barkan studied the terekes of Ottoman military men in Edirne from the
mid-16th century to the 17th. He was interested in price history and unwillingly launched
Ottoman material studies. When he was reading the cost registers (masraf defterleri) to
understand the construction materials used and the total cost of construction and labor
wages, he discovered the corpus of a book series revealing the data of the Süleymaniye
Mosque.24 Through studying the mübayaat/muhasebe defterleri, Barkan contributed to
19 Selma Delibaş, “Behice Sultan'ın Çeyizi Ve Muhallefatı,” Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Yıllık 3 (1988): 63-104.
20 Hatice Aynur, “II. Mahmud'un Kızı Saliha Sultan'ın Çehiz Defteri,” Journal of Turkish Studies: Türklük Bilgisi
Araştırmaları: Festschrift in honor of Cem Dilçin I Hasibe Mazıoğlu Armağanı, Duxburry 23 (1999): 65-85.
21 Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “İstanbul Saraylarına Ait Muhasebe Defterleri,” Belgeler IX/13 (1979): 1-380.
22 Halil İnalcık, “Osmanlı İdari, Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihiyle İligili Belgeler: Bursa Kadı Sicillerinden Seçmeler I:
Köy Sicil ve Terekeleri,” Belgeler X (1980-1): 1-91; Halil İnalcık, “Osmanlı İdari, Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihiyle
İlgili Belgeler: Bursa Kadı Sicillerinden Seçmeler II: Sicil: (1 Safar 883 – Muharram 886),” Belgeler XIII/17 (1988):
1-41; Halil İnalcık, “Osmanlı İdari, Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihiyle İligili Belgeler: Bursa Kadı Sicillerinden
Seçmeler I: Köy Sicil ve Terekeleri,” Belgeler XV /19 (1993) : 23- 167.
23 Lagos Fekete “XV.Yüzyılda Taşralı Bir Türk Efendi Evi,” Belleten XXIX. 115-6 (1965): 615-38, “Das Heim eines
türkischen Herrn in der Provinz im XVI. Jahrhundert,” Studia Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29/5,
(1960): 3-30.
24 Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “Süleymaniye Camii ve İmareti Tesislerine Ait Yıllık Bir Muhasebe Bilançosu 993/994
(1585/1586),” Vakıflar Dergisi, vol.9 (1971): 109-161.
8
Ottoman economic history.25 However, he did not analyze these, but published them
only as primary sources. Based on the primary sources he published, new studies can be
conducted on Ottoman material culture, focusing on how these objects were used,
whom they belonged to, and what they tell us about the everyday lives of the Ottomans.
Academic research on Ottoman material culture expanded after the publications of
Inalcık, Fekete and Barkan in the 1980s to include studies by a group of scholars who
published the probate or confiscation inventories of pashas or high-ranking elites in the
Ottoman Empire. 26 Yet the flow of such studies is the lack of analyses and
interpretations of listed property holdings or confiscated wealth in the documents. One
should also recognize the difficulty of defining, describing and interpreting the listed
objects in documents, as they were either called by different names or do not exist in
modern material life. The purposes of using material objects changed from time to time.
Hence, the terminologies became even more complicated.27
Other scholars studied the traditions, cultural codes, regulations and restrictions on dress
in the Ottoman Empire. They highlighted how clothing reflects different segments of
Ottoman society. Donald Quataert studied the clothing laws and regulations in the late
Ottoman era in his article Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire,
1720-1829 (1997). 28 Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph Neumann co-edited a book,
25 See; Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “Fatih Camii ve İmareti Tesislerinin 1489-1490 Yıllarına Ait Muhasebe Bilançoları,”
İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Dergisi, 23 (1-2) (1962): 297-341; “Edirne ve Civarındaki Bazı İmaret
Tesislerinin Yıllık Muhasebe Bilançoları,” Belgeler, I (2) (1964): 235-377; “Süleymaniye Camii ve İmareti
Tesislerine Ait Yıllık Bir Muhasebe Bilançosu 993/994 (1585/1586),” Vakıflar Dergisi, vol.9 (1971): 109-161.
26 For some example, see; Kenan Yıldız, “Sanatkâr bir Devlet Adamından Geriye Kalanlar: Esad Muhlis Paşa'nın
Terekesi,” in Yavuz Argıt Armağanı, ed. Mustafa Birol Ülker (İstanbul: 2010), 209-64. Musa Çadırcı, “Hüseyin Avni
Paşa’nın Terekesi,” Belgeler XI.15 (1986): 145-64. Jülide Akyüz, “Osmanlı Ulemasından Üç Efendi'nin Terekeleri,”
Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi, no: 36 (2008): 188-200. Musa Çadırcı, “Hüseyin Avni Paşa’nın Terekesi,” Belgeler
XI.15 (1986): 145-64. Mehmet Güneş, “Karahisâr-ı Sâhib A’yanı Molla-Zâde Hacı Ahmed Ağa'ya Ait Bir Tereke
Defteri/ an Estate Register Belonging to the Ayan of Karahisar-ı Sahib, Molla-Zade Hacı Ahmed Aga,” Sosyal
Bilimler Dergisi (2006): 65-92. Orhan Kılıç, “Harputlu Hacı Osman'ın 1725 Tarihli Terekesi ve Düşündürdükleri,”
Turkish Studies 2.1 (Winter 2007): 17-28. Yuzo Nagat, “Karaosmanoğlu Hacı Hüseyin Ağa'ya bir Tereke Defteri,” in
IX. Türk Tarih Kongresi (21-25 Eylül 1981) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1989), 1055-62.
27 Dictionaries and books were compiled and published in order to understand the terms used for certain materials.
For instance, Reşad Ekrem Koçu published a dictionary, titled Türk Giyim, Kuşam ve Süslenme Sözlüğü, defining
various Turkish clothing materials and terms in Turkish language.( Reşat Ekrem Koçu, Türk Giyim, Kuşam ve
Süslenme Sözlüğü (Ankara: Başnur Matbaası, 1967). ) Mine Esiner Özer published the names of fabrics in Turkish in
her Türkçede Kumaş Adları, while Şennur Şentürk wrote about the collections of embroideries with various visual
sources in her edited book, Kumaş: Yapı Kredi İşleme Koleksiyonundan Örnekler: Examples from the Yapı Kredi
Collection of Embroider. Priscilla Mary Işın wrote a book entitled Osmanlı Mutfak Sözlüğü (Ottoman Kitchen
Dictionary) on the kitchen utensils used in different times and places of the Ottoman Empire, drawing extensively
upon archival documents, memoirs, and travel accounts. Priscilla Mary Işın, Osmanlı Mutfak Sözlüğü (Istanbul: Kitap
Yayınevi, 2010).
28 Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720–1829,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 29, no. 03 (August 1997): 403–25.
9
Ottoman Costumes. From Textile to Identity (2004) on Ottoman costumes, mirroring the
hierarchical order of Ottoman society. In her introductory chapter, Faroqhi focuses on
the questions of why and how to study Ottoman costumes. In the same book, Odile
Blanc gives an extensive historiography of Ottoman costume; Hülya Tezcan and
Neumann write about imperial clothing; Louise Mackie and Charlotte Jirousek explore
cultural mediation of Western and Ottoman clothing; Madeline Zilfi discusses the
gender aspect of Ottoman clothes, and Matthew Elliot analyses the identity problems of
non-Muslim subjects of the empire.29 Onur İnal discussed the interchanges of women's
clothing between Britain and Ottoman states in Ottoman ports cities, referred to as
“borderland” that were active meeting places for different cultures.30 Betül İpşirli also
wrote on how clothing styles mirrored different statuses, religious, and ethnic and class
affiliations in her article Clothing Habits and Regulations in the Ottoman Empire
(1703-1839) (2005).31 The quality of fabrics, for instance, reflected social status and
differentiation among different segments of society. Donald Quataert argued that
“possession of certain textile could mean middle-class status in one home, while in
another time and place ownership of handmade ‘oriental rugs’ provide escape from the
tedium of mechanizing, standardizing world.”32
The edited book of Nurhan Atasoy was related to silk fabrics “that were among the most
powerful and most characteristic artistic products of Ottoman Empire.”33 In the book,
silk was evaluated within the scope of “artistic medium”, “status symbol”, “economic
treasury” and “diplomatic gifts”. The book was illustrated with fabrics from the Topkapı
Palace. Hülya Tezcan also focused on Ottoman fabric (silk, woolen, cotton), weaving
centers and types of weaves. 34 Sumru Belger Kroady and Roderic Taylor were
particularly interested in embroidered textiles, techniques of Ottoman embroidery and
kinds and colors of fabrics.35
29 Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann, Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity (Eren, 2004).
30 Onur Inal, “Women’s Fashions in Transition: Ottoman Borderlands and the Anglo-Ottoman Exchange of
Costumes,” Journal of World History: Official Journal of the World History Association 22, no. 2 (2011): 243–72.
31 Betül İpşirli Argıt,“Clothing Habits, Regulations and Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Academic
Studies, v. 6 (2005): 79-96.
32 Donald Quataert, Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An Introduction
(Albany: State University of New York Press., 2000), 2.
33 Nurhan Atasoy et al., Ipek: The Crescent & The Rose: Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets, eds. Julian Raby and
Alison Effeny (London; New York, N.Y.: Azimuth Editions, 2002).
34 Hülya Tezcan, Atlaslar Atlası Pamuklu Yün ve İpek Kumaş Koleksiyonu/ Cotton, Wool and Silk: Fabrics Collection
(İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1993), Back Page.
35 Sumru Belger Krody, Flowers of Silk & Gold: Four Centuries of Ottoman Embroidery (London: Merrell, 2000).
Roderick Taylor, Ottoman Embroidery (New York: Interlink Publishing Group, 1993).
10
Another scholarly focus of Ottoman material culture studies is the utensils used in
Ottoman kitchens; mainly the imperial kitchen, and in the kitchens of dervish lodges
and middle and upper-class houses were explored. Given the fact that Istanbul was a
huge commercial center, various food types and kitchen tools were available to imperial
and upper and middle-class households where many festivals and ceremonies were
organized. Narrative sources ranging from Tursun Bey’s Tarih-i Ebu’l-Feth to Seyyit
Vehbi’s Surname-i Vehbi gave accounts of kitchen utensils in the imperial kitchen, such
as Chinese porcelain bowls (fağfur-i üsküre) in which sorbets were served to guests
during the circumcision ceremony for the sons of Sultan Mehmet II, Bayezıd and
Mustafa. Modern Ottoman historians have been interested in studying such materials
used in the imperial kitchen through various Ottoman archival documents. Stefanos
Yerasimos focuses on the kinds of food found on the imperial table and the table culture
in the 16th and 17th centuries.36 Marianna Yerasimos deals with various issues of
Ottoman cuisine such as cooking methods, kinds of food, table etiquette, utensils, and
cookhouses from the 15th century to the end of the state.37 Similarly, Özge Samancı and
Arif Bilgin also contributed studies to imperial kitchen studies.38 Tülay Artan wrote on
changing staples, luxuries and delicacies of the Ottoman elites in the 18th century.39
Michael Roger's articles on plate and its substitutes is an inspiring work, which presents
how to study utensils through archived inventories.40 Algar contributed to the field with
an interesting article, related to the preparation, serving and consumption of food in
Mevlevi and Bektashi dervish lodges.41 The articles related to various issues in the
Suraiya Faroqhi’s and Christopher Nouman’s edited book The Illuminated Table, the
Prosperous House: Food and Shelter in Ottoman Material Culture (2003) are also very
36 Stefanos Yerasimos, Sultan Sofraları: 15.ve16. Yüzyılda Osmanlı Saray Mutfağı (Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002). He
uses the recipe book of Mehmed bin Mahmud Şirvani.
37 Marianna Yerasimos, 500 Years of Ottoman Cuisine (İstanbul: Boyut Yayınları. 2005).
38 See; Özge Samancı and Arif Bilgin, Türk Mutfağı (Ankara:T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Geleneksel El
Sanatları / Sanat Eserleri Dizisi, 2008). Özge Samancı, “Osmanlı Kültüründe Değişen Sofra Adabı: Alaturka-
Alafranga İkilemi,” Toplumsal Tarih, no.231 (2013): 22-28; “19. Yüzyıl İstanbul Elit Mutfağında Yeni Lezzetler,”
İstanbul Dergisi, Tarih Vakfı, Üç Aylık Dergi, No.:47 (October 2003): 71-74; “19. Yüzyılda Osmanlı Saray Mutfağı,”
Yemek ve Kültür, Çiya Yayınları, no:4 (2006) :36-60, “19. Yüzyıl İstanbul’unda Osmanlı Saray ve İstanbul
Mutfağında Et Tüketimi,” Yemek ve Kültür, no.28 (2012).
39 Tülay Artan, “Aspects of the Ottoman Elite's Food Consumption: Looking For ‘Staples,’ ‘Luxuries,’ And
‘Delicacies’ in a Changing Century,” in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An
Introduction, ed. Donald Quataert, 107-200. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002): 107- 200.
40 Michael Roger, “Plate and Its Substitutes in Ottoman Inventories” in Pots and Pans, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art,
ed. Michael Vickers (Oxford University Press, 1986), 117-36.
41 Ayla Algar, “Food in the Life of the Tekke,” in The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art, and Sufism in Ottoman
Turkey, ed. Raymond Lifchez, (University of California Press1992): 296-303.
11
crucial to understand food culture and history. 42 Especially, the article of Establet and
Pascual in the book provides crucial information on cooking equipment, exploring 450
inheritance inventories from Damascus. 43
Another way to study Ottoman material culture is to analyze the domestic interiors,
home furnishings and objects in Ottoman houses. The scholarly interest in Ottoman
houses began in the department of architecture at Istanbul Technical University in the
second part of 20th century. Architectural historians mainly approached Ottoman houses
with a focus on architectural typology and terminology.44
Sedad Hakkı Eldem compiled the plans of still extant houses in the Balkans, Anatolia
and Istanbul.45 According to the locations of the sofa (a hall or hallway), Ottoman
houses were classified in four categories as “the plan without a sofa”, “the plan with an
outer/ open sofa”, “the plan with an inner sofa” and “the plan with a central sofa.”46 Not
only did he focus on their architecture, but he also analyzed the roots of these houses
and their relation to Turkish culture and art. Cengiz Bektaş also defined houses
according to the locations of the sofa.47 His main thesis was that the architectural
designs of Ottoman houses were based on their functionalities. Doğan Kuban
highlighted the sofa on the upper floor of the houses (later called hayat) as a dominant
element of the Turkish architecture.48 In time, open hayat was enclosed and became a
center hall of the houses. Önder Küçükerman took rooms as the base of Ottoman houses
and explored the role of rooms in the spatial organization of the house in his works.49
The researches of architectural historians on the dwellings in Ottoman towns were
mainly based on houses that were still extant. These houses were generally constructed
42 Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann (eds.), The Illuminated Table, the Prosperous House: Food and
Shelter in Ottoman Material Culture (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag Gmbh, 2003).
43 Collette Establet and Jean Paul Pascual, “Cups, plates and kitchenware in late seventeenth-and early eighteenthcentury
Damascus,” in The Illuminated Table, the Prosperous House: Food and Shelter in Ottoman Material
Culture,eds. Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag Gmbh, 2003), 185-197.
44 Suraiya Faroqhi, Research on the History of Ottoman Consumption…, 15-44.
45 Sedad Hakkı Eldem, Türk Evi Plan Tipleri (İstanbul: İTÜ, Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayınları, 1954).
46 Sedad Hakkı Eldem, Turkish Houses Ottoman Period, vol.1-2 (Türkiye Anıt Çevre Turizm Değerlerini Koruma
Vakfı, 1984).
47 Cengiz Bektaş, Türk Evi (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1996).
48 Doğan Kuban, The Turkish Hayat House (Istanbul: Eren, 1995).
49 Önder Küçükerman, Anadolu Mirasında Türk Evleri (İstanbul: T.C. Kültür Bakanlığı,1995); Kendi Mekanının
Arayışı İçinde Türk Evi (Turkish House in Search of Spatial Identity) (İstanbul: Türkiye Turing ve Otomobil Kurumu,
1988).
12
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the exceptions of Çakırağa Konağı of Birgi50,
Gübgüboğlu Konağı of Kayseri51 and some houses in Divriği.52 In these studies,
historians mainly analyzed the characteristics of the interior and exterior architecture,
plan types, local materials and ornaments to reveal the general house structure in a
certain town. Although they presented the regional variety of vernacular architecture of
houses in terms of the cultural and climatic differences,53 they mainly analyzed these
houses as examples of “Turkish” houses rather than highlighting differences. Yüksel
Sayan studied the main characteristics of Ushak houses through eleven remaining
houses in the region that were constructed in the late 19th century and 20th century.54
Necibe Çakıroğlu, Vacit İmamoğlu and Gonca Büyükmıhçı did research on Kayseri
houses. Çakıroğlu’s thesis presented architectural drawings and building details of four
Kayseri houses.55 İmamoğlu focused on twelve traditional Kayseri dwellings and
discussed the general characteristics of the architectural culture in the region. 56 He also
“explained how people lived, what hardships they faced in their daily life, what attitudes
they had and which values they wanted to keep in their dwellings.”57 In addition, he
analyzed how luxury, heating, decoration and lighting were provided in these houses.
Büyükmıhçı categorized Kayseri houses as Armenian and Muslim houses and compared
them to each other.58 Burhan Bilget and Celile Berk studied Konya houses in terms of
their architectural styles, materials and decoration through several extant examples.59
Mehmet Ali Esmer focused on thirteen houses in Avanos and analyzed their
characteristics in terms of material and decoration.60
50 Doğan Kuban, The Turkish Hayat Houses…, 62. Sedat Hakkı Eldem, Türk Evi Plan Tipleri…, 71-72.
51 Necibe Çakıroğlu, “Kayseri Evleri” (PhD diss, İstanbul Teknik Üniverstesi, 1952). The construction of the
mansion was started in 1519, but its present state was around 18th century.
52 Necdet Sakaoğlu, Divriği’de Ev Mimarisi (Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınlar, 1978).
53 The reason of regional differences fiest analyzed by Albert Gabriel as climate and material in his article. (Albert
Gabriel, “Türk Evi,” Arkitekt Dergisi, no: 5-6 (1938): 149-154.) The role of culture was mainly emphasized by Amos
Rapoport. (Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture (London: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969).) These issues were later
debated by architectural historians.
54 Yüksel Sayan, Uşak Evleri (T.C Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1987).
55 Necibe Çakıroğlu, Kayseri Evleri...
56 Vacit İmamoğlu, Geleneksel Kayseri Evleri / Traditional dwellings in Kayseri (Ankara: Türkiye Halk Bankası,
1992).
57 Ibid., 205.
58 Gonca Büyükmıhçı, Kayseri’de Yaşam ve Konut Kültürü (Kayseri: Erciyes Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2005).
59 Burhan Bilget, Sivas Evleri (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1992). Celile Berk. “Konya Evleri” (PhD diss., İstanbul
Teknik Üniversitesi, 1950).
60 Mehmet Ali Esmer, Avanos’un Eski Türk Evleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1992). Apart from the books, there
are many many articles related to Anatolian houses. For instance; Mahmut Akok, “Çorum’un Eski Evleri,” Arkitekt,
XXII/7-8 (1951):171-189; “Trabzon’un Eski Evleri,” Arkitelt XX (1951): 233-35; “Çankırı’nın Eski Evleri,” Arkitekt
XXII/ 7-8 (1953): 142-153. Işık Aksulu, “Beypazarı Evleri,” İlgi, no:41 (1985): 18-23. Baha Apak, “Safranbolu
Evleri,” Türkiyemiz, no: 52 (1990): 22-23. Bülent Çetinor, “Diyarbakır Evleri,” İlgi, no:32 (1981):15-20. Gökçe
Günel, “Çorum’un Tarihi Evleri,” Kültür, no: 160 (1983): 15-31. Mustafa İncesakal, “Kayseri Evleri,” Türk Halk
Mimarisi Sempozyumu Bildirileri (1991): 97-114.
13
Architectural historian Ayda Arel brought a critical perspective to previous literature
and emphasized the role of social values and culture on the spatial organization of
Turkish houses.61 Also in her studies in Western Anatolia, specifically in the Aydın
region and the architectural patronage of the Cihanoğulları, a provincial dynasty in
Aydın, she brought a new perspective to studies on Ottoman provincial housing.62 She
claimed that Cihanoğulları had fostered a new architectural style by combining gothic
and baroque elements, which she characterized as “family style”. Her emphasis on the
role of magnates on architecture was crucial for further researches.
Social historians have different approaches from architectural historians to
Turkish/Ottoman dwellings.63 Suraiya Faroqhi remarked that “the question of survival
does not have the central importance that it possesses for architectural historians.”64
Hence historians conducted research on non-extant domestic architecture mainly
through archival documents of various kinds. In this regard, Faroqhi examined 16th and
17th century kadı registers and discussed Ankara and Kayseri houses.65 She explored
social and functional aspects of houses located in these regions and the house-owners;
properties of houses; and the social and economic structure of the towns. Stephane
Yerasimos discussed the social meanings of the technical terms that were used for
houses in the 16th century, exploring the vakıf registers of 1546, 1580, and 1596.66
Tülay Artan studied waterfront palaces of the 18th century Bosphorous mainly from the
qadı registers of Yeniköy.67 She was interested in “rebuilding” these structures as a
61 Ayda Arel, Osmanlı Konut Geleneğinde Tarihsel Sorunlar (İzmir: Ticaret Matbaacılık, 1982).
62 Ayla Arel, “Belgesel İçerikli Bir Yapı: Cihanoğlu Mehmet Ağa Camii,” Müze-Museum, 4, Ankara, 1990–1;
“Cincin Köyünde Cihanoğulları’na Ait Yapılar,” in V. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı, Ankara, 1987, 1-88, figs 1-62;
“Aydın ve Yöresinde Bir Âyân Ailesi ve Mimarlık: Cihanoğulları,” in Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e: Problemler,
Araştırmalar, Tartışmalar. I. Uluslararası Tarih Kongresi, (Ankara: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları): 184-221; “Ege
Bölgesi Ayânlık Dönemi Mimarisi: 1986–1991 Çalısmaları,” in X. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı, Ankara, 1993.
63 Suraiya Faroqhi, “Controversies and Contradiction: The Turkish (or Ottoman) Houses,” Turcica 45 (2014): 321-
354.
64 Ibid., 337.
65 Suraiya Faroqhi, Men of Modest Substance: House Owners and House Property in Seventeenth-Century Ankara
and Kayseri (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
66 Stephane Yerasimos, “Dwellings in Sixteenth Century Istanbul,” in The Illuminated Table, the Prosperous House:
Food and Shelter in Ottoman Material Culture, eds. Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann, (Würzburg: Ergon-
Verlag Gmbh, 2003), 275-300.
67 Tülay Artan, “Architecture as a theatre of life: profile of eighteenth century Bosphrous” (unpublished PhD diss.,
MIT, 1989). Waterfront palaces are one of crucial issue. Tülay Artan first evaluated this issue from socio-cultural
perspective in her thesis. She also has another study on waterfront palaces at Eyüp region. (Tülay Artan, “Eyüp’ün
Bir Diğer Çehresi: Sayfiye ve Sahilsarayları (Another Face of Eyüp: Villeggiatura and waterfront Palaces),” in Eyüp:
Dün/ Bugün Sempozyumu Bildirileri 11-12 Aralık 1993, (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1994), 106-115.)
