Full citation:Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste. 1675. Nouvelle Relation De l’intéreur Du Sérail Du Grand Seigneur Contenant Plusieurs Singularitex Qui Jusqu’icy N’ont Point esté mises En Lumiere. Translated into English by J. Phillips as: A New Relation Of The Inner-Part of The Grand Seignor’s Seraglio, Containing Several Remarkable Particulars, Never Before Expos’d To Public View bound with A Short Description of all the Kingdoms Which Encompas the Euxine and Caspian Seas, Delivered by the author after Twenty Years Travel Together with a Preface Containing Several Remarkable Observations concerning divers of the forementioned countries. 1677. R. L. and Moses Pitt.
This post is part of a series of primary source materials illustrating how Europeans perceived, reported, and discussed female homoeroticism in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to early 18th centuries. I’ll give a larger context for why this is a period of interest for European interactions with a non-European, non-Christian culture that could not be dismissed easily as not being of equal power an importance to their own. Attitudes toward, and practice of homosexuality was far from the most noteworthy difference that these reports covered, but it’s the one of interest to us within the scope of this Project. I’ll be presenting the descriptions from ambassadors, travelers, and others in chronological order of their time spent in Constantinople and other key cities, followed by some additional primary sources that show how the echos of these interactions became part of European myths about lesbianism.
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Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was a French gem merchant and traveller in the 17th century. He traveled extensively for business to Persia and India, making six voyages between 1630-1668. At the request of King Louis XIV of France, in 1675 he wrote up his experiences as Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. While, no doubt, much of Tavernier’s descriptions were based on first-hand experience, his Voyages includes accounts of Japan and Tongking, which he never visited personally, based on second-hand information. Among the trivia of Tavernier’s biography was the acquisition of the “Taverier Blue” diamond that at a later date (and a couple of re-cuttings) was re-named the Hope Diamond.
But our interest falls on a different publication the same year, based on the two visits he made to Constantinople during his first and sixth voyages: Nouvelle Relation De l’intéreur Du Sérail Du Grand Seigneur Contenant Plusieurs Singularitex Qui Jusqu’icy N’ont Point esté mises En Lumiere. Chez Gervais Clouzier, 1st ed. Paris, 7 February 1675. The general fascination with accounts of the Ottoman Empire can be seen in how quickly the work was translated into English by J. Phillips: A New Relation Of The Inner-Part of The Grand Seignor’s Seraglio, Containing Several Remarkable Particulars, Never Before Expos’d To Public View bound with A Short Description of all the Kingdoms Which Encompas the Euxine and Caspian Seas, Delivered by the author after Twenty Years Travel Together with a Preface Containing Several Remarkable Observations concerning divers of the forementioned countries. 1st English Edition, R. L. and Moses Pitt, 1677. The text I used is from a 1678 reprinting of the English translation, which is available at Archive.org.
Excerpts from Tavernier’s account are discussed in Traub 2002 and Donoghue 1995 (who quotes a 1684 edition).
The excerpts included below are:
Tavernier provides a detailed description of the household of the Grand Seraglio, with all the various functions, officers, and activities. Within this, chapter 17 (p.619 of the Archive.org pdf) concerns the women’s quarters. He also extensively describes male homoerotic activity within the court, noting that it is regulated for those of lesser status as part of general controls on behavior. It is telling that Tavernier explains how even his primary contact for information about the Seraglio (which can refer to the entire palace, not necessarily specifically the women’s quarters) “could give me no certain information of [the women’s] quarter of it.” Which necessarily raises doubts about how accurate the information he provides can be. In this context, it’s noteworthy that the two specific references he makes to lesbian activity are echoes of anecdotes previously published by others.
