A Female Voice in a Male-centric World

The Sultan’s Court in the Memories of Daughters of Abdülhamid II

Abstract

This article presents life at the court of Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II at the turn of the 20th century, described from the point of view of his two daughters, Şadiye Osmanoğlu (1886–1977) and Ayşe Osmanoğlu (1887–1960). Both, independently of each other, published their memoirs in the 1950s and 1960s, first in the press and later as books. Finally, their autobiographies were published under the same title: Babam Abdülhamid [My Father Abdülhamid]. The literary analysis of the autobiographies focused on the category of selfnarration. The princesses wrote down their memoirs around the age of 70, with the experience of exile from their country and years of nomadic existence, requiring a lot of independence and self-reliance. Nevertheless, reporting on their youth, spent in the Sultan’s harem, they adopted the perspective of young girls, fully dependent on their father’s will and believing in his values. Declaring themselves to be content with life in this male-centric world, they considered a hierarchy-based order as natural. Only the passed over issues and omissions, especially regarding the emotional sphere, brought out in the process of analysing the autobiography, showed that Şadiye and Ayşe Osmanoğlu’s selfnarration, although carefully created, was not always coherent. The principles instilled in childhood, the desire to defend a world of values discarded in the era of the Republic and the plain nostalgia for a comfortable and secure youth in the harem resulted in the decision of the princesses not to make their voices resound more strongly.