Historian Nurhan Atasoy also studied on a waterfront palace: “Nurhan Atasoy, Boğaziçi’de bir Yalı’nın Hikayesi:
Kont Ostrorog’dan Rahmi M.Koç’a (İstanbul: Rahmi Koç Müzecilik ve Kültür Vakfı, 2004). Emel Sayın wrote on
Sadullah Paşa Yalısı. (Emel Esin, Sadullah Paşa ve Yalısı: Bir Yapı, Bir Yaşam (İstanbul: Yem Yayınları, 2008).
14
“historical narrative” within a socio-historical framework because the 18th century
waterfront palace did not survive until today.68 By focusing on the notion of göç, she for
the first time considered the other faces (villeggiatura) of the Bosphorous and the
Golden Horn. She has also published articles on vizieral palaces based on archival
documents, maps and various visual sources.69
Another historian, Nurhan Atasoy, focused on the palace of grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha
that was the only surviving palace of the grand vizier.70 She did not only focus on extant
parts of the palace, but also analyzed visual materials (mainly miniatures) and written
documents. Gökçen Akgün Özkaya recently published work mainly includes
quantitative and statistical analyses from data obtained in the Ahkam registers in
Istanbul from between 1742 and 1764.71 She focused on the functioning of the istibdal
system and the architecture, comfort and privacy of Ottoman houses.
Rather than having a statistical approach to architectural typology and terminology,
social historians chose to explore historical changes and transformations in civil
architecture. Tülay Artan analyzes “the emergence of a new pattern of settlement along
the Bosphorus” by the effect of “gradual transformation in social structure” in the 18th
and 19th centuries.72 She also studied palaces in “close proximity to the Imperial Palace
from the 1630s to 1730s” and demonstrated that grand vizieral palaces have always
changed hands from one dignitary to another so their names and appearances have
changed.73 In this way, it was shown that “Ottoman residences were not permanently
fixed points in the cityscape.”74
The thesis of Ayşe Kaplan was also related to the waterfront palaces. (Ayşe Kaplan, “From Seasonal to Permanent:
A Study on the Effects of Göç Tradition on the Bosphorus Shores 1791-1815)” (MA Thesis, İstanbul Bilgi University,
2012).
68 Tülay Artan, Archtitecture as a theatre of life..., 4.
69 Tülay Artan, “The Kadırga Palace Shrouded by the Mists of Time,” Turcica XXI (1994): 55-124; “The Kadırga
Palace: An Architecural Construction,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 201-211.
70 Nurhan Atasoy, Ibrahim Pasa Sarayi (T.C Kültür ve Turizm Bakanligi, 2013).
71 H.Gökçen Akgün Özkaya, 18. Yüzyılda Osmanlı Evler: Mimarlık, Rant, Konfor, Mahremiyet (İstanbul:İstanbul
Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 2015).
72 Tülay Artan, “Early 20th Century Maps and 18th-19th Century Court Records : Sources for a Combined
Reconstruction of Urban Continuity on the Bosphorus,” Environmental Design : Journal of the Islamic
Environmental Design Research Center , n.13-14/1993 (Proceedings of the Symposium "La città Islamica attraverso
i catasti.Strumenti per la riconstruzione del processo tipologica", 5-7 July 1991), ed. Attilio Petrocelli, (Roma, 1996),
110.
73 Tülay Artan, “The Making of Sublime Porte Near the Alay Köşkü and a Tour of a Grand Vizieral Palaces at
Süleymaniye,” Turcica 43 (2011): 145-206. Tülay Artan, “Ayverdi’nin 19.asırda İstanbul Haritası: Ağa Kapusu ve
Civarı, 1650-1750,” in Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi'nin Hatırasına: Osmanlı Mimarlık Kültürü, eds. Hatice Aynur and Hilal
Uğurlu, (İstanbul: Kubbealtı Yayınları, 2016): 117-154.
74 Suraiya Faroqhi, Controversies and Contradiction..., 324.
15
Social historians also approach Ottoman housing from socio-political viewpoint. Tülay
Artan analyzes the role of architectural patronage on the transformation of architecture,
changing power relations and the issue of political legitimization.75 She highlighted the
18th century architectural patronage of the royal women in her PhD thesis76 and later
explored this issue in a series of articles.77 She presented the early 18th century was a
new phase for Ottoman princesses because they began to gain independence from the
circle of imperial power and pursued independent lives in their households. As indicated
by her, “the freedom and privileges these royal ladies enjoyed were best symbolized by
novel architecture they patronized on the shore of the Golden Horn and the
Bosphorus.”78 This was a change in terms of shifting political power from male
members of the imperial family to its female members. Lucienne Thys-Senocak also
focused the patrogane of Hadice Turhan Sultan and analyzed how “she expressed her
political authority and religious piety through the works of architecture she
commissioned.”79
Tülay Artan pointed out the shift of architectural patronage from the sultan to the
Ottoman elite, mainly certain families in both the capital and provinces in the late 17th
century.80 She claimed that patrons and builders had an important role in changing of
architectural styles by searching “something new and different” in the 18th century as an
alternative to the classical Ottoman architectural style.81 Rather than explaining the role
of Westernization on the architectural transformations in the 18th century, she
75 Tülay Artan, “Periods and Problems of Ottoman (Women's) Patronage on the Via Egnatia,” in Via Egnatia Under
Ottoman Rule, 1380-1699 (Halcyon Days in Crete II. A Symposium Held in Rethymnon, 9-11 January 2000), ed.
Elizabeth Zacharidou, (Rethymnon, 1996), 19-20. She indicated that “Initially, I was attracted to sultanefendis’
waterfront palaces on the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus purely as a process of architectural history. Then, I came to
see that building activity as running parallel to the emergence of new and enhanced political role for these royal
women.” (19-20)
76 Tülay Artan, Archtitecture as a theatre of life..., 73-91.
77 Tülay Artan, “From Charismatic Leadership to Collective Rule: Gender Problem of Legalism and Political
Legitimization in the Ottoman Empire,” in Histoire économique et sociale de l'Empire ottoman et de la Turquie
(1326-1960), ed. Daniel Panzac, (Peeters, 1995), Tülay Artan, From Charismatic Leadership to Collective Rule:
Introducing Materials on the Wealth and Power of Ottoman Princesses in the Eighteenth Century,” Toplum ve
Ekonomi 4 (1993): 53- 92. “Periods and Problems of Ottoman (Women's) Patronage on the Via Egnatia,” in Via
Egnatia Under Ottoman Rule, 1380-1699 (Halcyon Days in Crete II. A Symposium Held in Rethymnon, 9-11
January 2000), ed. Elizabeth Zacharidou, (Rethymnon, 1996), 19-43.
78 Tülay Artan, From Charismatic Leadership to Collective Rule..., 575.
79 Lucienne Thys-Senocak, Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan
(Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2007), Back Page.
80 Tülay Artan, “Art and Architecture,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol 3, The Later Ottoman Empire, ed.
Suraiya Faroqhi, (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2006), 55-124. Also see,Tülay Artan, “18. Yüzyılın
Başlarında Yönetici Elitin Saltanatın Meşruiyet Arayışına Katılımı,” Toplum ve Bilim, vol: 83 (1999): 292-322.
81 Ibid., 446.
16
highlighted “the creativity of Ottoman builders and patrons” and “the developments of
new elements and combination of motifs.”82
The post-Tanzimat era has been discussed through the history of houses, namely, the
interpretations of Ottoman architectural styles and their relation to Westernization and
modernization. Emre Yalçın study of a particular mansion in Balat in his article entitled
Pastırmacı Yokuşu No: 7, Balat-Istanbul: The Story of a Mansion during the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries, is an illustrating case (2003).83 Yalçın explores the water
system and the physical characteristic of the mansion which belonged to his family.
Carel Bertram discussed housing within the context of social and political ideologies of
the late 19th and 20th century.84 She was mainly interested in the concept of the home in
Turkish memory and imagination and its role in shaping personal and national identities.
With the material-cultural turn, scholars began to study material culture of domestic
interiors, public and private spaces, comfort and luxuries, lighting and heating.85
Ottoman historians now study domestic material culture more systematically. Fatih
Bozkurt in his PhD thesis Tereke Defterleri ve Osmanlı Maddi Kültürünün Değişimi
(1785-1875 Istanbul Örneği) (2011) explored architectural styles and interiors of
Ottoman houses mainly from a material cultural perspective.86 His analysis was based
on the tereke registers in the capital from between 1785 and 1875. One of the aims of
82 Ibid., 480.
83 Emre Yalçın,”Pastırmacı Yokuşu No: 7, Balat-Istanbul: The Story of a Mansion during the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries,” in The Illuminated Table, the Prosperous House: Food and Shelter in Ottoman Material
Culture, eds. Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann, (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag Gmbh, 2003), 237- 275.
84 Carel Bertram, Imagining the Turkish House: Collective Visions of Home (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2008).
85 See; Richard Thornton, Seventeenth Century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1981). Raffaella Sarti, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500-1800 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Margaret Ponsonby, Stories from Home: English Domestic Interiors, 1750-
1850 (England: Ashgate Publishing, 2006). Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti, Domestic Institutional Interiors in
Early Modern Europe (England: Ashgate Publishing, 2009). See about objects in home; S. Chevalier, “From
Woollen Carpet to Grass Carpet: Bridging House and Garden in an English Suburb,” in Material Cultures: Why Some
Things Matter, ed. Daniel Miller (London: University College London Press, 1997), 47–72. Sophie Sarin, “The
Floorcloth and Other Floor Coverings in the London Domestic Interior 1700-1800,” Journal of Design History 18, no.
2 (June 1, 2005): 133–45. Behrang Nabavi Nejad, “The Meaning of Oriental Carpets in the Early Modern Domestic
Interior: The Case of Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Married Couple,” ARTiculate 1, no. 1 (February 22, 2012): 4–18.
The great interest raised various issues about material culture in home like “the intricacies of material culture : Inga
Bryden and Janet Floyd(eds.), Domestic Space: Reading the Nineteenth-Century Interior (Manchester; New York;
New York: Manchester University Press, 1999). The details of both provisioning of furniture: Leora Auslander, Taste
and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley u.a.: University of California Press, 1998) and the influences of
states and commercial bodies on home interiors:Victor Buchli, An Archaeology of Socialism (Oxford: Berg 3PL,
2000). Sharon Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 2014).
86 Fatih Bozkurt, “Tereke Defterleri ve Osmanlı Maddi Kültürünün Değişimi (1785-1875 Istanbul Örneği)” (PhD
Sakarya University, 2011).
17
this study was to determine whether Ottoman houses were Westernized by the first part
of the 19th century. He took issue with Müge Göçek’s claim in her book, Rise of
Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (1996).87
She studied 124 tereke registers from between 1705 and 1809 and argued for the
increasing Westernization of Ottoman interiors, mainly due to the presence of Western
furniture (tables, chairs, chests, drawers and beds) found in these registers.88 Bozkurt
criticized Göçek’s argument because she did not provide information on the tereke
owners, on the registers in which inventories were recorded, and the terms used to
identify objects in terekes that she defined as ‘western’.89 Such omissions cast doubt
upon the reliability of Göçek’s arguments. Moreover, Bozkurt’s research on terekes
contradicted Göçek’s numeric data regarding the western objects in the 124 terekes in
question. Therefore, Bozkurt, based on the tereke registers he studied, argued that the
number of western pieces of furniture were very limited in Ottoman houses at the
beginning of the 19th century. He claimed that the Westernization of the typical
Ottoman house could not be dated to the first but to the second part of the 19th century.90
A few Ottoman historians studied furniture and decorative objects as part of Ottoman
material culture studies as well. Artan discussed changing lifestyles, living standards
and aesthetic taste in the 18th century through probate inventories and other archival
sources. 91 She focused on Chinese ceramics and European porcelains in Topkapı Palace
and the collections of two princesses, Hadice Sultan the Elder (1658–1743) and her
grand-niece Hadice Sultan the Younger (1768–1822).92 Feryal İrez examined furniture
styles of the 19th century through studying Dolmabahçe Palace, Beylerbeyi Palace and
the Yıldız Palace-Lale Pavilion.93 These studies are enriched by visual material. They
present various networks and cross-cultural relations between Ottoman lands and the
rest of the world.
87 Fatma Muge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
88 Ibid., 106-7.
89 Fatih Bozkurt, Tereke Defterleri..., 258-9.
90 Ibid., 257.
91 Tülay, Artan, “Terekeler Işığında 18. Yüzyıl Ortasında Eyüp’te Yaşam Tarzı ve Standartlarına Bir Bakış, Orta
Halliliğin Aynası” in 18. Yüzyıl Kadı Sicilleri Işığında Eyüp’te Sosyal Yaşam, ed. Tülay Artan, (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı
Yurt Yayınları, 1998), 49-64.
92 Tülay Artan, “18th century Ottoman princesses as collectors: Chinese and European porcelains in the Topkapı
Palace Museum," Ars Orientalis (Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century), Vol.39 (2011):
113-146. Julian Raby and Ünsal Yücel studied Chinese porcelain collections at the Topkapı Palace: Julian Raby and
Ünsal Yücel, “Chinese Porcelain at the Ottoman Court” in Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul,
Regina Krahl et al. (London : New York, NY: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 1986), 27-9.
93 Feryal İrez, XIX. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Saray Mobilyası (Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1989).
18
1.1. Global Material Culture
Disciplines dealing with material culture from the perspective of cultural turns since the
1980s now seem to be shifting to a perspective of trans-cultural and global turns. In
these debates, scholars are mainly taken issue cultural transfer and exchange. Peter
Burke claims that cultural transfer does not explain acculturation adequately, because it
refers to one direction in the process, so he introduced a new concept: ‘cultural
exchanges’.94 He mainly argues, “ideas, information, artifacts and practices are not
simply adopted but on the contrary, they are adapted to their new cultural environment.
They are first decontextualized and then recontextualized, domesticated or
‘localized’.”95 Werner and Benedict Zimmerman’s new concept, “historie croise” that
mainly focus on the historical process of local and global interactions, influenced
Burke’s approach.96 “Historie croise examines multilateral entanglements that occur in
a temporal and spatial framework where many actors interact together on different
levels, in different directions.”97
The trans-cultural and global turn presents the connection of different narratives and
histories and their global dimensions. Gerritson and Riello explain this framework as
follows: “this global turn meant that historians began to see objects as part of the wider
stories that crossed the geographical and chronological zones.”98 However, it is crucial
to emphasize that globalization “does not abolish either cultural or the peculiarities of
civilization developments of this or that region.” 99 Therefore, it led to a global
perspective in addition to a local one and so broadens the view of material-culture
studies. Indeed, material-culture studies should take into consideration both global
homogeneity and local differentiation, because the “history of material culture is one of
94 Peter Burke and R. Po-chia Hsia (eds.), Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge ; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
95 Peter Burke, “Translating, Knowledge, Tranlslating Culture” in Michael North (ed.), Kultureller Austausch in der
Frühen Nevzeit (Köhn-Weimar-Wein, 2009), 1.
96 Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of
Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45, no. 1 (February 1, 2006): 30–50.
97 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Michael North, “Introduction – Artistic and Cultural Exchange between Europe
and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections,” in Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between
Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections, ed. Michael North (Farnham, Surrey,
England ; Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2010).
98 Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early
Modern World (New York: Routledge, 2015), 13.
99 Leonid E. Grinin, Ilya V. Ilyin, and Andrey V. Korotayev (eds), Globalistics and Globalization Studies (Volgograd:
Uchitel Publishing House, 2012), 120.
19
the most productive areas in which to develop intersecting narratives of the past, some
of them local and comparative, others cross-cultural, transnational, and global.”100
A good example of a book with a global approach to material culture is Anne Gerritsen
and Giorgio Riello's book The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of
Connections in the Early Modern World (2016). The main aim of the book is to “make a
contribution to a new field, where global and material culture intersect.”101 Global
material culture is identified as a new field, because the social lives of things that were
mainly emphasized by Miller's Material Culture and Mass Consumption (1987) and
Appadurai's The Social Life of Things (1986) is now shifted to the global lives of things.
These studies focus on the material exchange between Europe, Asia, the Americas and
Australia and analyze their role in the global connections in the period from 1400 to
1800. They argue that “material objects mediated between the forces of global
economic exchange and the constantly changing identities of individuals, as they were
drawn into global circuits.”102 The transformation and transfer of identities through
objects and things is debated by Shelley Hales and Tamar Hodos in their books
Material Culture and Social Identities in the Ancient World (2014) from the perspective
of “the model of globalization” and “theories of hybrid cultural developments”. The
articles examine both local and global identity structures of early civilizations -Greeks,
Romans, Etruscans, Persians, Phoenicians, and Celts- and their role shaping Greek and
Roman culture through cultural interactions. Adshead contributes to the field in a more
specific context in his book Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400–1800: The
Rise of Consumerism (2014). In his book, he concentrates on the “diffusion of goods,
taste and techniques across culture, particularly from China to Europe.”103
The evaluation of objects and things in both local and global contexts is crucial for the
thesis because the travelers must be understood both in local and global frameworks.
They “leave home and return, enacting differently centered world, interconnected
cosmopolitanism.”104 Therefore, they were not the same as when they started their
100 Paula Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500-1800 (New York: Routledge, 2012),
6.
101 Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, The Glonal Lives..., 23.
102 Ibid., i.
103 S. A. M. Adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800: The Rise of Consumerism (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014).
104 Jonathan Lamb, Vanessa Smith, and Nicholas Thomas, eds., Exploration and Exchange: A South Seas Anthology,
1680-1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), xiii.
20
travel. Their cultural specificity melted in time and harmonized with other culture, even
though they often did not fully realize it. They brought their views, sensibilities and
background to other culture and formed a new perspective through their experiences.
Therefore, it is crucial to focus on life of travelers in order to comprehend their writings
and observations about traveled lands. In this regard, Julia Pardoe's writings from the
perspective of material culture are hard to analyze without understanding background
and sensibilities of her.
21
CHAPTER 2: JULIA PARDOE: A NEW PERSPECTIVE TO THE OTTOMAN
WORLD
This thesis focuses on the material culture in the Ottoman houses through Julia Pardoe’s
writings of her travel to the imperial capital, Istanbul. One should recognize that travel
accounts cannot be understood apart from the life of the writer. Rather, as Tim Young
contends, “it is influenced, if not determined, by its' author’s gender, class, age,
nationality, cultural background and education.”105
I argue that it is crucial to grasp Pardoe’s life in order to understand her travelogue and
observations on Ottoman material culture of the early 19th century. Travel experience
and writing was transformed in the 19th century, especially by women travelers. Their
critical approach to the common views and prejudices of previous travelers provided a
change of their experience with and account of the Orient. They constructed a new
perspective and a new discourse in their writings perhaps because of their middle class
and Victorian sensibilities. It is crucial to focus on the emergence of 19th century new
travel writings because it helps to explain Pardoe's attraction to Ottoman houses as a
way of understanding society, evaluating it as a feminine experience of daily life.
Moreover, her account cannot be completely understood without examining the
developments in the Ottoman State at the time of her visit. To sum up, in this part of the
thesis, I will focus on Pardoe’s life and character, the emergence of new travel writings
in 19th century Europe aiming to transcend the boundaries of Orientalist literature and
reconstruct a new perspective, and the transformation of the Ottoman world through
Mahmud II's reforms. In doing so, I will draw upon travel accounts, letters, novels,
journals and secondary sources.
105 Tim Youngs, ed., Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century: Filling the Blank Spaces (London; New York:
Anthem Press, 2006), 2.
22
2.1. Pardoe’s Life between Europe and The Ottoman Empire
Julia Pardoe was the second daughter of Elizabeth and Major Thomas Pardoe.106 Her
birth date is debated among scholars. Anita Gorman argues that although 1806 was
accepted as the year of her birth, baptismal records from Saint John parish in Beverley,
Yorkshire, confirmed that the date of baptism was 4 December 1804.107 However,
Gorman did not provide any reference to the information she gave. I found out that
according to the website of St. John Baptisms Records at the Beverley Genealogical
Records, Pardoe was baptized in 1805.108 Given that there is a controversy over her
birth date, other dates given in her biographies remain unreliable. Pardoe’s father,
Thomas Pardoe, was of Spanish origin.109 He had a very successful career as an officer
in the British army. Since he served at the Royal Wagon Train, he gained the confidence
of the British state. He was granted the right to attend the Peninsular Campaign and
took part at the battle of Waterloo.110
Pardoe was raised in an educated middle-class family. “In the early and mid-Victorian
periods, the majority of middle-class girls received all or most of their education at
home.”111 Therefore she most probably took private lessons at home. Her father’s highranking
status among the English elite certainly gave Pardoe an opportunity to mingle
intellectual circles. There is no exact information about how she received her education
but her contemporaries mentioned in their memoirs her interest in English literature.
She wrote her first poetry book before she reached puberty. She dedicated a poem to her
uncle, Captain William Pardoe. Later in 1829 she wrote a historical novel Lord Morcar
of Hereward: A Romance of the Times of William the Conqueror. In the early 1830s,
Pardoe wrote her first travel book Traits and Traditions of Portugal: Collected During a
Residence in That Country about her fifteen-month stay in Portugal. Since she suffered
106 Her full name was Julia Sophia Pardoe but she was commonly known as Julia Pardoe. In her books, she also wrote
her name as Miss Pardoe, probably she did not prefer to use her second name. Therefore, her name was written as
Julia Pardoe in the thesis.
107 Anita Gorman, “Julia Pardoe (1804-26 November 1862),” in Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Travel
Writers 1837-1875 Victorian Period (Detroit, MI: Gale, 1996), 294-298.
108 See Beverley Birth and Baptism Records, accessed Feb. 26, 2016, http://forebears.io/england/yorkshire/beverley
and Julia Pardoe's record: http://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/world-records/yorkshire-bishops-transcripts-ofbaptisms?
firstname=julia&firstname_variants=true&lastname=pardoe&lastname_variants=true
109 Elizabeth Lee, “Julia Pardoe,” in Dictionary of National Biography, vol: XLIII, ed. Sidney Lee, (New York:
Macmillan and Co., 1895), 201.
110 Miss Pardoe, The Court and Reign of Francis the First, King of France (New York : J. Pott, 1887), xiii.
111 Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (Routledge, 2014), 20.
23
from the symptoms of tuberculosis in Britain, Pardoe’s family had decided to move to a
warmer climate.112 This trip was a turning point in her life as it opened a way to observe
different local cultures. In her book, Pardoe wrote about the customs and manners of the
region and interpreted them from her own perspective. Her writing was praised by many
contemporary magazines, as she was able to satisfy the Victorian thirst for travelogues
and for tales of romance, violence, and intrigue.113 One of the British magazines titled
Fraser's Magazine described the book as the best of the season.114
Pardoe’s second other long-distance travel was to the imperial capital of the Ottoman
Empire, Istanbul. Her father was appointed to an official mission in Istanbul. Pardoe
accompanied her father, arrived in Istanbul on 30 December 1835 and stayed there for
nine months.115 In 1837, she published her book The City of the Sultan; and Domestic
Manners of the Turks, in 1836 about her experiences and observations in Istanbul.
