Isom-Verhaaren|151also reaped the benefit of proclaiming their own power and prestige through
their architectural patronage. Location, size, and design of buildings combined
to indicate status and power in Ottoman society. Süleyman provided opportu-
nities for favored female members of the dynasty to participate in architectural
patronage to proclaim their exalted status.
Sultan Süleyman was designated by his European contemporaries as the
Magnificent and by his own subjects as Kanuni, “the lawgiver.” Mihrimah, Süley-
man’s only daughter, was one of the children of his favorite concubine, Hurrem.
Süleyman’s contemporaries believed that he was dominated by his favorites, with
whom he developed close attachments and who his contemporaries believed ex-
erted enormous influence over him. Among his male favorites were Ibrahim Pa-
sha, Rüstem Pasha, and Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, three men whom he promoted
to the position of grand vizier. These men were slaves, as was Hurrem until he
freed and then married her. Just as Süleyman’s favor catapulted Hurrem from
the status of slave to that of the most powerful woman in the empire, the sultan’s
wife and confidant, so his favor promoted these men to wield great power under
the sultan.
Mihrimah was born into and raised in an atmosphere of competing favor-
ites, becoming the essential link between her mother, Hurrem, and her husband,
Rüstem Pasha. But Mihrimah also influenced her father, initially as an associate
of her mother and then as a partner with her mother and husband, but after their
deaths, her father’s love gave her influence at court. However, Mihrimah’s status
within the imperial family can be understood only in the broader context of Sü-
leyman’s relations with his favorites and how his innovations in promoting them
affected status more generally in the imperial family as well as within the Otto-
man administrative elite. Unlike most of his favorites, Mihrimah was born into
an elite position; whether a favorite was technically a slave, a prince, or a princess,
all depended on the sultan’s favor, and if the favored one lost this he or she was
doomed to a loss of status if not loss of life.
Harem and Succession Policies
Sensational accounts of the lives of women of the imperial harem exist in great
abundance. However, a rare scholarly study of the harem and the women who
lived in it, by Leslie Peirce, clarifies how it functioned and evolved over time. The
reproductive and succession policies of the Ottoman Empire were implemented
in the harem. In the fifteenth century, sultans had fathered children with slave
concubines, not with well-born wives, and after a concubine produced a son she
was no longer an eligible sexual partner for the sultan. As the mother of a prince
she was expected to devote her life to promoting the candidacy of her son to suc-
ceed his father. Since all sons, barring physical disabilities, had an equal right to