Hathaway|231is rendered in what art historians might consider more “conventional” fashion,
using a dark, charcoal-gray pigment. Interestingly, the matched set of one black
and one white eunuch would become something of a trope in Ottoman painting,
as well as in paintings by European observers of the Ottoman court. In such set-
tings, the two eunuchs often appear side by side on horseback. (See figure 16.3.)
By 1720, when the powerful Chief Eunuch el-Hajj Beshir Agha (term 1717–
1746) appears in numerous folios of the Book of Festivals, commissioned to com-
memorate the circumcision of the four sons of Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730), a new
protocol had apparently emerged for depicting African harem eunuchs. Given
that Beshir Agha is thought to have commissioned this work himself, it is per-
haps no surprise that he is prominently positioned in a number of paintings,
often front and center. On the other hand, he is a much more visible and impos-
ing presence in the manuscript than his counterpart, Habeshi Mehmed, in the
late sixteenth-century manuscripts mentioned above. His skin is painted a dark
Figure 16.2 The Third Court of Topkapı Palace, from Lokman and Osman, Hünername
[Manual of achievements]. Sultan Murad III and Habeshi Mehmed Agha appear in the lower
middle of the left-hand page. (Wikimedia Commons.)