Maybe due to her sadness for leaving her mother behind for the first time, she dedicated
the book to her.116 The publisher was Henry-Colburn Press, one of the leading
publishers of the time. As the audience enjoyed Pardoe’s writings on Istanbul, the book
was reprinted in 1838, 1845 and 1854.117 The City of the Sultan; and the Domestic
Manners of the Turks, in 1836 was a very valuable source due to the detailed
description of the daily life and material cultures of the Ottoman interiors. The adaption
to Ottoman society and enlargement of her social circle could be related to her relatively
long-term stay in Istanbul.118 She spent her whole time in Istanbul, although their plans
included visits to Greece and Egypt. She explained the reason for changing her travel
plan as: “I could not prove an honest chronicler if I merely contented myself with a
hurried and superficial survey of a country constituted like Turkey.”119 Therefore, she
did not live only as a short term visiter but chose to become part of the community.
112 Pardoe, The Court and Reign of Francis..., xiii.
113 Gorman, “Julia Pardoe (1804-26 November 1862),” 295.
114 “Book Review: The City of The Magyar,” in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, vol:23, (James Fraser,
1841), 316.
115 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 1.
116 Ibid., Dedication page.
117 Nigel Cross, The Common Writer: Life in Nineteenth-Century Grub Street (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985), 181.
118 Necla Arslan Sevin, Gravürlerle Yaşayan Osmanlı (T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınlar, 2006), 451. Sadun
Tanju, The Fairy-tale city of Miss Julia Pardoe, Istanbul 1835, accessed Oct. 1, 2016
http://earsiv.sehir.edu.tr:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11498/17168/001583090010.pdf?sequence=1
119 Ibid., x.
24
Pardoe’s enthusiasm and “determination to learn as much as possible of”120 Ottoman
culture and materials made her an “intrepid and insatiable observer”.121 She visited and
saw more places than most of the contemporary visiters to Istanbul due to her fearless
spirit and curiosity. Her character was noticed and praised in a contemporary magazine,
which appreciated her hardihood and energy to overcome troubles despite the timidity
of her sex. 122 Another contemporary magazine, Athenaeum, also appreciated her
fearlessness and courage as she “preferred running the risk of her life to returning home
with her curiosity ungratified.”123
Throughout her visit to Istanbul, Pardoe made her itinerary interesting by seeing places
that usually only male travelers would be allowed to see. One of those places was Hagia
Sophia, which she visited wearing an Ottoman male garb. Later on, she wrote in her
account: “What European traveler, possessed of the least spirit of adventure, would
refuse to encounter danger in order to stand beneath the dome of St. Sophia? And,
above all, what wandering Giaour could resist the temptation of entering a mosque
during High Prayer?” 124 Her second visit was to the house of Reis Efendi, the Minister
for Foreign Affairs where she got a unique chance to see the selamlık (men’s section) in
the house.
Specifically, Pardoe’s observation of Ottoman houses and her dedication to learning
about them opened new doors to her. In Ramadan, when Pardoe and her father arrived
in the imperial city, she was eager “to pass a day of Fast in the interior of a Turkish
family.” 125 Although she barely knew him, she wrote to “a respectable Turkish
merchant,” whom she recently met at a port of Istanbul upon arriving, and stated her
wish to visit his harem. She “received the most frank and cordial assurances of
welcome”.126 Another time, she asked a friend to visit the house of a Jewish family to
see the costume of their women.127 Together with her friend, Pardoe went to the house
of Naim Zomana and she was amazed by what she saw. Pardoe could thus manage to
120 Frase's Magazin, 318.
121 Reinhold Schiffer, Oriental Panorama: British Travellers in 19th Century Turkey (Amsterdam; Atlanta, Ga.,
1999), 393.
122 Book Review: The City of The Magyar, Fraser’s Magazine..., 318.
123 “Review: The City of the Domestic Manners of the Turks,” in The Athenæum: A Journal of Literature, Science,
the Fine Arts, Music, and the Drama, vol: 501, (J. Francis, 1837), 396.
124 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., 375.
125 Ibid., 16.
126 Ibid., 16.
127 Ibid., vol 2, 368
25
turn every situation into an opportunity for herself in understanding Ottoman material
culture.
Apart from The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, Pardoe’s trip to
the Ottoman capital inspired her other two books, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (1838)
and Romance of the Harem (1839). The reason for writing The Beauties of the
Bosphorus was that she provided little information in her former book regarding the
landscape of the city. This book also included natural views of Istanbul that were
engraved by William Henry Bartlett who was one of the leading illustrators of his time.
The combination of visual and textual materials was very rare in travel accounts.
Pardoe’s book captured the imagination of her audience because it was “purely
descriptive.”128 Her hope in writing this book was to get the reader not to overlook “the
fair city of Byzantium,” compared to Palmyra, Balbek, or Jerusalem.129 The Romance of
Harem consisted of Turkish tales. The “reality” and “observation” and “readable”
character of these tales was praised by a review in Waldie's Select Circulating
Library.130 These qualities made this work more valuable than the other books of Miss
Pardoe about Istanbul, and Waldie described it as: “a romance more to our liking than
the realities of her recently published journals”.131 Curiously, this book is not known as
much as her travel accounts.
She wrote another travel book about her trip to Hungary in 1840, entitled The City of the
Magyar, or Hungary and Her Institutions in 1839-40. As was stated by the Eclectic
Review, she was not like the “great mass of summer tourist” who just focuses on “the
surface of society”. She rather refers to “the existing institutions and habits to the causes
when they originated, to combine or to analyze, as the case might be, the facts which
has witnessed so as to extract the useful lessons which sound a philosophical
teaches.”132 The book was not only limited to her observations. She also provided her
comments about Hungarian politics and society. Such thoughts made her book more
worth reading. She observed local problems critically and interpreted them from her
perspective.
128 Ibid., vol 1, x.
129 Ibid.,151- 2.
130 “Review: The Romance of the Harem,” in Waldie’s Select Circulating Library, vol: 13 (A. Waldie, 1839). 487.
131 Ibid., 487.
132 Samuel Greatheed et al., The Eclectic Review (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1841), 68.
26
Apart from her travel accounts, Pardoe wrote some history books. Presumably, it was
her interest in history that encouraged her to write about historical events. She thought
“history is the great drama of the world; but we never thoroughly comprehend its whole
value until we have studies, not only its main outline, but also in details.”133 Her
historical works are Louis the Fourteenth: or, the Court of the Seventeenth Century
(1846), The Court and Reign of Francis the First, and The Life of Marie de Medici
(1849) and Episodes of French History During the Consulate and the First Empire
(1859). These historical accounts are mostly related to French history, specifically to the
biographies of well-known rulers of the time. Stecy Weir argues that Pardoe’s intention
was to write a history of Europe, but it did not happen because of her and her mother's
health problems.134 J. Cody Jeaffreson writes that, “Miss Pardoe has shown herself
capable of constructing ingenious plots, of charming by lively, and at times, gorgeously
colored narrative, and of giving an attractive and novel exposition of history.”135
However, it seems that they did not arouse the interest of the people at the time as much
as travel accounts.
Pardoe’s other book The River and the Desert, or Recollections of the Rhone and the
Chartreuse (1838) was a collection of her letters sent to friends during her journey to
southern France. The exact dates of the trip are not known. Yet, presumably, she wrote
these letters during the earlier phase of her journey.136 “The account of splendors and
curiosities of the City of the Sultan has led, it may fairly be presumed, to the publication
of this earlier series of letters.”137 There was inconsistency and “irrelevant matters” in
the letters because Pardoe decided “to leave every paragraph as it originally stood.”138
She apologized for irrelevances by making a reference to Molière's comedy, Les
Precieuses Ridicules: “Tout ce que je fais me vient naturellement, c'est sans tude”
(Everything I do comes naturally to me, it is without study).139
133 Miss Pardoe, Episodes Of French History: During The Consulate And The First Empire, vol:1 (London, Hurst and
Blackett, 1859), v.
134 Stecy Weir, Biography of Julia Pardoe (1806-1862), The Carvey Project at Sheiffeld Hallam University, accessed
October 1, 2016, http://extra.shu.ac.uk/corvey/corinne/1pardoe/pardoebiography.htm
135 John-Cordy Jeaffreson, Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria, vol: 2 (London: Hurst and Blackett
Publishers, 1858), 384.
136 Pardoe, The Court and Reign of Francis…, vx.
137 “Our Library Table: The River and the Desert, or Recollection of the Rhone and the Chartreuse,” in Athenaeum:
Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music and the Drama, No: 543, London: 24 March 1838/Saturday, 216.
138 Julia Pardoe, The River and the Desert, or Recollections of the Rhone and the Chartreuse (Philadelphia:
E.K.Carey & A.Hart, 1838), v-vi.
139 Ibid., vi.
27
Pardoe’s letters included much information and descriptions of landscape, culture,
manners, religious and political issues and folk tales of the region. Besides, Pardoe
debated the social-political issues in her society, especially about women. In one of her
letters to a friend, she said, “memory is a store-house, garnered with costly and with
countless treasure; but hope is a 'painted sepulcher', where is void”.140 The previous
memories of woman's roles in society can only be overcome with hope, a shining star
on the days that ‘life darkened upon’ women.141 She indicated that the dependency of
women on men was due to “the effect of custom rather than necessity.”142 From birth to
death, “they (women) were walled round within the charmed circle of domestic
guardianship” and “habituated to obedience and self-distrust”.143 Although social codes
and memory were formed in favor of men, she hoped that woman “can emancipate
herself from the thralldom of customary indulges; and take her place in the world's
throng, timidly, perhaps, but efficiently”.144
Some letters reflect Pardoe's psychological state. In a letter, she talked about her
loneliness. Being distant from her loved ones reminded her of who she “truly loved”
and that without them “the world may look cold.”145 Her pessimistic view of the
character of human beings is strongly evident in her writings. Many times, she
complained about people’s egoism and their wish to turn everything to their own benefit.
She said: “Are we not ever ready to smile or to sneer at the egoist, be his estimable
qualities as palpable as they are? And do we not deal out praise grudgingly, where we
felt that we are merely the echo of another's sentiment?”146
Pardoe's pessimism was also seen in her novels. She pointed out the “corruption” and
“hypocrisy” in the world in several of her novels.147 Her novels were generally long,
140 Ibid., 69.
141 Ibid., 69.
142 Ibid., 71.
143 Ibid., 70.
144 Ibid., 70.
145 Ibid.,14.
146 Ibid., 25.
147 Pardoe's novel are Lord Morcar of Hereward: A Romance of the Times of William the Conqueror (1829),
Speculation: A Novel (1834), The Mardens and the Daventrys: Tales (1835), The Romance of the Harem (1839), The
Hungarian Castle (1842), The Confessions of a Pretty Woman (1846), The Rival Beauties: A Novel (1848), Flies in
Amber (1850), Reginald Lyle (1854), The Jealous Wife (1855), The Wife's Trials: A Novel (1855), Lady Arabella; or,
The Adventures of a Doll (1856), Abroad and At Home: Tales Here and There (1857), Pilgrimages in Paris (1857),
The Poor Relation: A Novel (1858), A Life-Struggle (1859).
28
being published in two, three or four volumes. She did not only narrate stories in those
novels, but conveyed her opinions about life to her readers. One can argue that those
stories were philosophical. Her realist and rationalist attitude became effective in her
novels like in her other works. Her contemporary, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, explained
this attitude with these words “those of the fiction want impassioned truth in
sentiment.”148 For this reason, wrote Hale, although “her books have all been reprinted
in the United States, she has never been a favorite in our reading republic.”149 Pardoe
was not a well-known or successful writer compared to many of her contemporaries,
such as Jane Austen (1775-1817), George Elliot (1819-1880), Anne Bronte (1820-1862),
William Blake (1757-1827) or Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who were the pioneers of
the Victorian era. One of the reasons may be that her stories were not perfectly formed.
She could not capture the reader’s attention with her very long sentences and style of
story telling. Presumably, the previously mentioned British writers were excellent in
forming their narratives and holding the reader's attention until the end of the story. The
other reason could be related to the subjects of Pardoe's book. She did not effectively
talk about the social-political developments of Britain at the time. On the contrary, other
authors not only mastered history and contemporary events in Britain, but also
incisively criticized them with humor.
Although Pardoe was not as famous as these authors, she was luckier than them in terms
of her economic conditions. At the time, she was relatively rich, while her
contemporaries suffered from poverty, especially later in their lives. Many of them
applied to the “Royal Literary Fund” in England. Yet the financial aid provided to them
was so little that they made complaints about it.150 Even Charles Dickens criticized to
the fund:
“What we know of the condition of literature and its professors does not
seem to us to point the argument in favor of such institutions. There is the
Royal Literary Fund Society, if we are rightly informed, with its reserved
wealth of somewhere about £45,000. This wonderful Society, if we are
rightly informed, has not been able to dispense its income for the current
year in the belief of suffering authors- though seldom rigid in the selection
148 Sarah Josepha Buell Hale,Woman's record; or, Sketches of all distinguished women, from the creation to A.D.
1854. Arranged in four eras. With selections from female writers of every age (New York: Harper& Brothers
Publishers, 1885), 765.
149 Ibid., 765.
150 Nigel Cross, The Common Writer…, 72-3.
29
of its objects (25 March 1854).”151
Pardoe, on the other hand, took the financial support without making any application.
The funding committee decided to grant her some money because, they stated, she was
“a person of good moral character”.152 She was also awarded a civil list pension in 1860.
An annual payment of £100 was given her, “in consideration of thirty years' toil in the
field of literature, by which she has contributed both to cultivating the public taste and
to supporting a number of helpless relations.”153
In the last years of her life, Pardoe left London and resided in Kent with her family due
to her health problems. Her literary career ended as she suffered from insomnia. She
died at Upper Montagu Street on Wednesday, 29 November, 1862.154 Eight years after
her death, her contemporary, Samuel Carter Hall, described her as “a fairy-footed, fairhaired,
laughing, sunny girl,” and added that she never admitted her age and wanted to
remain young.
2.2. Opposing Orientalist Literature and the Reconstruction of New Travel
Writing: Women Travelers' Experience with the Orient
Traveling outside Europe was a male experience until the 18th century. In Western
Orientalist literature, the Orient was “depicted as a man's place, and the empire as a
male space, the locus of male character-building and 'career'.”155 European male
travelers approached the Ottoman world with clichés and stereotypes. These clichés
were mainly focused on ideas about the harem, depicting women as imprisoned or
oppressed and men as despotic and tyrannical. They also focused on Ottoman despotism
and Islamic bigotry in their narratives. For centuries, arguments by European male
travelers continued in the same direction because none of them had the chance to
observe forbidden zones that were reserved only for women. Therefore, there was a
tendency to copy the mentality and written works of male travel writers for
151 Ibid., 73.
152 Stacy Weir, Biography of Julia Pardoe, http://extra.shu.ac.uk/corvey/corinne/1pardoe/pardoebiography.htm.
153 William Morris Colles, Literature and the pension list. An investigation conducted for the Committee of the
Incorporated Society, 1855-1, (London: Society of Authors, 1889), 39.
154 Pardoe, The Court and Reign of Francis…, xvi.
155 Billie Melman, Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718-1918--Sexuality, Religion and Work
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 5.
30
generations.156
An alternative view of the Orient emerged in the 18th century.157 Lady Mary Montagu's
travel to the Ottoman capital could be accepted as a starting point for the emergence of
the new view. The wife of English Ambassador Edward Wortley Montagu was critical
about the representation of the domestic sphere in male traveler's accounts. She wrote
sarcastically: “Now I am a little acquainted with their ways. I cannot forbear admiring
either the exemplary discretion or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given
accounts of [Turkish women].”158 The opportunity to visit the spaces forbidden to men
provided terra incognita and a chance to witness and observe the Oriental reality for her,
and other women travelers. This way, women travelers could spot male travelers’
incorrect statements. European female travelers in the next generation were also aware
of the privilege involved in visiting such houses. Sophia Lane noted: “The opportunity
that I might enjoy of obtaining an inside into the mode of life of the higher classes of
the ladies in this country, and of seeing many things highly interested in themselves,
and rendered more by their being accessible only to a lady.”159 They enjoyed privileges
of being women, for instance, when visiting Ottoman houses. It was easier to get
themselves accepted as guests, because “Eastern women [were] also eager to learn
about the [western] other, namely Western customs and manners”.160 As Ottoman
women spent most of their lives at home, a space for sociability, they hosted the
European travelers with generosity and hospitality. They organized many social
gatherings for “celebrations, feasts, ceremonies and rituals: the birth of a child,
circumcision, wedding feasts”161, which provided women travelers an opportunity to
visit their houses. Pardoe received an invitation to visit the Kadi of Çekirge province in
Bursa to an event organized for the birth of his first son.162 It was an Ottoman tradition
to celebrate the seven days after the birth. Pardoe described the puerperant house and
clothes of the mother and child. Such conditions provided a special privilege to women
156 Juan Goytisolo, Osmanlı'nın İstanbul'u, trans. Neyyire Gül Işık (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2008), 14-17. See
also Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 15-16.
157 Ibid., Women’s Orient..., 7.
158 Lady Mary Montagu, The Complete Letters of Lady Marry Wortley Montagu, Volume 1, ed. Robert Halsband
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 327.
159 Sophia Lane Poole, The Englishwomen in Egypt: Letrers From Cairo (Philadelphia:G.B.Zieber, 1845), v.
160 Irene Kamberidou, “The East in the Eyes of Western Women Travellers of the 18th and 19th Centuries: Solidarity
and Understanding the East,” The West International Conference of Faculty of Art, Kuwait University (Nov. 26-28,
2013), 3.
161 Ibid., 4.
162 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., vol:2 , 96.
31
travelers, allowing them to witness and observe the interior parts of Ottoman houses, as
well as women’s clothes and daily habits.
18th century women travelers had common views and prejudices about the Orient, but
they did not reconstruct an alternative discourse. An 'alternative female discourse' on
the Orient evolved during the 19th century through increased travel to the Orient by
middle-class women in England. With the industrialization of Britain in the last quarter
of the 18th century, power gradually shifted from aristocracy to the middle class. In
other words, “the process of industrialization has created a middle class who gained
social prestige by virtue of education, wealth and political power.”163 Through the effect
of aristocratic culture, increasing wealth and education, they began to travel to different
parts of the world. Besides, “improvements in maritime and land-transport made travel
easier than ever before and affordable to the them.”164
Middle-class women travelers faced the Orient and strongly criticized male travelers'
accounts. Their reactions to stereotypical and copied information used by male travelers
could be seen in many of their writings. Pardoe argued that the “European mind has
become so imbued with ideas of Oriental mysteriousness, mysticism, and
magnificence.”165 They “accused male travelers- who had written about domestic
manners in the East and the position of women in Islam of misinforming or misleading
their readers, stressing that their accounts were based on second or third-hand
information, their unrestrained imagination and exotic fantasies.” 166
The main target of female travelers’ criticisms of male travelers was “the deliberate
extensive use of synecdoche, to the stereotyping of oriental features and, subsequently,
oriental character.”167 That is because the primary reason for the stereotyping was
generalization and synecdoche, created by male travelers. Short-term staying, living as a
tourist, and, more importantly, lack of access to certain places led them to
generalization. Therefore, they made their observations with vague and broad
163 Asebe Regassa Debelo, Wilderness or Home?: Conflicts, Competing Perspectives and Claims of Entitlement over
Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia (LIT Verlag, 2016), 144.
164 Billie Melman, Women’s Orients..., 11.
165 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., 89.
166 Irene Kamberidou, The East in the Eyes, 1. Also aee; Mary Adelaide Walker, Eastern Life and Scenery: With
Excursions in Asia Minor, Mytilene, Crete, and Roumania, Volume 2 (London: Chapman and Hall Press, 1886).
167 Billie Melman, Women's Orient..., 116.
32
descriptions. For example, male travelers made broad statements, about Turkish or
Ottoman houses. A Scottish traveler, David Urquart, compared Eastern and Western
houses in his accounts, attempting to show the characteristics of an Eastern house. He
described the windows, roofs, ceiling ornaments, paintings, and sofas of Ottoman
houses. 168 He also described some objects and items like “the stowage of bedding”169
and “cushion or shilteh” or “divan”.170 Yet he did not specify where he saw these items
in the houses he visited. Presumably, he had visited only one house and took it as a
standard, rather than visiting several houses and presenting a general observation on all
of them. Another possibility could be that he had heard about them from witnesses or
copied them from previous travelers' accounts. English women travelers condemned
tourist-centered traveling and generalization. As indicated by Pardoe, her main duty was
to correct misconceptions and mistakes and present the facts through her own
experience.171 Therefore, women travelers described every detail they saw to overcome
synecdoche and stereotypes. Pardoe had a little tolerance in this matter. When
describing the houses she had been to, Pardoe gave detailed accounts of the interior
designs and domestic objects rather than giving generalized descriptions. Unlike male
travelers, she did not use any second-hand information or clichéd descriptions. During
her visit to the house of Scodra Pasha, she wrote, she had “no wish to add to the number
of fables which have been advanced as facts, by suffering imagination to usurp the
office of vision”.172
Despite their strong criticism of male travelers, female travelers' writings were not
completely “innocent of the Oriental view, clichés, prejudice or that cultural smugness
which characterized the Victorian or Edwardian abroad.”173 They were not from a
'separate tradition'. They still believed the supremacy of the Europe, Western culture
and value.174 Therefore, especially in the earlier examples, like Pardoe, there were
examples of stereotypes and cliches. The idea of Western superiority and the “white
man's burden” was still in Pardoe's subconscious as reflected by her words; “before
those years are past, what may be the fate of Turkey? England must resolve the
168 David Urquhart, The Spirit of the East, Illustrated in a Journal of Travels Through Roumeli During an Eventful
Period, vol:1 (Philadelphia: E.L.Carey and A.Hart, 1839), 224.
169 Ibid., 223.
170 Ibid., 225.
171 Ibid., 88.
172 Ibid., 129.
173 Billie Melman, Women's Orient..., 17.
174 Ibid., 17.
33
question”175 or “how much I must find everything in Turkey inferior to what I had been
accustomed to in Europe.”176 Moreover, Pardoe's description of women in the bath,
“reclining luxuriously upon their sofas (…) in their fine white linen, embroidered with
gold, with their fine hair falling about their shoulders”177, evoked “the orientalist
paintings of Ingres and Gerôme, a sensual dream world beyond time or history.”178
Orientalist and stereotypical perceptions in the female traveler's sub-consciousness and
the reflection on their writings did not cast a shadow on their success. They challenged
the accepted and constructed truth and reconstructed a new travel writing in the 19th
century through their middle-class sensibilities. This sensibility changed the experiences
of British female travelers of the Orient. They redefined the relation between Europe
and the Orient and developed an alternative discourse. Their main contribution was to
give a detailed description of Oriental houses due to their access to these places, and,
more crucially, to reconstruct a new ideology of domesticity in light of middle-class and
Victorian values. Pardoe especially emphasized the lack of “the intimate knowledge of
domestic life” and the necessity for eye-witness reports stripped of “the ideas of
Oriental, mysteriousness,mysticism, and magnificence.”179
The middle class was not from the ruling elite as the noble class in England, and so
female travelers did not grow in a political environment. Rather, they lived in their own
private and individual world. Most probably because of that reason, their experience
with the Orient was “private rather than 'civic' or public, individual rather than
institutionalized and finally it was a-political.”180 An apolitical approach diversified the
topics women travelers were interested in. Therefore, their accounts became “more
complex than the orientalist topos” and reflected the plurality of “class, place and
time.”181 Their accounts focused on the private life of individuals from all strata of
visited societies, especially in the homes. They strongly criticized aristocratic travel
writers for just dealing with the life of the elite class of the visited society. Emmeline
175 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., 211.
