recognized Osman as the rightful heir to O©uz’s
rule. At the same time, the Ottomans purposely
revived ancient Turkish traditions to reinforce their
connection to the Turkish khans and to justify their
claim to the Islamic sultanate of Anatolia and Rum
(Byzantine lands).
The practice of fabricating a lineage that con-
nects a current ruler with mythic or ancient rulers
is a legitimating practice in many dynastic con-
texts – both Muslim and non-Muslim – and the
Ottomans were no exception. Two points bear
emphasizing here. First, the practice of polygyny
guaranteed the continuity of the Ottoman lineage.
Unlike some monarchies, the Ottoman Empire was
entirely identified with the Ottoman dynasty, so
that the production of an heir to the throne was of
paramount importance not only for the continuity
of the dynasty but also for political stability. This
problem was easily solved through polygyny, a
practice probably derived from Islamic law that
gave the Ottoman lineage the necessary flexibility
and strength to guarantee many sons and a contin-
uous dynasty.
Second, the lineages drawn up by Turkish histo-
rians reflect the fact that the Ottomans were decid-
edly patrilineal, meaning a child inherited all titles
and power from the father while the mother’s cul-
ture and background were largely inconsequential
to a child’s identity. By the fifteenth century, the
practice of capturing non-Muslim slave women to
serve as concubines – and not wives – to the sultan
and become mothers of the princes became estab-
lished, based on the logic that a converted slave
woman would not introduce fanatical or heretical
religious ideas into the inner sanctum of the palace.
Indeed, after Orhan I (ca. 1324–62), only Süley-
man the Magnificent (1520–66) chose to marry one
of his concubines, his beloved Hürrem Sultan.
Whether the sultan’s consort served as a wife or a
slave-concubine had no effect on the legitimacy of
his offspring. What established a child’s royal pedi-
gree was not the mother’s blood but the father’s.
Once the Ottomans were established as the heirs
of the Byzantine Empire (after the capture of Con-
stantinople in 1453) and as the seat of the caliphate
(after 1517), asserting the Ottoman dynasty’s right
to rule over far-flung and multiethnic populations
remained an important political issue. By the six-
teenth century the Ottomans adopted a legitimizing
kinship discourse that sought to link the Ottoman
house to the house of the Prophet. Certainly the
Ottomans could never claim any direct genealogi-
cal link to the Prophet and his family, as was com-
mon among Muslim rulers throughout the history350 kinship and state
of Islam. Early Ottomans did assert that their
renowned ancestor O©uz Khàn and his descendents
were all Muslims, had close contact with early
Muslim leaders, and were involved in the spread of
Islam from the beginning. Yet the importance of
linking the Ottoman dynasty to the Prophet’s fam-
ily was clearly recognized. Rather than connect
males (members of the Ottoman bloodline) to the
Prophet’s lineage, legitimizing discourse adopted
the practice of linking the women of the Ottoman
house – particularly the concubines and mothers of
the sultans – to the women of the Prophet’s family,
who were also not blood members of the Prophet
Mu™ammad’s lineage. For example, royal Ottoman
women were given honorific titles, such as the
“Khadìja of the age” or were likened to ≠â±isha, the
youngest wife of the Prophet. As Leslie Peirce
(1993) has suggested, linking the dynasty to the
Prophet’s family through women demonstrates a
discursive function that royal women, but not royal
men, could serve. That is, the royal women could be
likened to the Prophet’s family precisely because
they were not blood members of the Ottoman line-
age or house, just as Mu™ammad’s wives were not
members of his lineage. The notion of conversion
also played into this. Just as the Ottoman slave con-
cubines were foreign elements who converted to
Islam, so were the wives of Mu™ammad some of the
first converts from paganism to Islam.
In sum, kinship discourse was an important, if
not exclusive, means of legitimizing Ottoman power
first over the inhabitants of Anatolia and then over
the widely dispersed peoples of the Ottoman
Empire. In the case of the Ottomans, legitimacy of
birth and legitimacy of power were one and the
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