176 Ibid., 30.
177 Ibid., 131-2.
178 Efterpi Mitsi, “Private Rituals and Public Selves: The Turkish Bath in Women’s Travel Writing,” in Inside Out:
Women Negotiating, Subverting, Appropriating Public and Private Space, eds.Teresa Gmez Reus, Arnzazu Usandiza,
and Aranzazu Usandiza (Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2008), 55.
179 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., 89.
180 Billie Melmann, Women's Orient..., 12.
181 Ibid., 7.
34
Lott, who traveled to Istanbul in 1867, attacked Montague due to her lack of interest in
the daily life of Ottoman society, ‘outside the salons of Audience’.182 The criticism of
the aristocratic approach played a significant role in the “shifting of focus of interest
away from elites, to the middle classes and even the populace, and from the exotic and
unusual to the ordinary.”183 It did not mean they were not interested in the life of elites,
but they were very “sensitive to the diversity of familial structures within the
system.”184
By the apolitical interpretation of the East in 19th century travel writings, the Ottoman
'home' had taken a new meaning as a private, feminine space.185 The harem was not
perceived as a male- dominated area any more, but as “a society within society, a
female community, an autonomous sorority, little affected by the world outside it.”186
This was the depiction of the Middle Eastern houses, like the idealized Victorian home.
In Britain, the perception about the roles of women and men changed for the middle
classes at around the 1790s due to the rise of power and migration to the cities with
industrialization. In their new world, “men placed firmly in the newly defined public
world of the business, commerce and politics; women placed in the private world of the
home and family.”187 This perception led to the ideology of separate space (public and
private) and home was accepted as a 'proper sphere' for women. It was not a center for
economic production anymore; rather, it was a haven to protect women from the
industrialized and impersonal world of the outside. Therefore, female travelers defined
“the harem-system and its locus” as: “'sphere', 'home', 'haven' and 'sanctuary' or as:
'woman's sphere', 'sacred place', even 'sanctus sanctorum'.”188
The evaluation of the Eastern home as a feminine space through changing perspectives
in Britain eliminated previous travelers' ideas and led to a shift of focus to different
aspects of Eastern houses. It no longer was perceived as an exotic locus, but 'actual
places' for women. It was “the aesthetic and socialised locus of the female and of the
182 Emmeline Lott, Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople,: The English Governess in Egypt (Bentley, 1866), vi-vii.
183 Billie Melman, Women’s Orients..., 101.
184 Ibid., 101.
185Ibid., 140.
186 Ibid., 144.
187 Catherina Hall, “Private Persons versus Public Someones: Class, Gender and Politics in England, 1780-1850,” in
British Feminist Thought: A Reader, ed. Terry Lovell (Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Wiley-Blackwell,
1990), 52.
188 Ibid., 140.
35
feminine experience of reality.” 189 This was the middle- class and Victorian
reproduction of the Eastern house. The change of the perception of the woman’s role,
home and domesticity in English society was projected onto the Eastern house and
family structure by 19th century middle-class female travelers. In Britain, the ideal
woman emerged as a response to the 'cult of domesticity' or 'cult of womanhood'. In this
culture, true women ideally ought to live a home-centered life. Apart from taking care
of her husband and children and maintaining domestic order, the important part of a
woman's responsibility was decorating their houses tastefully.190 The etiquette handbook
of the age explained the duty of women as follows: “a sensible woman will always
seek to ornament her house and to render it attractive.”191 In this regard, “the ideological
construction of home as a woman's place coincides with the development of a distinct
style of design.”192 Therefore, Pardoe dealt with the architecture, interiors, materials and
decorations of houses to understand the Eastern woman’s world
Apart from the aesthetic taste, 19th century women travelers approached the Ottoman
harem as “an alternative ordering of life of individuals and community.”193 In other
words, architecture, decorations, interior design and objects were evaluated as
instruments to present order and regulation in society and the position and status of
house owners in it. That is because the imposing of decorating and designing houses on
women in British society was not only related to creating an aesthetic environment, but
had a more complex meaning. British society was based on hierarchy, and house
decoration was a way to gain social prestige and status, and to present one's wealth for
the rising middle classes. People built new houses and changed the decoration and
furnishing of their houses due to the rise of mass production and mass-transit through
industrialization in Britain. They demonstrated their status, prosperity and power
through decorative and architectural furnishings in their houses. Through decorations, a
message was given to visitors that “this was a house of a successful man.” 194 In this
regard, “through the creation of an appropriate domestic environment”, middle-class
women assured that “the private sphere acted as an effective indicator of status in the
189 Billie Melman, Women's Orient...,140.
190 Thad Logan, Decorating Domestic Space: Middle Class Women and Victorian Interiors in Keeping the Victorian
House: A Collection of Essays, ed. Vanessa D. Dickerson (Routledge, 2016), 207.
191 Arthur Martine, Martine’s Hand-Book of Etiquette and Guide to True Politeness (Dick & Fitzgerald, 1866), 146.
192 Thad Logan, Decorating Domestic Space..., 206.
193 Ibid., 149.
194 Ibid., 211.
36
public sphere.”195 Pardoe visited many houses from different strata of Ottoman society
(royal, upper and upper-middle class) to understand the order of the society, both in the
public and private spheres.
The special attention to architecture, interior design and objects of middle classes could
be helpful to clarify Pardoe's intimate knowledge about these issues. Pardoe explained
many details of Ottoman houses with technical terms. She most probably took an
education on embroidery and drawing because, at that time, they “learned at home with
a drawing masters or governess.”196 She herself may have a special interest in these
issues due to her upbringing in a middle-class family.197 She may also have been
interested in reading pattern books and observing architectural developments in her
country. The pattern books on architecture, furniture and interior design appeared first
in the 1790s to cater to the need of the middle classes in England.198 The middle classes
developed their taste and style through these books in the form of both textual and
visual illustrations. They gave advice to builders, craftsmen and furniture makers
through these publications.199 These books were influential in the forming aesthetic
taste in Britain. Pardoe could enhance her knowledge due to reading the pattern books.
Apart from architecture and interior design, middle-class women travelers focused on
behavior, manners, codes, norms, propriety and etiquette. Their special interest was
related to the obsession of English society with order and regulation. It was crucial to
“position people to their exact place in the social hierarchy.”200 In Victorian era,
however, the shift of power from the aristocracy to the middle class and the migration
of the middle class to the cities caused rapid changes in the class structure. The rising
middle classes attributed importance to etiquette as a means of regulating society. They
tried to identify themselves with the elite class through standards of behavior and tried
to determine people's social position based on their education, which provided the social
195 Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (Routledge, 2014), 8.
196 Jo Devereux, The Making of Women Artists in Victorian England: The Education and Careers of Six
Professionals (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2016), 26.
197 Necla Arslan Sevin, Gravürlerle Yaşayan Osmanlı..., 451.
198 Michael McMordie,”Picturesque Pattern Books and Pre-Victorian Designers,” Architectural History, Vol. 18
(1975): 43.
199 Akiko Shimbo, Furniture-Makers and Consumers in England, 1754-1851: Design as Interaction (Routledge,
2016), 21-3.
200 Kathryn Hughes, The Middle Class: Etiquette and Upward Mobility, accessed November 11, 2016,
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-middle-classes-etiquette-and-upwardmobility#
sthash.CMHzV8PF.dpuf
37
graces and etiquette. In this regard, Pardoe's desire to portray Ottoman daily life and
gain a detailed knowledge of their domestic manners, as previously mentioned, was
related to her middle-class background and deep-seated Victorian values.
It is crucial to note that the Victorian period formally started in 1837, but 1830 has been
accepted as a convenient starting point. The industrialization that began in the second
part of the 18th century brought certain results, especially with the opening of the
railway in Liverpool and Manchester in 1830 and the passing of the Great Reform Act
in 1832. These improvements transformed class structure and prepared the ground for
the successive developments in the Victorian Era. Therefore, 1830 was accepted as the
starting point of the era. Pardoe was a witness to all these developments and so could be
accepted as a part of Victorian culture. More importantly, her interests, attitude and
interpretations differentiated her from previous travelers to the Ottoman land, especially
from Lady Mary Montagu, who came from aristocratic background and was closer to
middle-class and Victorian values. In this sense, Pardoe's travel accounts can be
accepted as one example of the dramatic change took place in English travel literature
of the 19th century which “coincided with the perceptible shift away from aristocratic
travel towards what may conveniently be described as the embourgeoisement of the
voyage to the eastern Mediterranean countries.”201
As a result, the middle classes in Britain had the opportunity travel to different parts of
the world with the rise of industrialization and the shift of power in the 19th century.
Middle-class female travelers transformed travel to East through their critical approach
to the stereotypes created by male; middle-class and Victorian sensibilities. Pardoe was
one of traveler of 19th century new travel writings that provided important insights into
the social life and material culture of the Ottomans.
2.3. The Ottoman State in the Age of Reform
Julia Pardoe arrived to the Ottoman capital on the eve of the Tanzimat era. The
Ottomans' changing perspective of the Europeans and European culture made it easier
for her to adapt to Ottoman society. At that time, the Ottoman state was under the rule
of Mahmud II, which differed considerably from previous experience. The inefficiency
201 Melman, Women's Orient...,99.
38
of former reforms to compete militarily and economically with the continental powers
forced Sultan Mahmud II to adopt more radical reforms. Rather than trying to return to
the practices of Ottoman golden age, he imported certain innovations from
contemporary Europe.202 “For the first time, Westernization appeared as a formal policy
linked to extensive bureaucratic reform.”203
Mahmud II had to neutralize his opponents and establish his own authority in order to
implement his reform agenda. He first destroyed the Janissary corps, which he saw as
the paramount obstacle to genuine the reform. The destruction of the Janissaries was a
break from previous Ottoman tradition and a turning point in establishing a new order.
“This was a major accomplishment in centralization.”204 These centralizing policies
were continued by struggling with local notables (ayans) in the provinces. Throughout
the 18th century, ayans had become the peripheral powers at several domains of the
empire by strengthening their power, accumulating wealth, and building headquarters
for their benefit.205 Acquiring offices and land contracts from the imperial rule, ayans
“integrated themselves into the institutional apparatus of the empire” and “monopolized
taxation, public finance, policing, provisioning, conscription, and other imperial and
public services in the business of governance in the Ottoman provinces.”206
Before Ottoman sultans sought to seize all the power and centralize the empire, ayans
were “autonomous from state direct intervention.” 207 Following Selim III’s lead,
Mahmud II attempted to suppress them through a provincial reform program in which
he consolidated the central power over the peripheral powers of the empire, and
established an institutional link between the center and the peripheries. One way to
consolidate central control over the provinces, and get rid of ayans was to create a
standard institutional system of taxation which tax payers and prospective revenues
would be identified much easier and earlier. Therefore, Mahmud II ordered the first
202 Ercüman Kuran claimed that many reforms of Mahmud II had a similar character with the reforms of Mehmed Ali
Pasha in Egypt. (Ercümen Kuran, “Sultan II. Mahmud ve Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Paşa`nın Gerçekleştirdikleri
Reformların Karşılıklı Tesirleri,” Sultan II. Mahmud ve Reformları Semineri İstanbul, 28-30.VI.1989, 107-111.)
Therefore, it can be said that Mehmet Ali Pasha’s reforms in Egypt were very influential on the formation of
Mahmud II’s reform agenda.
203 M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 63.
204 Ibid., 59.
205 Ali Yaycioglu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 2016), 67.
206 Ibid., 67.
207 Ibid., 117.
39
census to be conducted in 1830 and 1831.
It was around the same time when Phanariots was considered a threat to the central
authority, besides the janissaries and ayans, mainly because of their support to the
Greek Revolution. They were not exactly from the core of Ottoman ruling classes yet
they actively were involved in Ottoman political life as governors, dragomans and
diplomats.208 Although Mahmud II aimed to eliminate the power of Phanariots, “they
demonstrated an ability to adapt to manifold changes and an ability to survive and
prosper well into the supposedly new age of reforms.”209
As part of a centralization agenda, the state's administrative structure was reorganized.
Old administrative departments were transformed into ministries that were based on
specialization. “New ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, and finance formed the
embryonic limbs of a modern bureaucracy.”210 New schools were established to
educate officials for a reformed state service. Moreover, groups of students were sent to
Europe for education, especially in the military sciences.
Apart from reforms in the military, economic, administrative and educational fields,
Mahmud II's reform program involved the social and material life of the Ottoman
Empire. European architectural and artistic motifs started to appear in the lifestyle of the
Sultan. In 1815, Mahmud II moved to a new palace (Beşiktaş), which “reflected
European taste”211. The façade of new palace had a European style. Moreover, it was
“furnished with Serves china, French tables, chairs and clock, along with divans and
cushions.”212 Contemporary traveler Helmuth von Moltke also mentioned the furnishing
of the room in the Sultan’s palace with chairs, tables, mirrors, chandeliers and even
heating stoves. He also noted that all of these furnitures were like in the house of welloff
person in our cities.213 Imported materials from Europe transformed the traditional
habits of the sultan and gradually replaced traditional customs and habits. Mahmud II
208 Christine M. Philliou, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2010), 5.
209 Ibid., xxv.
210 M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History..., 62.
211 Daniëlle De Vooght, ed., Royal Taste: Food, Power and Status at the European Courts after 1789 (Routledge,
2016), 117.
212 Ibid., 117.
213 Helmuth von Moltke, Türkiye’deki Durum ve Olaylar Üzerime Mektuplar, trans. Hayrullah Örs (Ankara: Türk
Tarih Kurumu), 84.
40
introduced “the European way of eating with knives and forks at the table instead of
using a low tray and common plates.”214 Contemporary English traveler Robert Walsh
described the sultan’s eating habits as follows:
“He takes two meals a day; one at eleven, in the morning, and the other at
sunset. He has exchanged the Turkish stool and tray for a chair and table,
which is laid out exactly in European fashion. The table is furnished with a
cloth, and knives and forks, which are English; to these are added golden
spoons, and a decanter of wine. The wine is usually champagne, which he is
fond of, and is greatly amused when the cork explodes and the wine flies up
to the ceiling. He always sits alone at his meals. The dishes are brought in
one at a time, in succession, to the number of fifty or sixty, all covered and
sealed. He breaks the seal himself, and tastes the dish; if he does not like it,
he sends it away.”215
European table manners and accoutrements were used in the banquets of the Ottoman
court that were held for foreign envoys.216 Pardoe wrote about each day of the banquets
that were given for the wedding of Princess Mihrimah. One table at the banquets that
was arranged on the sixth day for a foreign ambassador was prepared in the European
style. 217 She also mentioned the Ottoman and European table etiquette that she
witnessed in the houses. She found the intermingling of the two cultures at the table as
“perfectly European in its arrangement, being accompanied by silver forks, knives, and
chairs; but the luxury of the East had, nevertheless, its part in the banquet.”218
Transformations in material, architecture, taste and etiquette manifested itself
effectively in the clothing style of the sultan and clothing reforms. The sultan himself
shortened his beard and wore “his own version of contemporary Western hats, frock
coats, and trousers.”219 Unlike previous ostentatious clothing, he introduced more
simple clothing, as was reflected in the words of British military officer Adolphus Slade:
“Instead of robes of golden tissue, and a cashmere turban concealed by precious stones,
he wore a plain blue military cloak and trousers, with no other ornament than a diamond
214 Daniëlle De Vooght, ed., Royal Taste..., 118.
215 Robert Walsh, A Residence at Constantinople: During a Period Including the Commencement, Progress, and
Termination of the Greek and Turkish Revolutions, vol.2 (London: Frederick Westley and AH.Davis, 1836), 311-2.
216 Ibid., 120.
217 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 486.
218 Ibid.,237.
219 Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, Reform,
Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808-1975 (Cambridge; London; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), 49.
41
chelengk [aigrette] in his fez, and steel spurs on his Wellington boots.”220 Moreover, the
sultan designed a new uniform for officers through the 1829 clothing law. The fez, with
European-style trousers, jacket and shoes, became the obligatory dress for state
employees. These radical changes in dress codes aroused the interest of Pardoe. She
harshly criticized the reform, saying:
“the fez, which has almost superseded the gorgeous turban of muslin and
cachemire: indeed, I was nearly tempted in my woman wrath to consider all
the admirable reforms, wrought by Sultan Mahmoud in his capital,
overbalanced by the frightful changes that he has made in the national
costume, by introducing a mere caricature of that worst of all originals —
the stiff, starch, angular European dress.”221
According to Donald Quataert, “the clothing law (..) was a quite radical measure in its
attempts to eliminate clothing distinctions that long separated the official from the
subject classes and the various Ottoman religious community from one another.”222
Mahmud II “offered non-Muslim and Muslim a common subjecthood/citizenry”223
through the elimination of class-based and confessional identity. In his ferman (July,
1829) issued near the end of the Greek Revolution, he said: “There will be in the future
no distinctions made between Muslims and re’aya and everybody will be ensured the
inviolability of his property, life and honor by a sacred law (Şeriat) and my sublime
patronage.”224 All these can be accepted as a first step to break defining identity in
Ottoman society based on religion.
Mahmud II tried to control and reshape society with his reforms, but the main question
is whether- or how much- all these reforms affected the lifestyles of Ottoman subjects.
It is difficult to radically change the customs and habits of society. Indeed, Mahmud II
did not only target the palace in his reforms, but also aimed to “enlighten” his subjects
and raise public awareness. He founded an official newspaper, Takvim-i Vekayi
(Calendar of Events), to inform society about the reforms and developments in Europe
and gain his subjects’ support. French-language newspaper, Moniteur Ottoman, had
220 Quated from Darin Stephanov, “Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839) and the First Shift in Modern Ruler Visibility in
the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 1, No.1-2 (2014): 130.
221 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 6-7.
222 Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1829,” International Journal
of Middle East Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Aug., 1997): 403.
223 Ibid., 413.
224 Quated from Darin Stephanov, Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839)..., 140.
42
been published in Istanbul by Frenchman Alexandre Blaque with the support of the
sultan. Furthermore, the sultan himself appeared among society with his European-style
clothing and carriage, fayton, in an attempt to eradicate prejudices against the European
culture and practices. All these had an impact on the changing views of Europe, and
allowed Ottoman subjects to identify with European culture. Their openness to Europe
also “resulted in their increased willingness to invite foreign women into their
homes.”225 In this regard, Pardoe entered Ottoman houses more easily than previous
travelers. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to measure the effect of these reforms on the
lifestyles of Ottoman subjects. The descriptions of Ottoman houses by Pardoe, which
will be analyzed in the next chapter, can also helpful in determining how much these
reforms influenced Ottoman daily life.
To conclude this chapter, I would claim that Pardoe, in her writings, shared her
observations of different cultures, traditions, lifestyles in Europe and the Middle East.
She aimed to put aside the prejudice and ignorance of previous British travelers. She “is
not much behind her predecessors in her estimate of their intelligence and
knowledge.”226 As a part of 19th century new traveler writings, she criticized male
travelers’ constructed Oriental image and stereotypical information and provided a new
view to the Orient. Her middle-class and Victorian background expanded her interest to
include various aspects of the visited societies. She aimed to be a part of Ottoman
society and so visited many houses. Her observations in these houses are a valuable
means of understanding the material culture of the Ottoman state at the time.
225 Mary Roberts, Intimate Outsider..., 60.
226 “Article 3: The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1836,” The British and Foreign Review:
Or, European Quarterly Journal, vol:7, (J. Ridgeway and sons, 1838): 91.
43
CHAPTER 3: ISTANBUL HOUSES THROUGH THE EYES OF JULIA
PARDOE
Julia Pardoe's book “The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks” was
one of the early examples of the 19th century travel writings. The notion of middle class
and Victorian background were influential on her interest in Ottoman society. While
describing visited houses, she interpreted them as real and private place of Ottoman
women and representative of the hierarchical structure of the society. Therefore, she
focused on architectural style, domestic interiors and objects of houses to understand
home-centered life of Ottoman women. She also approached the house as a place
presenting social status of the house owners. Therefore, Pardoe specifically was
interested in interior architecture, domestic interiors, furniture and objects of Ottoman
houses.
Pardoe described the interior of one of the royal palaces, five high-ranking elites’
houses and six upper middle class houses. The related parts where she wrote about the
upper middle class houses makes her book more special due to the lack of this kind of
description in previous travel accounts. The possible reason for her to visit many upper
middle class houses could be her reaction against aristocratic travelers that focus only
on the royal class or upper class houses. In addition, she came from the middle class, so
she could be curious about the life of middle classes in other societies. Another reason
could be her easy integration into Ottoman society thanks to relatively long-term
staying, her character and openness of Ottoman society to European culture at that time.
Fernand Braudel explained clearly the importance of interior design to comprehend the
‘whole picture’ of material culture as follows: “one piece of furniture does not reveal a
whole picture; and the whole picture is what matters most. Museums, with their isolated
objects, generally only teach the basic elements of a complex history. The essential is
44
not contained within these pieces of furniture themselves but is in their arrangement.”227
The arrangements of these houses cannot be evaluated without considering the life of
the person who organized the house with furniture and objects. In addition, the
information about the house owners can allow us to contextualize the description of
houses better. The social status of the owners, also, plays a role in the decorations of
their houses. Therefore, the studying of their political careers and position in the society
allows us to locate them either in royal, high-ranking elite or middle classes.
After that, the part focuses on domestic interiors and material worlds of Ottoman houses
through the travel account of Julia Pardoe. In this analysis, mainly the essential issues of
material culture will be considered, such as how furniture and objects were arranged in
these houses, how comfort and heating was provided and how luxury was presented in
an Ottoman house.
3.1. Life and Lifestyle of House Owners
Travelers were most probably writing the names what they heard or how a person was
commonly called in the society. Therefore, it is a little tricky to recognize house owners
of houses that Pardoe visited and reach the information about them. Therefore, political
life, careers, clothes, eating habits and behaviors of Ottoman royal, high-ranking and the
upper middle classes will be analyzed as far as her account, chronicles and secondary
sources are concerned.
Among the royal houses, Pardoe only visited the palaces of Esma Sultan at Eyüp and
Ortaköy. Esma Sultan was a prominent figure among Ottoman women elites at the time.
She was the daughter of Sultan Abdülhamid I and Ayşe Sinaperver. She was married to
Grand Admiral Hüseyin Pasha. After his death in 1803, she never married again and
had a more independent life when compared to other women in the palace.228 Her
difference from other women was indicated by Robert Walsh as follows:
“one of the few princesses of the house of Othman, who have not been
227 Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. I: The Structure of Everyday Life, trans.
Siân Reynold (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 306.
228 Türkan Duran, “I.Abdülhamid'in Kızı Esma Sultan'ın Hayatı (1778-1848)” (MA thesis, Marmara University,
2007), 94.
45
debarred, owing to a barbarous policy, the society of their husbands; the
object of marrying them off being only to free them from the restraints of
the seraglio, and to give them a separate establishment, which the husband
supports from the proceeds of his government, usually rich and distant,
where he resides without daring to profit by the Mohammedan privilege of a
plurality of wives, since on the good graces of his royal bride depends his
existence.”229
Her free life caused rumors, like her poisoning and burying young boys in distant places
after having entertainments with them230 and her having fun watching the killing of
bulky men.231
Esma Sultan was known for her high living and conspicuous consumption. The register
of her expenditure reveal that most of the expense was for clothes and accessories.232
Besides, Esma Sultan spent money for the furnishing (mefruşat) of her palaces.233
Because of so much spending, her mother sometimes prohibited shopping to her.234 Not
only Esma Sultan, but her slaves would dress up too. Pardoe’s accounts reveal that her
slaves would wear clothes that were made from “the most gaudy furniture.”235 The
“most striking feature of their costume”, writes Pardoe, was their head-dresses.236 The
most impressive one for Pardoe was the clothes of Nazip Hanım (Nazife Hanım),
“mother of slaves.”237 Pardoe described her clothes as an “odd mixture of the European
and Oriental” styles.238 Apart from shopping for clothes and furnishing, Esma Sultan
used to financially support music trainings of her odalisques239 as well as spending
money for musical entertainment at her palace in Ortaköy. Pardoe wrote that the
melodies would be heard while passing by her palace and would attract the attention of
229 Robert Walsh, Sir Adolphus Slade, Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, &C., and of a Cruise in the Black Sea:
With the Capitan Pasha, in the Years 1829, 1830, and 1831 (Philadelphia: E.L.Carey & A. Hart, 1833), 71.
230 Nahid Sıdkı Örik, Eski Zaman Kadınları Arasında (Oğlak Yayıncılık, 1995), 19.
231 Türka Duran, I. Abdülhamid'in Kızı...,77.
232 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 76.
233 Ibid., 31.
234 Ibid., 44.
235 Ibid., 303.
236 Ibid., 304. Detailed decription as follows: “A painted handkerchief is bound tightly round the brow, and secured
by jewelled bodkins : the back hair is crtpe until it be comes one huge dishevelled mass, when it is traversed across
the top of the head by a corner of the handkerchief: a number of slender plaits of false hair hang down the back,
frequently differing very materially from the colour of the natural tresses : the front locks are cut square across the
forehead, and left a couple of inches longer at the sides, where they lie quite flat, and are stuck full of roses, or gems ;
or over hung by the deep fringe of the handkerchief, wrought to resemble a wreath of flowers.” (304)
237 Ibid.., 303.
238 Ibid., 305. Nazip Hanım's cloth was described in detail as follows: “She wore trowsers of pale blue cotton
flowered with yellow ; and an antery of light green striped with white, and edged with a fringe of pink floss silk ;
while her jacket, which was the production of a Parisian dress-maker, was of dove-coloured satin, thickly wadded,
and furnished with a deep cape, and a pair of immense sleeves, fastened at the wrists with diamond studs.” (305).
239 İbrahim Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, “Osmanlılar Zamanında Saraylarda Musiki Hayatı,” Belleten, 161 (Ocak 1977): 110.
46
kayıkçıs. 240
Besides her interests in amusements and shopping, Esma Sultan was also an influential
figure in state affairs. As well put by Tülay Artan female members of the Ottoman
imperial family started taking effective roles in administration around the early 18th
century.241 It is not surprising to see Esma Sultan on the stage of state affairs in the first
decades of the 19th century. She played a role in her brother Mustafa IV's accession to
the throne, the revolts of the Janissaries and Kabakçı Mustafa and the promotions or
dismissals of some officers.242 She was even supported by Janissaries as an alternative
ruler. When Mustafa IV was murdered through the order of Mahmud II, he became only
surviving male member of the dynasty. When Janissaries learned the murder of Mustafa
IV by Mahmud II, they claimed that they did not trust Mahmud anymore and suggested
alternative rulers, including Esma Sultan.243
Ottoman princesses mostly displayed their wealth and power by constructing palaces in
their own name. In this regard, Artan noted that
“one of the consequences of royal princesses’ new found-license was that
unlike in the classical age, when they had lived in a palaces held by and
named after their husband, now the palaces constructed in their own name
(such as Esma Sultan Sarayı, Beyhan Sultan Sarayı, Hatice Sultan Sarayı,
etc.) came to dwarf their husbands’ residence.”244
Esma Sultan also constructed new palaces. The account registers (hesap pusulası) and
the inventory registers (keşif defteri) uncover the expenditures of the construction work
of her palaces at Defterdar Pier.245 Interior design was a passion for Esma Sultan. She
owned one of the most spectacular looking mansions in Eyüp Pier, which she tastefully
240 Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., vol:2, 161.
241 Tülay Artan, From Charismatic Leadership to Collective Rule: Introducing Materials on the Wealth and Power of
Ottoman Princesses in the Eighteenth Century,” Toplum ve Ekonomi 4 (1993): 53- 92. Tülay Artan, “Boğaziçi’nin
Çehresini Değiştiren Soylu Kadınlar ve Sultanefendi Sarayları,” İstanbul Dergisi III, (October 1992): 109-118 /
Noble Women Who Changed the Face of the Bosphrous and the Palace of the Sultans,” in Biannual İstanbul I,
(January 1993): 87-97.
242 Necdet Sakaoğlu, “Esma Sultan (Küçük),” in Dünden Bugüne İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, vol:3 (İstanbul, 1994), 207.
Türkan Duran, I.Abdühamid'in kızı..., 79-80.
243 Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlı Tarihi: Nizam-ı Cedid ve Tanzimat Devirleri (1789-1856), vol: 5 (Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu, 2007), 96.
244 Tülay Artan, “Periods and Problems of Ottoman (Women's) Patronage on the Via Egnatia,” in Via Egnatia Under
Ottoman Rule, 1380-1699 (Halcyon Days in Crete II. A Symposium Held in Rethymnon, 9-11 January 2000), ed.
Elizabeth Zacharidou, Rethymnon, 1996, 20.
245 Tülay Artan, “Esma Sultan Sahil Sarayı,” in Dünden Bugüne İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, vol:3, (İstanbul, 1994), 209.
Tülay Artan, Eyüp’ün bir Diğer çehresi: sayfiye ve sahilsaraylar, in Tülay Artan (ed.), Eyüp. Dün-bugün (Istanbul
1994), 111.
47
decorated. She had requested the palace to be repaired after her marriage with Hüseyin
Pasha and she herself got involved in the interior decoration process during the repair.
The embroidery designs and color for furnishing of the palace were chosen by Esma
Sultan.246
Pardoe was invited to the palace in Eyüp to spend a night. When she arrived, she
learned that “the sultan and principal ladies of her households had been detained by the
Sultan and would not return until the following day.”247 Therefore, she just entered the
palace for a short time, as she feared of not being able to find any opportunity to visit
the palace again. Therefore, she could not give a detailed description of the palace in her
accounts. Apart from Pardoe, a traveler named Eugene Flandin engraved the exterior
view of the palace at Eyüp with lithography techniques. Another traveler named
Thomas Allom illustrated the meeting at the chamber, which could be the Divanhane.
Although one should have enough formation to examine this illustration in detail,
overall it can be said that the chamber is depicted as over-decorated and overornamented.
Therefore, one can be argue that the illustration reflects an “oriental
fantasy” rather than the possible reality. Although Pardoe’s descriptions for palaces
were close to reality, W.H.Bartlett’s illustration of the room at Phanar in her book can
be shown as an example of an oriental fantasy.
Another palace of Esma Sultan that Pardoe visited was in Ortaköy, which was also
known as ‘Tırnakçı Mansion’. A book by Sedad Hakkı Eldem includes the photography,
engraving and plans of the palace.248 Tülay Artan contends that the palace has civil
architectural feature of the classical period due to spreading the linear parallel to the
coast and its external façade feature.249 She also compares the palaces in Ortaköy and
Eyüp in terms of their architectural styles and argues that while Western architectural
elements are dominant though limited to the ornamentation in Ortaköy palace, the
characteristic features of the classical Ottoman houses can be seen in the palace at
Eyüp.250 Rather than the exterior of the palace in Ortaköy, Pardoe only wrote about
246 Türkan Duran, “I.Abdülhamid'in Kızı Esma Sultan'ın Hayatı (1778-1848)” (MA thesis, 2007), 58.
247 Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 512.
248 Sedad Hakkı Eldem, Boğaziçi Yalıları Rumeli Yakası/ The Yalıs of the Bosphorus European Side, vol 1 (Vehbi
Koç Yayınları, 1993), 90-1.
249 Tülay Artan, “Boğaziçi’nin Çehresini Değiştiren Soylu Kadınlar ve Sultan Efendi Sarayları,” İstanbul Dergisi III,
(October 1992): 114.
250 Tülay Artan, “Esma Sultan Sahil Sarayı,” in Dünden Bugüne İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, vol:3, (İstanbul, 1994), 210;
Tülay Artan, Eyüp’ün bir Diğer çehresi: sayfiye ve sahilsaraylar in Eyüp. Dün-bugün, ed. Tülay Artan, (Istanbul:
48
interior decoration in detail. Melek Hanım also visited the palaces and described the
interior.251 The closeness of the descriptions of Melek Hanım and Pardoe reveals the
reliability of Pardoe’s narrative. 252
Figure 1: Thomas Allom: “Apartment in the Palace of Eyoub, the Residence of Asme
Sultana, Constantinople”253
Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1994), 112.
251 Melek Hanım, Thirty Years in the Harem: Or the Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, Wife of H. H. Kibrizli-
Mehemet-Pasha (London: Chapman and Hall, 1872), 150-2.
252 Artan claims that it is possible to draw the plan of the palace by evaluating two sources in the light of these two
descriptions: two account registers (hesap pusulası) kept during the repair after earthquake of 1767 and a inventory
register (keşif defteri) dated 1785. (Tülay Artan, Boğaziçi’nin Çehresini Değiştiren Soylu Kadınlar..., 114).
253 Thomas Allom and Rober Wash, Constantinople and the scenery of the seven churches of Asia Minor (London:
Fisher Son&Co., 1838).
49
Figure 2: Jean-Baptiste Eugene Napoleon Flandin: “Palais de Hezmeh—Sultane a
Eyoup, Constantinople”254
Figure 3: W.H. Bartlett: “A Turkish Apartmant in the Fanar”255
254 Jean-Baptiste Eugene Napoleon Flandin, L’Orient (Paris, Gide et J Baudry, 1853). For the figure;
http://tr.travelogues.gr/item.php?view=43063 / Jan, 2016.
255 Julia Pardoe, Sultanlar Şehri Istanbul, trans. Banu Büyükkal (Türkiye:İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2010), 59.
50
Pardoe visited more high-ranking elites’ houses compared to royal palaces in number.
She paid visit five upper-class palaces. One of them was the granted palace of İskodralı
Mustafa Pasha. Pardoe called him as Scodra Pasha, but his exact name was Mustafa
Pasha Buşati (İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha). The title Buşatlı came from the Pashalık of
Scudari that was ruled by the Buşatlı family from 1757 to 1830. In the 17th century,
many local notables and grandee families strengthened their power in Albania because
of gradual weakening of central power in the peripheries. One of them, Mehmed Pasha
Buşati, established his authority in northern Albania and received an official
appointment as governor of Shkoder in 1757.256 The appointment intensified the power
of the family. They extended their control over a large area and “linked Adriatic porttowns
under their control with both the Balkan hinterland and the larger Mediterranean
world.”257 By the policy of Mahmud II, which was the elimination of the local notable
as a threat to the central authority, their power was consolidated.
İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha was the last hereditary governor of the sanjak of Scudari.
According to Pardoe, the breaking of Mustafa Pasha's power was mainly related to his
support to his army about the resistance to the clothing reform.258 After Reşid Mehmed
Pasha's army defeated him, he asked for mercy. Beside forgiveness, the palace at
Süleymaniye was granted to him.259 The granting of a palace as well as forgiveness
could be related to his previous alliance with the sultan. Robert Elsie indicated that
Mustafa Pasha was married with Ayşe, the daughter of Ali Pasha Tepedenli, but he
learned that this was a tactical marriage to kill him and make an alliance with the
Sultan.260 However, he started to control very large areas, including important center
like Nishe, Skopje and Sofia and made alliances against the state261 and broke away
from the control of the state. Therefore, he was declared a rebel.262 Pardoe explained his
loss of power with these words:
256 Biray Kolluoglu and Meltem Toksöz, eds., Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day
(London; New York; New York: I.B.Tauris, 2014), 120.
257 Ibid., 120.
258 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 243-44.
259 Mustafa Lütfi Bilge, “Mustafa Pasha, Buşatlı (1797-1860),” in Diyanet Islam Ansiklopedisi, vol: 31, (Ankara:
Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2006), 344-5.
260 Robert Elsie ed., A Biographical Dictionary of Albanian History (London; New York: I.B.Tauris, 2012), 63.
261 Ibid., 63.
262 Mustafa Lütfi Bilge, Mustafa Pasha..., 345.
51
“Scodra Pasha had earned for himself a place on the page of history, but he
had paid a high and a painful price for the privilege. He had tasted for a
brief space the intoxicating draught of power, but the bowl had been dashed
from his lips. He had defied the yoke beneath which he had been ultimately
bowed, and the iron that has been resisted is ever that which eats deepest
into the soul”.263
When Pardoe visited İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha, he might have been around 40 years old,
because he was born in 1797. Pardoe noted that there was “a slight cast in one of his
eyes” and his face had an “aggreable and sensible expression”.264 To her, he seemed to
be healthy. Although Pardoe indicated that he was middle-sized265, Turkish novelist
Cevdet Kudret mentioned that he was very tall and had wide shoulders.266 Even he
claimed that Sultan Abdülmecit married him to a sultana because he was impressed by
his bulky body.267 Through describing İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha in this way, he could
portray him as a politically strong person. It was also shown that the stories about
İşkodralı Mustafa were still alive in the memories of Ottoman people, because the book
was published in 1943. It could be related to political and intellectual circles that he had
in Istanbul. After he moved to Istanbul from Scodra, he formed a large intellectual
circle due to his curiosity about literature and opinions that he presented in intellectual
meetings.268 Political and intellectual circles might have kept his memory alive.
İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha took his education from her father, who was a statesman and
poet.269 He also wrote poems by using the nickname ‘Şerifi’ and so was also known as
‘Şerifi Mustafa Pasha’.270 Pardoe pointed out his intellectual side and eating habits. He
studied French and had a respectable library, including the books of “Voltaire, Racine,
Boileau, Moliere and many other standard authors”.271 Also, the table's arrangement in
his house was “perfectly European” and he sat in a chair and ate at the table with knives
and forks.272
The wife of İşkodralı Mustafa Paşa, the Buyuk Hanoum, “was descended from one of
263 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 236.
264 Ibid., 249-50.
265 Ibid., 250.
266 Cevdet Kudret, Sınıf Arkadaşları (Evrensel Basım Yayın, 2006), 47.
267 Ibid., 47-8.
268 Mustafa Lütfi Bilge, Mustafa Pasha..., 345.
269 Ibid., 344.
270 Ibid., 344.
271 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 251.
272 Ibid., 237.
52
the most powerful and princely families of the country.”273 They had a lovely daughter,
Heymine Hanım. She mentioned to Pardoe about how she missed her country, which
was the place where she felt more happy and free. 274 As understood from the
conversations with family members, they were living with memories that they had gone
through in Albania. Even so, Emine Hanım shows an Albania-fashion handkerchief to
her. “It was of black muslin, painted with groups of coloured flowers, and bordered all
round with a deep fringe of fine pearls.”275 Albanians' love and loyalty to their country
was also remarked by travelers Baron John and Cam Hobhouse Broughton as follows:
“No foreign country, nor new sights, can take away from them the remembrance and the
love of their mountains, their friends, and their own villages.”276
Pardoe visited another high-ranking elite Ömer Pasha’s house. While she was trying to
find the house of İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha, she mistakenly entered Ömer Pasha’s house
assuming that it was the house of İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha. Ömer Pasha was the
successor of İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha.277 When Pardoe said that she came to visit Scodra
Pasha, the households accepted her as a guest. After the conversation with Buyuk
Hanım, she understood that it was the house of newly appointed Scodra Pasha, not the
Scodra Pasha who revolted before. After the appointment, Scodra Pasha moved to
Albania and his households were making their arrangement to meet him, as indicated by
Pardoe. Therefore, they “were occupying a house lent to them by a friend, for the few
weeks which they found it expedient to pass in Constantinople.”278 Secondary sources I
consulted with just focus on political chaos in the region without mentioning who ruled
Albania because political instability and chaos was raised in the region after the
elimination of the Buşati family's power. At that time, there were many “anti-Ottoman
uprisings in most parts of Albanian territory that was demanding self-administration.”279
Pardoe also did not give information about the family members.
Pardoe also had a chance to attend a dinner given by Azmi Bey in his home. Mahmud II
had opened Mekteb-i Harbiye (military academy) to strengthen his new army that was
273 Ibid., 234.
274 Ibid., 234.
275 Ibid., 242.
276 Baron John, Cam Hobhouse Broughton, A Journey Through Albania, and Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe
and Asia, to Constantinople during the Years 1809 and 1810, Vol: 1 (Philadelphia: M.Carey and Son, 1817), 132.
277 Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 226.
278 Ibid., 227.
279 Antoine Young, Albania (Clio Press, 1997), xxix.
53
formed after the abolishment of the Janissaries and Azmi Bey was second governor of
Mekteb-i Harbiye.280 Azmi Bey probably was one of the officers who were sent to
England by the sultan to take military education because Pardoe had personal
acquaintance with Azmi Bey in England. He was brought to the academy temporarily
(1836-7).281 In a short time, he was promoted to colonel (miralay), mainly due to his
second language knowledge.282
Pardoe mentioned that he was like English gentleman with his ‘sincerity, frank and
unostentatious politeness’ rather than a Turk.283 The invitees to the dinner were also
modern and literate. Some of them took education in Europe and fluently spoke English
and French. The dinner table for the guests was arranged in a European style and
included French wines, champagne and Edinburgh ale.284 After dinner, she met with
Azmi Bey’s eighteen-year-old wife. Her clothes were “partly of European
arrangement.”285 The atmosphere in Azmi Bey's house made Pardoe hopeful about the
civilizing process of Ottomans.286
Another high-ranking elite’s house visited by Pardoe was the house of Mustafa Nazif
Efendi, the Egyptian Charge d'Affaires. Mustafa Efendi was the son of Kamili Ismail
Efendi, so he was also known as ‘Kamilizade Mustafa Nazif Efendi’. Pardoe described
him with his lofty turban and snow-white beard. For her, he was “venerable looking,
kind and humorous person.”287 He took education at the Enderun school. After his
education, he became a member of hacegan (scribal service) and served in various
positions. 288 He was appointed as Esham deputy accountant in 1807 and the
accountancy of Haremeyn in 1830-1. Haremeyn Directorate was transformed to the
ministry (nezaret) and Mustafa Efendi was appointed as a Chief Accountent of
Haremeyn Ministry in 1836. 289 He was sent to Egypt to meet Mehmet Ali Paşa in 1831-
280 There is a picture of old Maçka Barrack, the first building of Mekteb-i Harbiye (Military Academy) drawn
specifically for her book by Bartlett after her visit to this barrack. (Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 194-215).
281 Harpokulu Tarihçesi 1834-1945 (Istanbul, 1945), 9; Ayın Tarihi (Dahiliye Vekaleti Matbuat Umumi Müdürlüğü,
1934), 87.
282 Harpokulu Okulu Tarihçesi..., 9; Niyazi Ahmet Banoğlu, Tarihi ve Efsaneleriyle İstanbul Semtleri ( İstanbul:Selis
Kitaplar, 2007), 225.
283 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., vol:2, 307.
284 Ibid., 312.
285 Ibid., 314.
286 Ibid., 309.
287 Ibid., vol 1, 113.
288 Mehmet Süreyya Bey, Sicill-i Osmani, vol IV (Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları,1996), 1239.
289 John Robert Barnes, An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden ; New York: Brill
Academic Publishers, 1987), 78.
54
2 and became a kapı kethüdası (Chamberlain) in 1834. He died in 1836.290
Pardoe had the opportunity to visit the house of the foreign minister two times. At first,
it was requested from Pardoe to make a visit to the harem of Reiss Efendi, but it was
long delayed due to illness and death of Buyuk Hanım.291 In her visit, Reis Efendi was
not in the house and most probably that second invitation directly came from Reis
Efendi himself. It was not clear who requested the first visit. It could also have come
from the Reis Efendi because it was understood from Pardoe's explanation that his
desire to meet Pardoe was only related to political affairs. As indicated by her, “the only
subject in which he took a marked interest, was the degree of popularity enjoyed by the
present Turkish Ambassador (Nuri Pasha) in London.”292 Her opinion about Nuri Pasha
was that he was a good man but not a convenient person for Britain because he did not
know any European language, how to behave in society and also made no attempt “to
identify himself with the feeling and habits of them among whom he resided.”293 After
that, Reis Efendi asked that if you had a chance to select the next ambassador, whom
should be choose? She replied “without hesitation: Reshid Bey- the present minister at
Paris.”294 She claimed that in a short period after this conversation a ferman was issued
for the appointment of Reshid Bey.295 The person she mentioned was Mustafa Reshid
Pasha. Mustafa Reshid and Nuri Efendi changed their embassies with each other toward
the autumn of 1838.296 It was the time where Pardoe was in Istanbul but it was unknown
whether she had an effect on this decision or not. Indeed, applying the opinion of a
woman who knows both cultures demonstrated how open-minded Reis Efendi was.
Pardoe generally used the word ‘Reis Efendi’ to identify him. Just one time she called
him with the name ‘Yusuf Pasha’.297 It is certain that she misnamed her, because there
was not a reisü'l-küttap or foreign minister named as Yusuf at that time. As a part of
bureaucratic reforms, Mahmud II transformed the old offices of the Reis’ül-küttap
(Chief of the clerk) to the Foreign Ministry in 1836. When Pardoe was in Istanbul, the
mentioned minister was either Akif Paşa (1836) or Ahmed Hulusi Paşa (1836 – 1837).
290 Mehmet Süreyya Bey, Sicill-i Osmani, vol IV (Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları,1996), 1239.
291 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 210.
292 Ibid., vol 2, 266.
293 Ibid., 266-7.
294 Ibid., 268.
295 Ibid., 268.
296 Reşat Kaynar, Mustafa Reşit Paşa ve Tanzimat (Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1991), 82.
297 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan...,vol:2, 268.
55
It is more likely to be Akif Pasha for several reasons. Before Reis Efendi applied her
opinion, most probably he had an opportunity to observe her and have a good
impression about her. The most possible place for Pardoe and Reis Efendi to have met
was the imperial wedding of Mehmed Said Pasha and Mihrimah Sultan. As improved
by Mehmet Işık in his thesis, the foreign minister attended the wedding ceremony and
he was Akif Efendi.298 Also, Akif Efendi was the last Reis'ül-küttap and he was
appointed as the first foreign minister.299 It was understood that he was appointed when
Pardoe was there, because she also indicated that he was a minister of foreign affairs. It
could be that although his title was changed, his old title might be commonly used
among society because he was first recognized as Reis'ül-küttap (Reis Efendi). On the
other hand, it was doubtful that Akif Pasha could support the appointment of Mustafa
Reshid Pasha because Mustafa Resid Pasha was under the patronage of Pertev Pasha
who was the enemy of Akif Pasha.300
In the house of Reis Efendi, Devlehay Hanım met Pardoe. Pardoe argues that the Sultan
was disturbed by the unethical behavior of Büyük Hanım (the wife of Reis Efendi)
while she was presenting her gift in the wedding ceremony of Saliha Sultan. Therefore,
he sent Devlehay Hanım as a gift to perform such duties.301 She was a very beautiful
Georgian and Reiss Efendi received this gift and married her.302 However, it was
understood that Devlehay Hanım did not have a child. Therefore, when Reis Efendi
learned his other concubine, Goncafem Hanım, was pregnant, he married her, but she
aborted her child.303 In the harem, there were also other women from high-ranking
families who Pasha married in his early ages.304 Through such stories, Pardoe could aim
to present the controversy about the head of the harem, because her interest in this issue
was to understand the “domestic economy of the harem.”305 Beside them, Pardoe also
298 Mehmet Işık, “Siyaset ve Şenlik 1836 Sur-ı Humayun” (MA thesis, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf Üniversitesi,
2014), 19 and 26.
299 Cartley Findley, “Hariciye Nezareti,” in Diyanet İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol: 16 (Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı,
1997), 179.
300 Reşat Kaynar, Mustafa Reşit Paşa ve Tanzimat..., 82.
301 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., vol 2, 211.
302 Pardoe described her cloth in detail as follows: “Devlehai Hanoum was dressed in an antery of white silk,
embroidered all over with groups of flowers in pale green ; her salva, or trowsers, were of satin of the Stuart tartan,
and her jacket light blue ; the gauze that composed her chemisette was almost impalpable, and the cachemire about
her waist was of a rich crimson. Her hair, of which several tresses had been allowed to escape from beneath the
embroidered handker chief, was as black as the plumage of a raven; and her complexion was a clear, transparent
brown.” (vol 2,214-5)
303 Ibid., 264.
304 Ibid., 215.
305 Ibid., 507.
56
briefly mentioned Goncafen Hanım (a concubine), Emin Bey who was the elder son of
the Reis Efendi and a young Greek girl who converted to Islam.306
The third category in classifying the house type is middle-class houses. As well as
understood from her descriptions, Pardoe had a large non-Muslim social circle that was
mainly composed of Greeks. She probably had this circle through attending Greek
carnival, festival of fire307 and Easter. Especially, she had an opportunity to meet and
have conversations with leading Phanariots. She mentioned in detail about three leading
Phanariots, residing in Phanar: Nikolas Aristarchi, İstefanaki Vogorides and
Angeolopolo. According to her, they were gifted with diplomatic abilities and gained
the trust of the Bab-ı Ali. She identified them with a certain characteristic: “the craft is
with Vogorede, the energy with Logotheti, and the tenacity of purpose with
Angiolopolo”.308
Nicholas Aristarchi was a member of the Aristarchi family, one of the well-established
families in Phanar. He was born in 1799 and married with Marie, daughter of the Mano
family who monopolized the 'great logotheti'309 of the Orthodox Patriarch. He was the
great logotheti when Pardoe was there, so she called him Logotheti (Logofet Bey),
rather than his name. His physical properties were described as
“he is about five and thirty, of the middle size, and there is mind in every
line of his expressive countenance —his brow is high and ample, with the
rich brown hair receding from it, as if fully to reveal its intellectual character;
his bright and restless eyes appear almost to flash fire during his moments of
excitement, but in those of repose their characteristic is extreme softness ;
his nose is a perfect aquiline, and his moustache partially conceals a set of
the whitest teeth I ever saw”.310
There was some gossip in society about him. The gossip about his family was more
attractive for her. It was told that his father was killed in front of him by his
manservant.311 However, Pardoe thought that these did not reflect the truth. She paid a
visit to her house by the invitation of Madame Logotheti, but she did not describe the
306 Ibid., 221.
307Pardoe defined festival of fire as follows: “One of the ancient of the Greek commemorative usage” (Julia Pardoe,
The City of the Sultan..., 134)
308 Ibid., 160.
309 Logotheti was the deputy of Orthodox patriarch and he was mainly responsible for economic issues.
310 Pardoe., The City of the Sultan..., 79.
311 Ibid, 76.
57
interior of the house, just focused on the breakfast culture. She also mentioned how
Aristarchi kindly behaved to his family members.
The person, named Angiolopolo, was Panoyati Argyropoulo. 312 He served as a
dragoman until 1817 and voluntarily retired.313 Pardoe explained this situation as
follows: “after an existence of political toil, Angiolopolo has ostensibly retired into the
calm and quiet of domestic life.”314 She accepted his invitation because of the positive
impression on him and especially her “anxious to make the acquaintance of all those
individuals who had become matter of local interest”.315 As is understood from her
description, there was a sincere atmosphere in the house that was mainly provided by
Argyropoulo himself. His kindly behavior to his wife impressed Pardoe so much.316
Beside the houses of the two Phanariots, Pardoe visited some other non-Muslim houses
in Istanbul. The most civilized nation was the Greeks for her, as indicated as follows:
“They pride themselves in their progress; they stand forth, scorning all half measures, as
declared converts to European customs; and they fashion their minds as well as their
persons, after their admitted models.”317 She also claimed that sedir, the main furniture
of Ottoman houses, was invented by Greeks and copied by Turks.318 Philhellenism in
Europe could also be the base of her ideas, which was the love of Greece emerging with
the romantic relation to Greeks in the Romantic Era at the end of the 18th century. In
this ideology, Greeks were accepted as the most civilized nation and so the cultural link
between Ancient Greece and Europe tried to be constructed.319
Pardoe visited three Greek houses. In one house, she witnessed a Greek wedding. As a
part of the wedding ceremony, she went to another Greek house for performing the
solemnization of the marriage. She also spent time in a Greek merchant's house before
attending the Greek Carnaval at the house of Keşişoğlu. The participants of the Greek
Carnaval generally took education in Europe and they knew ancient Greek, French,
English and even Italian. In the clothes of Greek young men and females, there was a
312 Musa Kılıç, Osmanlı Hariciyesinde..., 23.
313 Ibid, 23.
314 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., 163.
315 Ibid., 163.
316 Ibid., 164.
317 Ibid., 84.
318 Ibid., 69.
319 Christopher John Murray, ed., Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era 1760-1850 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 872.
58
harmony of Greek and European styles.320 She also noted that some of the Greeks used
knives, forks, and other European appliances at dinner, but they were a “hindrance
rather than auxiliary” for them.321
According to Pardoe, “the Turks have a thousand old and cherished superstitions that
tend to clog the chariot wheels of social progression, and which it will require time to
rend away.”322 From Turkish subjects, she visited the house of Turkish merchant. She
did not indicate the name of the merchant.323 It was the first visited house in Istanbul.
As soon as she arrived to the port, she met a “respectable” Turkish merchant and
explained her desire to spend time with a Turkish family in Ramadan and take an
invitation from him.324
The Turkish merchant's “family consisted of the father and the mother, the son and the
son's wife, the daughter and her husband, and a younger and adopted son (Süleyman
Efendi).”325 For Pardoe, women’s habits in the harem were a “luxury and indolent”.326
They just spent their time dressing327, sleeping and bathing in the bath (hamam).328
Even she could not understand why they woke up early. When she was here, the
atmosphere of the house suddenly changed when a slave announced “the intended
presence of the gentlemen of the family.”329 Two ladies, came for visiting, ran away
from the room, old story teller (masalcı) covered their face with a thick veil moved to
the behind of the door.330 The Turkish merchant sat opposite to Pardoe. He was
“smothered in furs, and crowned with the most stately looking turban I had yet seen.”331
320 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., vol:2, 73.
321 Ibid., 71.
322 Ibid., 84.
323 Pardoe does not specify the name of Turkish Merchant, so he is called as “the Turkish merchant” and his house as
“Turkish merchant's house” in the text.
324 Ibid., vol:1, 16.
325 Ibid., 18-9.
326 Ibid., 20.
327 Pardoe makes generalization for the cloth of women in the harem as follows: “They all wore chemisettes or under
garments of silk gauze, trimmed with fringes of narrow ribbon, and wide trowsers of printed cotton falling to the
ancle: their feet were bare, save that occasionally they thrust them into little yellow slippers, that scarcely covered
their toes, and in which they moved over the floor with the greatest ease, dragging after them their anterys, or
sweeping robes ; but more frequently they dispensed with even these, and walked barefoot about the harem. Their
upper dresses were of printed cotton of the brightest colours — that of the daughter had a blue ground, with a yellow
pattern, and was trimmed with a fringe of pink and green. These robes, which are made in one piece, are divided at
the hip on either side to their extreme length, and are girt about the waist with a cachemire shawl. The costume is
completed in winter by a tight vest lined with fur, which is generally of light green or pink.” (19-20)
328 Ibid., 20.
329 Ibid., 22.
330 Ibid., 26.
331 Ibid., 27.
59
Pardoe did not mention any conversation she made with him. He may have been more
conservative than other house owner that Pardoe visited.
Pardoe also had dinner with households. 332 In contrast to Mustafa Pasha's table
arrangement, the dinner in the house was traditionally prepared. Meals were served on a
round tray placed on low stands. Pardoe and the household “had each possessed
themselves of a cushion, and squatted down with our feet under us round the dinner tray,
having on our laps linen napkins of about two yards in length richly fringed.”333 There
was only a spoon for eating, no other eating utensils such as knives, forks and plates.
Fanny Davis argues that the traditional table arrangement at the house should be related
to the traditions of Ramadan, because table accoutrements were mostly Westernized at
that time.334
Although Pardoe did not describe the interior and architecture of the house, she entered
an Armenian house. Her opinion was that they were “further removed from the
improvements than Turks.”335 She also visited a Jewish family at Galata after she asked
her friend to take her to a Jewish home to see the costumes of Jewish women. She just
mentioned the sofa of the house, not a detailed description of the interior, most probably
because her only aim was to see Jewish clothes.
The Jewish house's owner was a “respectable” merchant and his name was given as
Naim Zornona. Unfortunately, his real name is not found in secondary literature. It
could be written wrongly as Angiolopolo. In addition, he could not be an important
merchant, so there was no knowledge about him in the sources. Also, the information
about the merchant's family was limited in Pardoe’s account. She just mentioned that
the mistress of this house was a typical Jewish woman with her “eagle eye, prominent
nose, and high pale forehead”336 and the whole family was kind and hospitable and so
332 Description of food kinds by Pardoe as follows: “Nineteen dishes, of fish, flesh, fowl, pastry, and creams,
succeeding each other in the most heterogeneous manner—the salt following the sweet, and the stew preceding the
custard—were terminated by a pyramid of pillauf.” (24)
333 Ibid., 23.
334 Fanny Davis, Mary E. Esch, and Sema Gurun, The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918: A Social
History, 1718-1918 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1986), 250.
335 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 84.
336 Ibid., vol 2, 369. Her dress was described as follows: “she was attired in a full dress of white silk, confined a little
above the hips by a broad girdle of wrought gold, clasped with gems; both the girdle and the clasps being between
five and six inches in width. Above this robe, she wore a pelisse of dovecoloured cachemire, lined and overlaid with
the most costly sables, and worth several hundred pounds.”
60
happy to host a Christian.337 Indeed, the person himself, his family and atmosphere in
his house was not so crucial, because, as indicated, there was no information about the
interior of the house, except the sofa.
All in all, Pardoe observed and witnessed different lifestyles regarding political life,
careers, clothes, eating habits and behaviors in visited houses. In previous part, I
presented a general view and atmosphere of visited houses through briefly mentioning
house owners, households and the experience that Pardoe had in these houses. Also, the
qualities of house owners made us to involve them in our classification of the house,
which are royal, high-ranking and upper middle class.
3.2. The Material Culture in the Ottoman Houses
Pardoe described interiors of thirteen houses in Istanbul. Considering her descriptions
and main units of typical Ottoman houses, visited houses will be analyzed into three
parts: courtyards, halls and rooms. In addition, rooms will be categorized as haremlik
(women’s section), selamlık (men’s section), bedroom, eating room and private rooms.
In Ottoman classical houses, there were not specific sections like eating and bedrooms.
In here, it was just rooms where Pardoe spent the night and had dinner with households
because still there was not a specific rooms as bedroom and dining room as well as
understood from her description. The main criterion for evaluating visited houses is
Pardoe's own perspective formed with a middle-class and Victorian background and
essential issues of material culture.
3.2.1. Courtyard
Ottoman houses were built within a courtyard. The courtyard was an area that was
partly or completely surrounded by walls. The walls cut off the private space of
Ottoman women from the public outside. In other words, courtyard allowed the houses
to be excluded from the street.338 In their private place, women and children had an
opportunity to socialize far away from the eyes of outsiders. They spent much of their
time within courtyards especially in warmer climates.339 “Many of the family activities-
337 Ibid., 372.
338 Ülkü Altınoluk, “Geleneksel Türk Evi ve Yaşam,” İlgi Dergisi 56, (1989), 3.
339 Leslie Pierce, “The Material World: Ideologies and Ordinary Things,” in The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping
the Empire, ed. Virginia H. Aksan (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 218.
61
such as cooking, baking, preparation of food for winter storage, weaving carpets and
rugs and laundry- were carried out in the courtyard.”340 The covered and specious
courtyards in the houses of Mustafa Efendi, İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha and the Turkish
merchant could be for a comfortable space. Pardeo witnessed children's entertainment in
the courtyard of Reis Efendi. The younger sons of Re'is Efendi and three or four
children were running barefooted around the fountain in the courtyards. They were
soaked with water droplets from the fountain and laughed at the dripping condition of
each other.341
Having described the courtyards of the houses, Pardoe mentioned some objects. There
was a fountain just in the houses of royal and some high ranking elites. It could be
argued that they had better life conditions than the middle class because the water
supply in middle-class houses was from fountains constructed in main street or
rainwater.342 Among fountains Pardoe mentioned, fountain kiosk in the house of Reiss
Efendi was most beautiful that she had yet seen. “A painted dome of fountain,
representing the shores of the channel, occupied the centre of the roof; and beneath it a
graceful jef d'eau threw up its sparkling waters, which fell back into a capacious
bason.”343 In the inner courtyard of İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha, there was also a marble
fountain. When Pardoe entered, “a pretty girl of about eighteen was performing her
ablutions.”344 However, this situation was questionable because the privacy of women
was essential for Ottoman society. Maybe, the girl was doing something else such as
washing her hands, but Pardoe assumed she performed ablution.
In the house of Mustafa Efendi, a marble fountain was positioned on the left side of the
courtyard.345 Just beyond the fountain, there was a conventual-looking wheel. It was a
mechanism that rounded itself and functioned such a way. It was for transferring food
and dishes between haremlik and selamlık (women’s and men’s sections) without facing
each other. Another traveler, Garnett, described the mechanism as “a kind of buttery
hatch, in the form of a revolving cupboard, called the dulap, serves for all verbal
340 Vacit İmamoğlu, Geleneksel Kayseri Evleri..., 214.
341 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., vol:2, 273-4.
342 For detailed information about water supply in Ottoman State see David Waines, Food Culture and Health in Pre-
Modern Muslim Societies (Leiden ; Boston: BRILL, 2010), especially pages between 59 and 65.
343 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., vol 2, 273.
344 Ibid., 230.
345 Ibid., vol 1, 109.
62
communication between the two departments, and for the transmission of dishes from
the harem kitchen when a meal has to be served in the selamlik”.346 Indeed, this was a
system to protect women’s privacy.
The fountain was used as a decorative object in the courtyard of Mustafa Efendi. The
water of the fountain flowed from a group of lions’ heads.347 Most probably, the lion
figure of the foundation was a ‘spolia’, reusing decorative sculptures on a new
monument. Indeed, using the lion’s head as an aesthetic and decorative object in the
courtyard can be related to the display of power and wealth. It could be carrying a
meaning that the owner of the house was a politically powerful man who not only tamed
the strongest animal in the nature (lion), but made it his servant. A person who tamed
the lion to serve him could subject the people around him.
The physical quality of courtyards gave an idea about the status and wealth of houseowners.
Although the Turkish merchant, İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha and Mustafa Efendi
had spacious courtyards, Naom Zornona and Ömer Pasha had ‘miserable’ courtyards.
Their houses’ exteriors were as distorted as the courtyards. The wooden front of
Zornona’s house was blackened because of the time and fire and house’ shutter had a
rusty hinge.348 The house of Ömer Pasha seemed almost to be demolished and was
supported by heavy timbers in the garden. Pardoe described this scene as “tottering to
its fall.”349 On the other hand, there were garish courtyards and ostentatious gardens in
the palace of Esma Sultan. It was a very large land decorated with gardens, repositories,
terrace and gaily gilded kiosk.350 Therefore, Pardoe could understand the wealth and
status of visited families even from the appearance of the courtyards; right from the first
moment she entered it.
3.2.2. Sofa (Halls)
A prominent part of Ottoman houses' interior was the hall (sofa). The sofa was the main
access space of houses. It was the place that rooms opened to. The location of the sofa
in houses was a criteria to categorize house type as: “no sofa, outer sofa, inner sofa and
346 Lucy M. Garnett, Turkey of the Ottomans (Isaac Pitman, 1911), 421.
347 Ibid., 109.
348 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., vol:2, 368.
349 Ibid., vol 1, 223.
350 Ibid., 315.
63
central sofa.”351 In other word, sofa was “either closed on one or two sides or it was in
the middle, resembling a square.”352 In my opinion, Pardoe used several words, such as
hall, passage, saloon and great saloon to remark these differences among sofas.
The sofa did not only function as a passage or connecting rooms, but a place for social
activities and gathering.353 Pardoe witnessed some organization that was arranged in the
sofa. One of them was Greek wedding ceremony in 'simple' sofa of the Greek house
(houses visited for the marriage ceremony). As understood from the description, the
only remarkable item in the sofa was a Turkish carpet on the floor.354 Unfortunately,
which kind of Turkish carpet was not indicated by her. Ushak was the “leading carpetproducing
town in Anatolia” in the first decade of 19th century.355 Therefore, it could be
Ushak carpet that has two main types of design which were 'medallion' and 'star'.356 For
the purpose of gathering in the sofa, a Bible and two marriage rings were put on the
reading desk “overlaid by a gold-embroidered handkerchief.”357 Silver money was
scattered over them to give a shiny appearance.358 A handkerchief was used for the
basic need and generally presented as a gift.359 One of the functions of handkerchief, as
seen here, was to cover up something. In the house of the Turkish merchant, it was used
to cover the Quran.360 It was generally made from fine linen and decorated with the
“motifs of health, longevity, love and passion.”361 The reason for using gold embroidery
most probably related to the wedding ceremony that was considerable importance for all
religious communities in the Ottoman State.362
The dinner, given by Azmi Bey, was also organized in the saloon (sofa) of the selamlık.
The saloon had many windows, “opening upon delicious garden, and forming a leafy
351 Sedad Hakkı Eldem, Turkish Houses, Ottoman Period, vol:1 (Türkiye Anıt Çevre Turizm Koruma Vakfı, 1984),
16.
352 Esra Burçin Dengiz, “Boundaries of gendered space: traditional Turkish house” (MA thesis, Bilkent University,
2001), 42.
353 Ibid., 42.
354 Pardoe, The city of the Sultan..., 342.
355 Donald Quataert, “Part IV: The Age of Reforms, 1812-1914,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman
Empire, Vol. 2: 1600-1914, Suraiya Faroqhi et al., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 915.
356 Murray L. Eiland and Murray Eiland III, Oriental Rugs: A Complte Guide (Laurence King Publishing, 2008), 178.
357 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., vol 2, 342-3.
358 Ibid., 342-3.
359 Nurhayat Berker and Virginia Taylor Saraçoğlu, Türk İşlemeleri / The Turkish Embroidery (Yapı Kredi
Koleksiyonu, 1985), 219.
360 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 18.
361 Ibid., 219.
362 Mehrdad Kia, Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (Greenwood, 2011), 189.
64
screen amid which we caught here and there are a bright glimpse of the Bosphorus.”363
The guests were sitting on the sedir (divan) in the saloon. Sedir was also seen in the
‘spacious saloon’ of the Reis Efendi.364 It was covered with white fabric, most probably
for a precaution to keep clean. The fabric could be removed when it was used. Most
probably, cushions were also used for sitting in the sofa because there were many
cushions in the recess of ‘very handsome saloon’ (sofa) of İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha's
palace.365 When it was necessary, they could move from the recess and use it for sitting.
The covering of the face of sedir and putting the cushions in recess presented that sofa
was not actively used in the house of high-ranking elites. It could be that there were
many sofas depending on the size of these houses, so some sofas were just separated for
meeting and organizations.
The sofa was a show-room to present wealth and aesthetic taste through objects and
decorations for Ottomans. An immense mirror was “filled up a space between two of
the doors of the sofa of Turkish merchant's house.”366 Mirrors were used from the early
period of Ottoman Empire, but it was a small mirror known as ‘cushion mirror’ or ‘hand
mirror’.367 A large mirror was first used for the decoration of Aynalı Kavak Kasrı (the
Pavilion of Mirrors). 368 Modern wall mirrors were a luxurious item because its
production required a developed technology. Europe started to produce wall mirrors in
the 19th century thanks to improvements in material and manufacturing process. The
Ottoman state still imported it in the 19th century from Venice that was an important
producer since from the 13th century.369 Therefore, it was a luxury commodity for
Ottomans. It was an enigma how the Turkish merchant obtained it.
In the sofa of Ottoman elites, luxury was presented through objects imported from
Europe and using richly embroidered and colored carpets and cushions. The most garish
one among narrated sofas was the ‘saloon’ that opened into the Imperial sleeping room
in the house of Esma Sultan. It has thirty windows curtained with purple velvet (kadife)
363 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 310.
364 Ibid., 223. (the word specious was used by Pardoe to describe the sofa)
365 Ibid., vol 1, 230.
366 Ibid., 17.
367 Şevket Rado, “Ayna /Mirrors,” in Aletler ve Adetler, Şevket Rado Başkanlığı'nda Bir Heyet (written by a group of
people under the precidency of Şevket Rado) (Akbank Yayınlar, 1987), 12.
368 Ibid., 12.
369 Pamela Heyne, Mirror by Design: Using Reflection to Transform Space (Wiley, 1996), 22.
65
fringed with gold. 370 There were “many types of kadife varying according to
manufacturing techniques, areas of publication and the materials they included.”371 It
was difficult to exactly identify the kind of the velvet that Pardoe described. It can be
just a flat curtain or a self-patterned çatma (a kind of velvet). Çatma was “brocaded
with pattern, formed by additional weft threads, that were raised form the main
surface.”372 Another item that decorated the room was cushions with glittered tissues.373
A European style atmosphere was provided with imported items that were plate-glass
(mirror) on gilded walls and tables decorated with scattering gems for serving.374
The decoration of the sofa also provided with carpets that was imported from other
empires. The grand salon of state apartments in Esma Sultan's palace375 and the white
walled sofa of Naom Zornana was covered with a 'handsome' Persian carpet.376 The
trade between the Ottoman State and Persia had been established from Renaissance.377
Therefore, Persian carpets were in the Ottoman carpets since the early ages. The other
empire that Ottoman State had trade relations from the early 15th century was India. 378
Through merchants and sailors, Indian commodities were carried to Ottoman lands and
occupied the Ottoman market. As mentioned by Pardoe, Indian matting was decorating
the center of the saloon in Mustafa Efendi’s mansion.379
Distinguishing the kind of carpet by Pardoe whether it was Turkish, Indian or Persian at
the first glance was most probably related to the colors and motifs of the carpets.
Murray L. Eiland Jr. and Murray Eliand III argue that “one immediate clue in
distinguishing Turkish from Persian rugs is provided by the differing color
tonalities.”380 Dark blue was more common for Iranian carpets, but the colors in the
Turkish carpet was brighter than Persian carpets.381 The Indian carpets were generally
370 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 316.
371 Hülya Tezcan, Atlaslar Atlası Pamuklu Yün ve İpek Kumaş Koleksiyonu/ Cotton, Wool and Silk: Fabrics
Collection (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1993), 30.
372 Ibid., 30.
373 Ibid., 56.
374 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 316.
375 Ibid., 315.
376 Ibid., vol 2, 369.
377 Murray L. Eiland and Murray Eiland III, Oriental Rugs..., 84.
378 Halil Inalcık, “When and how British cotton goods invaded the Levant market,” in The Ottoman Empire and the
World-Economy, ed. Huri Islamogu-Inan (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 374; Halil
İnalcık, Studies in the History of Textiles in Turkey (İstanbul:Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2010), 73-80.
379 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan...., 109-10.
380 Murray L. Eiland Jr. and Murray Eliand III, Oriental Rugs..., 172.
381 Ibid., 172.; Charles Jacobsen, Oriental Rugs: A Complete Guide (Tokyo, Rutland, Vt: Tuttle Publishing, 1989), 57.
66
more colored with the mosaic of green, red, yellow and blue.382 Besides, the majority of
Persian carpets had “leaves, flowers, palmettes, rosettes (char-bag design), and other
graceful and intricate patterns”383 but Turkish carpets were generally characterized by
small geometrical designs.384 Although Persian carpets had animal and human figures, it
was never used as a motive of Turkish carpets.385 Indian carpets were a rather a
indistinct style386 but “usually asymmetrically knotted with cotton foundations.”387
Another grand saloon in Esma Sultan’s palace, which led to the Sultan’s room, was “the
very embodiment of Eastern splendour.”388 To create a wealthy atmosphere, draperies,
as used to hide rooms’ doors opened to sofa, were made from silk389 and sofa’s walls
covered with plate glass.390 The grandness of the sofa completed with Persian carpet
covering the floor and magnificently painted dome, “supported by forty porphyry pillars
with gilt capitals.”391 It is crucial to note that though such a wealthy sofa, “there was no
matting upon the floor of the empty, chilly, comfortless hall” in the house of Omer
Pasha most probably because of the preparation to move for Albania.392
Pardoe specifically pointed out the cleanliness of the sofa in Ottoman houses. She noted
that there was “not a grain of dust, not a foot-mark, defaces the surface of the Indian
matting that covers the large halls.”393 Although the courtyard, ground and first floor of
Naom Zorona's house were ‘miserable’, Pardoe mentioned a magical change when she
reached the sofa from the neatly matted steps that were very clean.394 For her, the
cleanliness was the “leading characteristics” of Ottoman houses. This idea could be a
reflection of her Victorian and middle class background. In the Victorian era, cleanness
and uncleanness was associated with social categorization. As indicated by Richard and
Claudia Bushman, “among the middle class anyway, personal cleanliness ranked as a
mark of moral superiority and dirtiness as a sign of degradation. Cleanliness indicated
382 Stanley Reed, All Colour Book of Oriental Carpets and Rugs (Hong Kong Mandarin Publihers, 1977), 14.
383 Charles Jacobsen, Oriental Rugs..., 23.
384 Walter B. Denny, The Classical Tradition in Anatolian Carpet (Washington: The Textile Museum, 2002), 18.
385 Charles Jacobsen, Oriental Rugs..., 57.
386 Stanley Reed, All Colour Book..., 14.
387 Murray L. Eiland Jr. and Murray Eliand III, Oriental Rugs..., 295.
388 Julia Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 315.
389 Ibid., 295.
390 Ibid., 295.
391 Ibid., 315.
392 Ibid., 224.
393 Ibid., 106.
394 Ibid., vol 2, 369.
67
control, spiritual refinement, breeding; the unclean were vulgar, coarse, animalistic.”395
As well as personal morality, it presented the civilization level of the societies, as
argued by Dr. Buchan. He noted that “whatever pretensions people may make to
learning, politeness, or civilization, we will venture to affirm, that, so long as they
neglect cleanliness, they are in a state of barbarity.”396 In this regard, the importance of
cleanliness in English society at that time effected on Pardoe's evaluation of Ottoman
houses.
3.2.3. Room (Oda)
The room in Ottoman houses was “a space surrounded by service areas and intermediate
spaces, and separated from the other rooms by it almost independence position in the
plan of the house.”397 The accesses to rooms were through halls. In traditional Ottoman
houses, rooms were not devoted to a single purposes as in the Victorian home, so there
was no departmentalization of Ottoman houses into dining, sleeping and work areas.
Mainly, the emptiness of the room allowed the room to be used for multiple purposes
such as sitting, sleeping, resting, working and socializing.398
3.2.3.1. Haremlik (Woman's Section)
In Ottoman houses, the room called harem was the women's quarter. Visited harems by
Pardoe were generally sparsely furnished. A carpet or mattress covered the floor of the
harem. Curtained windows were generally tightly closed.399 The sedir, a traditional low
seat adjacent and fixed to the wall, surrounded three sides of the harem.400 The cushions
were folded over the sedir or on the floor. For heating, there was a tandour and mangal
in the room.401
395 Richard L. Bushman and Claudia L. Bushman, “The Early History of Cleanliness in America,” The Journal of
American History, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Mar., 1988): 1228.
396 William Buchan, Domestic Medicine: Or, a Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases (London : Printed
For W. Strahan, 1790), 102.
397 Doğan Kuban, The Turkish Hayat House..., 106.
398 Sedad Hakkı Eldem, Turkish Houses, Ottoman Period, vol:1 (Türkiye Anıt Çevre Turizm Degerlerini Koruma
Vakfı, 1984), 20. Sumru Belger Krody, Flowers of Silk & Gold: Four Centuries of Ottoman Embroidery (London:
Merrell, 2000), 71.
399 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..., 18.
400 Ibid., 69.
401 In the second part of the 19th century, a “Turkish corner” became popular in European and American houses. “In
the homes of the less-well-off, a single piece of overstuffed furniture – a sofa, ottoman, or divan – often conjured up
the exotic East.” (Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005, 10.) Quataert claimed that it was “thanks to the Ottoman artifacts displayed at the various
world’s fairs of the nineteenth century.” (Quataert, 10) Collectors also decorated their rooms with Oriental artifacts.
For instance, Edouard and Nelia Jacquemart traveled the world and collected objects to decorate their home. Musee
Jacquaemart Andre in Paris was created from the home of wealthy couple and it was seen that their smooking room
was decorated with the Oriental carpet. In this context, it can be debated in the further research whether travelers
were influential in the popularization of Turkish corner. If travelers are found to be influential, they can be accepted
68
In some houses, Pardoe mentioned that curtains functioned as a door of the harem. The
door of the Turkish merchant's harem was “screened with curtains of dark cloth
embroidered with coloured worsted.”402 The reason for preferring dark colors most
strongly related to the privacy of the harem. The colored worsted yarns could give a
more aesthetic view to it. A heavy curtain also veiled the room in the house of Omer
Pasha.403 The use of the curtain as a door was pointed out by other travelers. For
instance, Lady Hornby noted that “there were no doors, but heavy hangings of crimson
embroidered cloth and tapestry at the entrance of the numerous apartments.”404
A detailed description of Turkish merchant's harem presented how the interior of a
harem could be designed. This presentation can enable us to visualize the room. The
large and warm harem had “double windows, which were all at the upper end of the
apartment, were closely latticed.” It was “richly carpeted” and “surrounded on the three
sides by the sofa, raised a foot from the floor.” The cushions were “rested against the
wall or were scattered at intervals along the couch.” The tandour was at one angle of the
sofa and the mangal in the middle of the floor. In the arched recces at the lower
extremity of the room, there was “classically-shaped clay jar full of water, and a
covered goblet in a glass saucer.” Two sides of the recess were decorated with “a
number of napkins, richly worked and fringed with gold”, while a “Koran was deposited
beneath a handkerchief of gold gauze, on a carved rosewood bracket.”405
Handkerchief and napkins also aroused the interest of Charles White who traveled to
Ottoman lands in the 1840s. He noted that
“Muslin and cotton handkerchiefs... are employed less, perhaps, for the
purposes to which such articles are applied in Europe, than for that of
folding up money, linen, and other things. In the houses of great men, there
is always a mahkramajee bashy (makramacı başı), whose principal duty it is
to take care of these and other similar articles. No object, great or small, is
conveyed from one person to another; no present is made—even fees to
medical men—unless folded in a handkerchief, embroidered cloth, or piece
as a tastemaker of this popularization.
402 Pardoe, The City of Sultan..,, 17.
403 Ibid., 224.
404 Emelia Bithynia Maceroni Hornby, Constantinople during the Crimean War (London: Adamant Media
Corporation, 2002), 299.
405 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 17-18. ( for all description of the paragraph)
69
of gauze. The more rich the envelope, the higher the compliment to the
receiver.”406
Napkins were named as peşkir, makrama and yağlık. In addition to its being used for
decoration like in this house, it could also be used for several purposes such as covering
a book or wiping their hands before and after eating.407
In the harem, the simplicity of rooms was balanced with the richness of textiles. They
had different colors, embroidered cushions, curtains and fabrics, but their quality
depended on the wealth level. The sedir was generally colored with crimson. It was
crimson shag in the Turkish merchant’s house408 and crimson satin in the İşkodralı
Mustafa Pasha’s room.409 The sedir of İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha was more qualified
because it was made from satin (atlas). Atlas was “the name of a stiff and glossy
material made from tightly-woven silk.”410 Pardoe did not indicate the origin of satin
but it could be produced in Bursa or Istanbul that were the leading satin centers of
Anatolia, or imported from Europe.411 The decoration of the sedir was completed with
“cushions of gold tissue embroidered with coloured silk.” 412 Most probably, for
aesthetic harmony, the curtains of the room (İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha) was “fringed with
gold a foot in depth.”413 The sedir’s cover in the Greek merchant's house was less
qualified than the Turkish merchant’s sedir’s cover. It was “covered with a gay
patterned chintz, and furnished with cushions of cut velvet of a rich deep blue.”414
Ottoman women generally spent their time in the harem. It was the place that “the
group counted more than the individual.”415 Women from the different classes, different
races and different age groups mixed together in the harem. Therefore, it was crucial to
ensure comfort and heating. Comfort was mainly provided with cushions. It was used
“on the seat of the sofa as fixed feature, but sometimes also set along the wall, on top of
406 Charles White, Three Years in Constantinople; or, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844 (London Henry
Colbourn, 1846), 104.
407 Roderick Taylor, Ottoman Embroidery (New York: Interlink Publishing Group, 1993), 69. Sumru Belger Krody,
Flowers of Silk..., 77.
408 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 17.
409 Ibid, 249.
410 Ibid., 30.
411 Ibid., 30.
412 Ibid, 249.
413 Ibid, 249.
414 Ibid., 69.
415 Melman, Women's Orient..., 153.
70
the base cushions, to firm back rest.”416 Heating was provided either by tandır and
mangal (small stove). The Swedish dragoman Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson “discussed
the popularity among Ottoman women of the tandır as a way to keep warm in the
winter.”417 The engraving in the book of his book also shows that several women and
children were warming up around the tandır. It was understood from Pardoe's narrative
that these systems ensured the comfort and well heating of the harem in many houses.
The large harem of the Turkish merchant was warm.418 Despite the poor condition of
Omer Pasha's house, small room was also well heated.419
Figure 4: D’ohsson: Appartement d'une dame Mahométane avec le tandour (Apartment
of a Muslim Lady with the Tandır)420
Pardoe described the mangal, as “a large copper vessel of about a foot in height, resting
upon a stand of the same material raised on castors, and filled, like that within the
416 Roderick Taylor, Ottoman Embroidery...., 77.
417 Günsel Renda and Carter V. Findley, “Comments on engravings in d’Ohsson, Table General de Empire Othoman,”
in The torch of the Empire, Ignatius Mouradgea d'Ohnson and the tableau général of the Ottoman Empire in the
Eighteenth Century = İmparatorluğun meşalesi, XVIII. yüzyılda Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun genel görünümü ve
İgnatius Mouradgea d'Ohsson, eds. Sture Teolin, Carter Vaugn Findley, Günsel Renda, Philip Mansel, Veniamin
Ciobanu, Kemal Beydilli, Abdeljelil Temimi, Rachida Tilli Sellaoutı, Folke Ludwigs (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları,
2002), 212.
418 Pardoe, The city of Sultan..., 17.
419 Ibid., 224-5.
420 Mouradgea D’Ohsson, Tableau Général De L’empire Ottoman, vol:2 (Istanbul: Isis, 2001), facing 154.
71
tandour, with charcoal.”421 For Pardoe, the tandour was an odd object that was “unlike
any thing in Europe.”422 In Victorian times, there was a fireplace in every room and
heating was provided by a fireplace.423 French women traveler De Fontmagne, who
lived in Constantinople from 1856 to 1858, pointed out this difference as there were no
fireplaces in Turkish houses and so women warmed in front of the tandır.424 The
tandour was described by Pardoe as follows:
“the tandour is a wooden frame, covered with a couple of wadded coverlets,
for such they literally are, that are in their turn overlaid by a third and
considerably smaller one of rich silk : within the frame, which is of the
height and dimensions of a moderately sized breakfast table, stands a copper
vessel, filled with the embers of charcoal”.425
Pardoe also indicated that the tandour was the main reason for fires in Istanbul. The
person fell asleep by the effect of the tandour's heat and the frame-work of the tandour
suddenly moved. The clothes, chintz covered sofas and cotton draperies on the tandour
burnt and caused big fires.426 A century ago, Lady Mantagu also pointed this problem as
follows: “The hot ashes of tandour commonly set the houses fire.”427
Pardoe noticed the hierarchy among the women in the harem but the principle of
hierarchy was not based on status or economic class as in Europe. It was related to “the
physical place of a person, the position and posture of the body (whether a woman
receives guests reclining on a divan, or a sofa, or sitting upright, or standing up) and her
propinquity to, or distance from, other women.”428 The hierarchy in the harem of
Mustafa Efendi manifested itself in the seating place and position of women. The wife
and daughter-in-law were seated at the tandour and other family members were
“inferior to the first wife, who takes the upper seat on the sofa.”429 For other ladies, it
was “only permitted to fold their feet under them on a cushion spread upon the
421 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan...,18.
422 Ibid., 17.
423 Paul Righini, Thinking Architecturally: An Introduction to the Creation of Form and Place (Cape Town: Univ of
Cape Town Pr, 1999), 160.
424 La Baronne Durand De Fontmagne, Kırım Harbi Sonrasında İstanbul, Trans. Celal Altuntaş (İstanbul: Tercüman
Yayınları, 1977), 252.
425 Pardoe,The City of the Sultan..., 18.
426 Ibid., 134-5.
427 Mary Wontley Montagu, Lady Montagu’s Letters During the Embassy to Constantinople 1716 – 18, vol:1 (John
Sharpe, 1820), 14.
428 Billie Melman, Women's Orient..., 156.
429 Pardoe, The city of the Sultan..., 111.
72
carpet.”430
As a middle class and Victorian traveler, the harem was a productive and self-sufficient
place for Pardoe. For her, Ottoman women were indolent and lazy but their habits were
transformed with developments. She explained this opinion as follow: “Habits of
industry have, however, made their way, in many instances, even into the harem; the
changes without have influenced the pursuits and feelings of the women; and utter
idleness has already ceased to be a necessary attribute to the high-bred Turkish
female.”431 She narrated preparations for Ramadhan Eid by the women in the harem of
Mustafa Efendi. Although they were aware of the fact that they could not leave the
house and attend the Eid festival, they busily engaged in the preparing of the festival of
tomorrow.”432 Pardoe was also eager to observe the women workers’ conditions, so she
visited the Imperial Fez Manufactory at Ayoub and described women piece workers
from few national types as follows:
“After a delightful row from Galata, we landed at the celebrated pier of
Eyoub; (...) There was the Turkess with her yashmac folded closely over her
face, and her dark feridjhe falling to the pavement : the Greek woman, with
her large tur ban, and braided hair, covered loosely with a scarf of white
muslin, her gay-coloured dress, and large shawl : the Armenian, with her
dark bright eyes flashing from under the jealous screen of her carefullyarranged
veil, and her red slipper peeping out under the long wrapping
cloak : the Jewess, muffled in a coarse linen cloth.”433
Female knitters from Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish nation “do appear in
archival documentation, maybe not colorfully as Pardoe depicts, but as numerous and as
diverse as she stated.”434
3.2.3.2. Selamlık (Men's Section)
The selamlık was the part of Ottoman houses reserved for men. “It had a separate
entrance and and a room where male guest were received.”435 Most probably because of
430 Ibid, 112.
431 Ibid., 20.
432 Ibid., 117.
433 İbid., vol 2, 349.
434 M. Erdem Kabadayı, “Working from Home: Division of Labor among Female Workers of Feshane in late
nineteenth-century Istanbul,” in A Social History of Late Ottoman Women. New Perspectives, edit. Duygu Köksal and
Anastasia Falierou (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 70.)
435 Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters, eds., Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (New York, NY: Facts on File,
2008), 46.
73
that, French traveler Theophile Gautier claimed that it was a room “reserved for the
public part of the life of the Turk.”436 Pardoe was one of the women who had a chance
to visit the selamlık of Reis Efendi in her second visit. For her, there was not a
remarkable quality in her selamlık. It was just “a handsome house, well fitted up, and
exquisitely clean”.437 Gautier also did not give a detailed description of the selamlık
because of the extreme simplicity of it. After that, he imagined the harem as a place that
all Oriental luxury was presented.438
The most exciting thing for Pardoe in the selamlık of Reis Efendi was open windows
that gave a spacious feeling after “the closely-latticed and stifling apartments of the
women.”439 This was because the close windows made the harem stuffy and Pardoe felt
suffocated in the room. Even she opened a window with the hope of getting a little air
as soon as she arrived to the sofa in the house of Reis Efendi’s house.440 One reason of
small and close windows in the harem could be the privacy of Ottoman. In this way, she
pointed out the private and home-centered life of Ottoman women and the life of men,
which were open to the public. Another reason was to keep out heat and cold.
3.2.3.3. The Bedroom
As indicated previously, rooms were used for multiple purposes such as sitting, sleeping,
resting, working and socializing. A room was turned into a bedroom by spreading
mattresses on the floor at night and bedding “stowed away into the in the chest or builtin
cupboards in the morning and the room then arranged for use during the day.”441
Pardoe surprisingly explained how beds were tidied up quickly by the slaves in the
house of the Turkish merchant as follows: “the slaves no sooner ascertain that you have
risen, than half a dozen of them enter the apartment, and in five minutes every vestige
of your couch has disappeared—you hurry from the bed to the bath, whence you cannot
436 Théophile Gautier, Constantinople of To-day: Illustrated with Engravings from Photographic Pictures (London:
Henry Vizetelly, 1854),190.
437 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 272.
438 Théophile Gautier, Constantinople of To-day...., 190. (All the luxury is confined to the harem. It is there that are
displayed the carpets of Ispahan or Smyrna; there are spread the embroidered tapestries ; there stretch the soft divans
of silk, and shine the little inlaid tables of pearl and agate ; there burn rich perfumes, in censers of gold and silver
filigree : there bloom the rarest of flowers ; and there gleam, like stalactites, the superb chimney-pieces of marble of
Marmora, and the fountains of perfumed water, which diffuse, at once, freshness and melody. In that mysterious
retreat passes the real and actual life—the life of pleasure and of intimacy ; and there no relative, and no friend, can
ever penetrate.)
439 Ibid, 272.
440 Ibid., vol 2, 223.
441Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London ; New York : New
York: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 151.
74
possibly escape in less than two hours— and the business of the day is then generally
terminated for a Turkish lady”.442
Ottoman bedding was composed of pillows, mattresses, coverlets, blankets, a quilt and a
top sheet. It was arranged as follows: “the bed was made by spreading the mattress,
covered with thin blanket, 'a battaniye' on the floor, with the pillows at the head covered
with a loose cloth.”443 Prepared bed for Pardoe in the house of Turkish merchant was
composed of double mattresses covered with muslin. A dozen pillows of various forms
and sizes were piled up at the head of the bed and a couple of wadded coverlets were
laid down that were carefully folded at the foot side.
There were different kinds of fabric, design and color used for mattresses, pillows and
coverlets. The color of Ottoman mattresses was “predominantly red and blue but also in
a green, a soft yellow, white and black.”444 Pardoe’s mattress in the Turkish merchant’s
house was “yellow satin brocaded with gold” and the mattress of a Greek lady (her
companion) was “violet-coloured velvet, richly fringed.”445 Velvet was a very rich
fabric and generally use as sofa’s mattress in palaces, but Pardoe indicated their bed was
on the floor. Maybe, a luxurious bad was prepared for European visitors to present
Ottoman hospitality. Generally, mattresses were covered with a sheet of silk gauze or
striped muslin; her own was the former one in Turkish merchant’s house. Flowers were
the “most prominent elements in the composition of Ottoman embroidered textile.”446
The wadded coverlet at the foot side was “pale blue silk, worked with rose-coloured
flowers.”447 The pillows at the head of her bed were also all “richly embroidered muslin
cases, through which the satin containing the down is distinctly seen.”448 Pardoe also
noted that sleeping arrangements were the same at the house of Argyropoulo but
mattresses and pillows were less splendid.449
The ‘spacious’ and ‘lofty’ room that Pardoe stayed in the house of the Turkish merchant
had ornamentation in the ceiling. A canvas, that had a leafy tree painted with oil, was
442 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan...., 31.
443 Roderich Taylor, Ottoman Embroidery..., 83.
444 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan... ,86.
445 Ibid., 32.
446 Sumru Belger Krody, Flowers of Silk & Gold..., 63.
447 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 32.
448 Ibid., 32.
449 Ibid., 167.
75
lined to the ceiling of the room. It was “instead of being tightly stretched, was mounted
loosely on a slight frame, which, when the air entered from the open windows,
permitted an undulation intended to give to the tree the effect of reality.”450 Pardoe
compared the branches of the tree to a huge boa and the leaf's size and color to a man's
black hat with her imagination. For her, it was a “great ornament” and a “model of
ingenious invention.”451 Decorating the ceiling in this way could be used to balance the
simplicity of the room.
The room that Pardoe spent the night in Mustafa Efendi's house was more pleasant and
wealthy than others. The carpet in the room of Mustafa Efendi was wool. It was known
that Anatolian carpets were “almost uniformly of wool”452, but Pardoe specifically
indicated that it was “expensive wool.”453 The sedir was flesh-colored satin and the
cushions on the bed both from the fabric of velvet and satin. Crimson color for sedir
was an old tradition. Therefore, using flesh color as the cover color of sedir could be
related to the fashion of the time, because pastel colors -such yellow or light blue- were
preferred at that time by the effects of Europe. The coverlet was remarkable because it
was “rich Broussa silk, powdered with silver leaves.”454
The bedroom (Mustafa Efendi's house) had a different atmosphere from other rooms in
visited houses due to the decoration of small objects and artifacts. At that time, there
was no sideboard, so the niches were built to display luxurious objects. In the domed
recess of the room, there were a French clock, “two noble porcelain vases”, “a china
plate containing an enamelled snuff-box” and “a carved ebony chaplet.”455 Pardoe noted
that French clocks were very popular among Eastern people, who had one or two in
every room where the family lived.456 In the room, foods were also presented in an
artistic style: “crystal goblets of water”, “covered glass bowls filled with delicate
conserves”, “a silver caique, whose oars were small spoons” positioned on a tray.457 In a
beautifully worked wicker basket, there were also crystallized fruits “beneath a veil of
450 Ibid., 30.
451 Ibid., 30.
452 Murray L. Eiland and Murray Eiland III, Oriental Rugs...., 171.
453 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 123.
454 Ibid., 123.
455 Ibid., 122.
456 Ibid., 122.
457 Ibid., 122.
76
pale pink gauze knotted together with bunches of artificial flowers.”458
3.2.3.4. Eating Room
Like a bedroom, a room was easily turned into a dining room when a round metal tray
was put on the floor. In visited harems, the foods were mainly served in the harem. For
instance, the breakfast was in the harem of Reis Efendi’s house.459 However, they
moved to another room for the iftaree in the Turkish merchant’s house. It could be
related to Ramadhan that the table was richly arranged with foods. Therefore, the
preparing of the table could take time, so they may want to organize the table without
disturbing hosts. As mentioned by Pardoe, the table was arranged in a perfect square
room that was totally unfurnished. An immense round plated tray was put into the
center of the room. It was almost two feet in height from the floor and supported with a
wooden frame.460
Pardoe mentioned in detail the foods and table manners she witnessed in the Turkish
merchant house and ‘gastronomy in Turkey’. This may seem to her very attractive
thanks to the rich ritual of iftaree. In Britain, eating was accepted as a social and
masculine activity, but here it was transformed to a private and feminine activity.461
Women were sitting around the same tray and socialized through eating at home. This
also cut across the hierarchy in the harem. In this regard, Pardoe aimed to break “every
single rule in the middle-class code, regulating female behavior” through representing
eating neutrally and presenting it as feminine activity.462
3.2.3.5. Private Rooms
Pardoe criticized a French traveler for his misinformation about the harem. He argued
that jealousies of women in the harem reached the point of poisoning and humiliating
each other. Pardoe claimed it was not possible due to “the very arrangements of the
harem...: each lady has her private apartment, which, should she desire to remain
secluded, no one has the privilege to invade.”463 She aimed to this image by previous
travelers through emphasizing the order in the harem that allowed privacy to the women.
458 Ibid., 122.
459 Ibid., 274.
460 Ibid, 20.
461 Ibid., 124.
462 Melman, Women's Orient..., 125.
463 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 120.
77
The ladies of houses (Büyük Hanım) could have a private room as the head of
household, but it is known that “less important family member and the servants would
sleep in corridors, across doors, on the roof or in the outside verandahs.”464 In addition,
it was a question whether they were as free as in their own room that Pardoe thought.
Concubines had private rooms around a sofa just in the palace of Esma Sultan. Private
rooms were only for the head of the slaves, not for all. Pardoe visited the apartments of
Nazip Hanım (Nazif Hanım), mother of slaves, and Perousse Hanım (Firuze Hanım),
‘the private secretary of the Princess’ and ‘favourite odalisque of Sultan Selim’.465
Nazip Hanım’s “charming room overlooking the water” was covered with cushions.466
Pardoe mentioned that she was a “celebrated poet” and shared one of her ballad
translated into English.467 Most probably because of that, her sofa was “surrounded by
papers; lying confusedly in heaps, or tied up in squares of clear muslin.”468 Also, when
Pardoe entered the rooms, she seated on her sofa (sedir) and wrote somethings on the
chest. Depending on the size, the chest could be a sandık (for middle-size), ambar (for
large size) and kutu (box/ for small size). The chest of the wealthy families could be
made from massive wood inlaid with pearl or ornamented with filigree or carving.469
Perousse Hanım’s chest was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The chest was not only used
by Turkish people, but also by non-Muslim subject in Ottoman society. Pardoe came
across a chest in the room of Argyropoulo. It was made from “polished wood” and
contained papers.470 The chest was probably used for writing; but it is also crucial to
indicate there was “a small writing-stand on a low stool” beside the chest in the house
of Argyropoulo.471
In the palace of Esma Sultan, there was a section separated for the Sultan. Pardoe
named the rooms in this section as “state apartments” and indicated that they were
“situated immediately over the harem.”472 One of the rooms in this part was the
‘reception room’. For her, the room was “sombre, magnificent, and almost cloistral in
464 Frederick Taylar, Ottoman Embroidery..., 83.
465 Ibid., 310.
466 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan...., 303.
467 Ibid., 320.
468 Ibid., 310.
469 Ibid., 158.
470 Ibid., 163.
471 Ibid., 163.
472 Ibid., 315.
78
its decorations.”473 Pardoe did not give a detailed description of the room. Heavy gilded
cornices created a gloomy atmosphere for her. Indeed, the illustration of reception room
of a Minister of the Porte in the book of d’Ohsson depicted a typical reception room in
the late 18th century Istanbul house.474 In the room, there was “a sitting area one step
raised from the entrance to the room, two rows of the windows, a decorative ceilings
and a fireplace. The decorative details on the walls are especially striking. Two
landscape compositions are clearly visible on the upper sections of the walls as well as
narrow landscape frieze around the ceiling.”475
Figure 5: D’ohsson: Appartement d'un ministre de la Porte (Reception Room of a
Minister of the Porte)476
In the section of ‘state apartments’ in the Esma Sultan’s Palace, there were other rooms
named the Sultan’s morning room and private withdrawing room. In English houses, the
withdrawing room was mainly for the guest; the morning room was a sitting room for
just family members to spent time in the daylight.477 Robert Kerr defined the morning
473 Ibid., 316.
474 Günsel Renda and Carter V. Findley, Comments on engravings in d’Ohsson.., 211
475 Ibid., 211.
476 Mouradgea D’Ohsson, Tableau Général…, facing pace 128.
477 Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr, The Decoration of Houses (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2015),
79
room as “the drawing room in ordinary.”478 The room was named the sultan’s morning
room probably because it was thought that the Sultan spent the day there.
For Pardoe, the roof of the morning room displayed the most elaborate taste of the
Orient. It “was of a deep purple colour, ribbed and studded with golden stars.”479 The
use of purple for both the sofa of the imperial sleeping room and morning room could
be to provide the harmony of color in this section. It could also reflect the aesthetic taste
of Esma Sultan. The walls of the room were also decorated with the purest white
fabric.480 Apart from providing an aesthetic view, it could be for heat protection. “The
private withdrawing-room was not remarkable in any respect” for Pardoe.481 The only
thing worth talking about for the European eye was “sofa and curtains being trimmed
with fluted gauze ribbon.”482 Most probably, the reason why the room looks so simple
to a European was the splendor of English withdrawing rooms in contrast to the simple
and comfortable morning room. The parlour of Azmi Bey's house was more impressive
for her, because it was English- looking with chairs, tables and sofas.483
The most elegant room of state apartments was the resting room prepared for the Sultan.
Both European and Eastern furniture decorated the room. There was a European-style
bed, decorated with knots of colored ribbon and surrounded by flowered muslin.
According to her, it was “contrasted cheerfully with the heavy magnificence of the
saloon and its elaborate draperies.”484 Richly gilded silver mangal and 'the collection of
jewelled toys' provided to turn back ‘gorgeous East’ for her.485 Besides, there were also
‘incense-burners of gold’ and ‘a chocolate cup of enamel studded with pearls’.486
Personal items of the sultan in the room were watches that were put into a gilt salver, ‘a
toilette of fillagreed silver’ and ‘ring-trays wreathed with rubies’.487 She was “more
delighted by a Koran, and a manuscript collection of prayers, written by the Sultan, and
132.
478 Robert Kerr, The Gentleman’s House Or How To Plan English Residences From The Parsonage To The Palace
With Tables Of Accommodation And Cost And A Series Of Selected Plans (John Muuray, 1864), 103.
479 Pardoe, The City of the Sultan..., 316.
480 Ibid., 316.
481 Ibid., 317.
482 Ibid., 317.
483 Ibid., vol 2, 313.
484 Ibid., vol 1, 317.
485 Ibid.,, 317.
486 Ibid., 101.
487 Ibid., 101.
80
splendidly illuminated.”488 They were both covered with gold and each corner was
brilliantly wrought with Imperial cipher (tughra). Also, there was a border “formed
round the outer edges of the volumes, of passages from the holy writings, indifferent
coloured jewels.”489 This kind of decoration in the room may give us some clues about
the presentation of political power and royal identity of the sultan through the dynastic
elements and religious items.
Pardoe also visited some high-ranking elites -Reis Efendi, İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha and
Mustafa Efendi- in their personal rooms. In the house of Reis Efendi, a large room,
honored by the Sultan in a night about three years ago, was separated for him. The
Imperial bedstead was still there. The sofa surrounded the upper end of the room that
was formed with raising a step from the floor. The covering of the sofa was crimson
satin (atlas) and “fringed with gold a foot in depth, and furnished with cushions of gold
tissue embroidered with coloured silk.”490 A pile of cushions was heaped upon the floor
at the extreme side of raised step. The lighting of the room was provided by candles that
were on a tray on two tables. A branch holding other candles were also positioned in an
arched-recess between the two tables. Heating was supplied by a mangal at the center of
the room. The personal items of the pasha -his watch, his hand-mirror, and a small agate
box containing opium pills- were also laid on a sofa-cushion.491
The room of Mustafa Efendi was much more attractive and splendid than the rooms of
İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha and Reis Efendi. His room was extensively decorated with
European style furniture. Even Pardoe noted that it “would have satisfied the most
boudoir loving petite-maitresse of Paris or London.”492 A tripod table, a splendid coffee
service of French porcelain and a chair (brought for the Greek lady) were in the room.
In the room, heating was supplied by “a magnificent mangal, up-headed with fire.”493
Mustafa Efendi was from the scribal service (hacegan). Most probably because of that,
there were books, papers and boxes on his sofa.
When compared to the rooms of the households’ head, the rooms of the house’s lady
488 Ibid., 317.
489 Ibid., 317.
490 Ibid., 249.
491 Ibid., vol 2, 221.
492 Ibid., 113.
493 Ibid., 113.
81
(Büyük Hanım) were very simple. The room of İşkodralı Mustfa Pasha's wife Haymine
Hanım was composed of cushions and a sedir. Lighting in the room was provided by
the four candles on the tray. This tray was positioned on a small round table at the
extremity of the apartment. Pardoe noted that “this custom of clustering the candles
together is common in both Turkish, Armenian, and Greek houses.”494 She also visited
the room of Reis Efendi's wife. The only remarkable object in there was a “high-backed
chair of crimson velvet and gilding”.495 In the house of Reis Efendi, there was a room
where the mother of the children gave her last breath. The belongings of her were put in
there and it was locked.496 No person was allowed to visit the room.
The room was separated for the wife of Omer Pasha. The atmosphere in the room was
very oppressive especially because of the windows. Turkish windows, “perforated in a
double tier”, did not allow sunlight to enter the room. The lower ones of the tier were so
closely latticed and the upper ones were “small and half circular, dull with dust, situated
close to the ceiling.”497 The room looked even worse because “several instances, where
time or accident had displaced the glass, repaired roughly with thin planks nailed
across.”498 The mangal, where the perfume was burned, also enhanced the oppressive
atmosphere of the room.
In this part, firstly the life and lifestyles of house-owners that Pardoe visited were
analyzed considering their place in the hierarchical order of Ottoman society. Although
some of them were not exactly identified, their households and the atmosphere in their
houses were examined in a general schema by the information provided by secondary
sources, Pardoe's travel book and chronicles. The part focused on the material culture of
Ottoman houses through the descriptions of Pardoe. Her perception of these houses and
essential issues of material culture -such as objects, artifacts, heating, lighting, comfort,
kinds of fabrics and embroideries- were considered while analyzing visited houses.
494 Ibid., vol 2, 239.
495 Ibid., vol 1, 218-9.
496 Ibid., 220-1.
497 Ibid., 227-8.
498 Ibid., 228.
82
Conclusion
The material world that surrounded Ottomans (men and women, rich and poor) has been
neglected by Ottoman historians for a long time. It could be related to the lack of
sources and the tendency to use only official documents for the researches. This thesis,
grounded on a travel account, aimed to investigate royal, high-ranking and upper middle
class houses in Ottoman society with regard to their material culture.
In this thesis, first, the transformation of travel experiences and the construction of new
discourses in the 19th century were analyzed. This is because Julia Pardoe was among
the travelers of the early 19th century, and transformations in travel writings had an
influence on her interests, depictions and interpretations. It has been claimed that travel
experiences to the Orient and travel writings were subject to transformation especially
by middle class women travelers. Through their critical approach to common views and
prejudices of previous travelers, they brought an alternative view to travel writings.
Their new perspective and discourses were mainly constructed through their middle
class and Victorian background. The changing experiences and perspectives were also
transformed by the topics that travelers were interested in. Thanks to their apolitical
approach in particular, the issues that concerned them were diversified.
Among various topics, the focal point for the thesis was the transformation of views
regarding the Oriental home, because this was Julia Pardoe’s main objective in visiting
many Ottoman houses and giving detailed and realistic descriptions of them. Therefore,
specifically, the change in perceptions of the woman’s role, home and domesticity in
English society and its effects on transforming views of the Oriental home were
analyzed. It was argued that 19th-century women travelers interpreted the Eastern house
as a private and feminine space and socialized locus of women. Their Victorian
background also led them to pay special attention to behaviors, manners, codes and
social life in visited houses. Therefore, there was a middle class and Victorian
reproduction of Eastern houses in their travel accounts.
83
The transformation of views on the Oriental home was reflected in Julia Pardoe's travel
account The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836. She
visited several homes and focused on households, home-life, stories of individuals,
interiors and objects to be able to understand daily life, Ottoman women and the
hierarchical order in society. Besides, her passionate and enthusiastic character and the
social transformation of the Ottoman society made it easier for her to visit most of the
depicted houses. Describing in detail what she observed and witnessed in these houses,
she demythisised the Orient and aimed to eliminate stereotypes and clichés constructed
by previous travelers.
For the thesis, Pardoe's descriptions of architecture, interiors and objects of Ottoman
houses were very crucial because the main target of the thesis was to analyze early 19thcentury
Ottoman houses through her eyes. Before going into detailed analyses of houses,
the house-owners and their lifestyle and households were evaluated to understand the
atmosphere in these houses. This was also important for placing them within a social
hierarchy to render them royal elites, high-ranking elites or upper middle classes. After
that, visited houses were analyzed regarding her stance and issues essential to material
culture. Therefore as well as the interior, objects and furniture of these houses, her
special focus on cleanliness of sofas, eating culture, hierarchy in the harem were also
pointed out.
Among the upper middle class houses that Pardoe visited, the most detailed descriptions
were given for the house of a Turkish merchant. The description was elaborated to such
a degree that one could envisage it. The reason could be that it was the first house
visited by Pardoe. In other words, it was the place where she had her first encounter
with Ottoman culture, houses, furniture and objects. Therefore, she was very curious
about every detail and tried to understand the architectural style, ornamentation,
decorations and objects in an Ottoman house. From her description, it was also argued
that the Turkish merchant was wealthier than any other upper middle class house-owner.
A mirror, which was so rare even in the houses of high-ranking elites, decorated his sofa.
The coverlet, mattresses and pillows were more splendid than Argyropoulo 's mattresses,
and pillows and the fabric of his sedir were described as more high-quality than a Greek
merchant's. Among the mentioned houses, the most interesting case was the house of
Ömer Pasha. He was a pasha but the condition of his house was very poor because his
84
household was residing there temporarily. They were in that house while finishing
preparations to move to Albania.
As understood from the descriptions, Ottoman houses architecturally still had specific
characteristics at that time. Basically, they were built within courtyards and composed
of rooms around a sofa, while stairs and passages led to other floors and different parts
of the houses. The numbers of sofas, rooms and passages only varied according to the
size of the houses depending on whether they were inhabited by royal, high-ranking or
upper middle class households. Separate personal rooms for concubines and the house's
ladies (Büyük Hanım) were also up to the size of houses. There were private apartments
for the head of slaves in Esma Sultan's palace, but Pardoe did not mention private rooms
for slaves in high-ranking and upper middle class houses. There were also personal
rooms for all high-ranking ladies. A room was provided even for the wife of Omer
Pasha although their stay was temporary there. However, Pardoe did not mention any
personal room for upper middle class ladies.
Rooms were also very simple considering the small amount of furniture. There were
only few pieces of furniture such as sedir, tandır, mangal in royal, high-ranking and
upper middle class houses. In this context, the way to display luxury was decorating the
houses with objects, carpets, ornamentation and embroidered and colored fabrics. These
kinds of decorations also pointed at the wealth and status of the house owners within
society. Even houses’ courtyards served to understand the wealth and position of a
person. Esma Sultan’s courtyard was richly decorated with gardens, repositories, a
terrace and gaily gilded kiosk, and high-ranking elites’ mainly with marble foundations.
On the other hand, the upper middle classes had more modest and even distorted
courtyards. Most splendid sofas and rooms were also in the palace of Esma Sultan. The
embroideries, carpets, wall decorations and roof designs reflected the royal grandness.
In the rooms, many furnishings were of the same kind but the types of fabric, color and
embroidery were diverse. For instance, although the harem was very simple in highranking
and upper middle class houses, İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha's harem was decorated
with golden-fringed curtains and richly embroidered cushions. He also displayed his
wealth through covering the sedir with satin although the Turkish merchant’s sedir was
made out of a shag, and the Greek merchant’s covered with a gay patterned chintz. The
85
color of a sedir’s cover was generally crimson, but it was flesh color in a room of
Mustafa Efendi’s house. There was also a chest in many Ottoman houses but the quality
differed for each house. Perousse’s hanım chest was made of massive wooden and
inlaid with mother-of-pearl but Argyropoulo’s chest was of polished wood. The bedding
was also arranged in the same way in different houses but fabrics presented luxury.
While the coverlet of bed was velvet, satin and embroidery muslin in the house of the
Turkish merchant, it was Broussa silk in the house of Mustafa Efendi. The mattresses
and pillows were also more splendid in the bedroom of the Turkish merchant than that
of Argyropoulo.
Besides, rooms in Mustafa Efendi’s house decorated with small objects had a distinct
character. The room that Pardoe spent the night was more wealthy and pleasant mainly
because of the presence of a French clock, porcelain vases, china plates and foods
presented in an artistic style. His private rooms were also decorated with European-style
small objects such as a tripod table, a splendid coffee service of French porcelain and a
table. For Pardoe, his room was more splendid most probably because English houses
were too crowded with small objects.
There were also European style goods in the shape of free-standing furniture such as
chairs, table, bedsteads in the houses of royal and certain high-ranking elites. A
European-style bed was in the private chamber of the Sultan in Esma Sultan’s palace.
There was also one in a private chamber of Reis Efendi because the Sultan had spent a
night in there. Tables and chairs were also seen in the houses of Mustafa Efendi, Reis
Efendi, İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha and Azmi Bey. For Pardoe, European-style objects
gave an English look to the rooms. In this respect, it can be argued that European style
furniture and objects started to be seen in the houses of royal and certain high-ranking
Ottomans but still they were few in number.
Pardoe’s travel account provided valuable information to investigate architecture and
interior design of Ottoman houses. However, it was only limited to certain houses in
Ottoman society. To be able to envisage the whole picture of the material culture in
Istanbul houses, further research is needed. Further studies about other travelers’
accounts on Ottoman material culture may also shed light upon several other issues that
escaped her notice and broaden the scope of this field.
86
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APPENDICES
Appendix A: The Visited Places in Istanbul by Julia Pardoe
Religious Buildings Historical Place / Buildings
Galata Mevlevihanesi Kapalıçarşı
Greek Church of Pera Yerebatan Sarnıcı
Patriarchal Church of Fanar Binbirdirek
Aya Sophia Konstantinus Sarayı
Sultan Ahmet Mosque Rumeli Hisarı
Süleymaniye Sarayburnu
Balıklı Church
Balıklı Ayazması
A Chapel
Official Buildings Social Places/Buildings
Mekteb-i Harbiye Bathroom of Scodra Pasha
Selimiye Kışlası (2 times) A Khan
Yedikule A Prisoner
Beylerbeyi Sarayı Tımarhane (Süleymaniye)
Houses
Royal Houses The Palace of Esma Sultan at
Ortaköy and Eyüp
Upper Class Houses The Palace of Reis Efendi
The Palace of İşkodralı Mustafa
Pasha
The Mansion of Mustafa Efendi
(the Egyptian Charge d'Affaires)
The Palace of Azmi Bey
A House of Ömer Pasha
Upper Middle Class Houses A Turkish Merchant's House
A Greek's House (wedding),
102
A Greek's House (wedding
ceremony)
A Greek Merchant's House
Jew's House (Naim Zornana)
The House of Argyropoulo
(Angiolopolo)
Appendix B: Furniture and Objects in the Visited Houses
Esma Sultan’s Palace at Eyup
Nazip (Nazife) Hanım’s Room
Perouse (Firuze) Hanım’s Room Sofa
Papers
The Lid of a chest
Cushions
The principal room of Harem Cushions
Mirror
The morning-room of the Sultan Carpet
Cushions
Fabric hanging of the walls
The Reception Room Curtains
The Sultan's Room Curtain
Sofa
bed
Mangal
Toys
Incense-burner
A miniature of Sultan
A toilette
A chocolate cap
A gilt salver
Watches
Kur'an
A manuscript
The Private Withdrawing-room
The Palace of Reiss Efendi
Buyuk Hanım's Room Sofa
A high-backed chair
Cushions
The Forbidden Room The personal property of women
(death)
A Room (The room of Reis Efendi) Imperial bedstead
A sofa
103
Cushions
Watch
Hand-mirror
A small agate box
Selamlık
The Palace of İşkodralı Mustafa Pasha
(Scodra Pasha)
An apartment Sedir
Mandolin
Tambourine
The room of Heymine Hanım Cushions
A Tray
Wax Lights
Pasha's Room Sofa
Two tables
Candles
Curtains
Cushions
Mangal
The Mansion of Mustafa Efendi, the
Egyptian Charge d'Affaires
Courtyard Marble fountain
The conventual looking wheel
Harem Indian matting
An embroidered carpet
A couple of cushions
The dinner tray
Apartment of the lady Curtains,
Tandour
The Apartment of Minister Sofa
Cushions
Mangal
The divan( covered with inlaid
boxes, articles of bijouterie, books,
and papers)
A large silver tray,
Coffee service of French porcelain,
A pair of tall and exquisitelywrought
essence-vases of fillagreed
silver,
Chair
The room that she spent the night A French clock
Two noble porcelain vases
104
A china plate
A tray
Glass bowls
A silver caique,
Divan
Carpet
Cushions
The Palace of Azmi Bey
English looking parlour Chairs
Sofa
Tables
Haremlik
A Turkish Merchant House
Harem
Curtains
Immense mirror
Sofa
Cushions
Tandour
Windows
Clay jar
Goblet
Napkins
Koran
Mangal
Dining Room Carpet
Tray
Porcelain saucers
Goblets
Cushions
Bedroom Canvass
Beds
Mattresses
Pillows
Coverlets
Closets for the reception of the
bedding
A Greek House (wedding)
An Inner Room Bridal Dress
Gauze
Flowers
Diamonds
105
Satin slippers
Embroidered handkerchiefs
Cachemire shawl
A Greek House (wedding ceremony)
Great Saloon (Sofa) Turkish carpet
A Bible
Two marriage rings
A reading desk
Silver Money
A Greek Merchant's House
Harem Sofa
Cushions
Tandır
The house of Argyropoulo (Angiolopolo)
His Room Sofa
Writing-Stand
A Chest
Tandour
Bedroom Matresses
Pillows
A House of Ömer Pasha
Harem Cushions
Curtain
The room of Buyuk Hanım Sofa
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