I Make a Chapter by it self of the Appartment of the Women, only to entertain the Reader, with the impossibility there is, of having a perfect knowledg of it, or getting any exact account, either what the accommodations of it are; or how the Persons, who are confin’d therein, behave themselves. There is not in all Christendome any Monastery of Religious Virgins, how regular and austere soever it may be, the entrance whereof is more strictly forbidden to men, than is that of this Appartment of the Women: insomuch that my white Eunuch, who has supply'd me with so particular a description of the inner part of the Seraglio, could give me no certain information of this Quarter of it, where the Women are lodg'd. All I could get out of him, was, That the Doors of it are kept by Negro-Eunuchs, and that, besides the Grand Seignor himself, and sometimes, the Physician, in case of great necessity, there never enters any man into it, no nor Woman, besides those who live in it, and they are never permitted to go out of it, unless it be in order to their confinement in the Old Seraglio. But we must except, out of that number, the Sultanesses, and their Maids, or Ladies of Honour, whom the Grand Seignor allows, when he pleases, to come into the Gardens of the Seraglio, and whom he sometimes takes abroad with him, into the Country; yet so as that they cannot be seen by any person whatsoever. Four Negro-Eunuchs carry a kind of Pavilion, under which is the Sultaness, and the Horse upon which she is mounted, all save only the head of the horse, which is seen on the out-side of the Pavilion, the two fore-pieces of which, taking him about the Neck, are close fasten'd, above, and below.
Tavernier asserts that the “cucumber anecdote” that he relates is a myth, based on a misunderstanding of the usual method of serving fresh fruits. Given that his anecdote closely matches that in Ottaviano Bon, we have two possibilities. Either Tavernier has adapted Bon’s anecdote (only to contradict it) or the cucumber anecdote was a longstanding trope within Ottoman society (there being almost a century between Bon’s publication and Tavernier’s) that was related to curious travelers (regardless of whether it was believed within Ottoman society itself). In contrast to Bon, Tavernier unambiguously connects the cucumber anecdote to homosexuality, and suggests that both male and female homosexuality in Ottoman society are a consequence of the extreme gender segregation. Tavernier then relates the “old woman falling in love at the baths” anecdote, clearly identifying it as an old story from the time of Suleiman the Magnificent. As we first encountered this story from Busbecq, whose time in Constantinople was during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, either he is taking the story from Busbecq or the specific dating of the anecdote was part of its transmission to him. Although many specific details in Busbecq’s and Tavernier’s accounts match up, the two narratives are structured differently and Tavernier has fewer specifics. This could be consistent with oral transmission of a historic anecdote, but the exact relationship between the two accounts with regard to provenance cannot be known for certain.
Besides these things, which may be positively known, concerning the Appartment of the Women, in the Seraglio, it may well be imagined, that the embellishments of their Lodgings are answerable to those of the Grand Seignor, since it is the place where he passes away the most divertive part of his time. It is also not to be question'd, but that it has its Infirmary, its Baths, and the other accommodations and conveniences, that can be wish'd for. It may also be conjectur'd, That there is, in this Quarter, an observance of the same regulations, as there are in the Chambers of the Ichoglans: That some of the more ancient Maids are Mistresses over the Younger ones, and are, night and day employ'd in observing their actions, and that their unvoluntary restraint forces them to the same unseemly actions amongst themselves, as the brutish Passions of those Young Men engages them in, whenever they can find the opportunities to commit them. And this presumption has no doubt given occasion to the Fabulous Story, which is related of their being serv'd up with Cucumbers cut into pieces, and not entire, out of a ridiculous fear lest they should put them to undecent uses: they who have forg'd the Story not knowing, that it is the custome in the Levant, to cut the Fruit a-cross, into great thick slices, as I shall make it appear in the Chapter, where I treat of their Gardens. But it is not only in the Seraglio, that that abominable Vice reigns, but it is predominant also in the City of Constantinople, and in all the Provinces of the Empire, and the wicked Example of the Men, who, flighting the natural use of Woman-kind, are mutually enflam'd with a detestable love for one another, unfortunately enclines the Women to imitate them.
Of this, there was a strange instance in the time of Solyman the Magnificent. An old Woman was guilty of such an excess of extravagance, as to put on Man's Cloaths, and to give out, that she had bought a Chiaoux’s place, the better to compass her desire, of obtaining the only Daughter of a Trades-man of Constantinople, with whom she was desperately fallen in love, having made fruitless attempts, by other ways, to satisfie her infamous inclinations. The Father, not suspecting any thing of her wicked intentions, and being withal poor, grants her his Daughter, the Marriage is solemniz'd in the presence of the Cadi, and the imposture having been discover'd the very Wedding-night, the old woman was condemn'd the next day to be thrown into the Sea, there to quench the Gomorrhean Inflammations of her lewd desires. This Story is to this day related in Constantinople, and I have had it from several good hands.
These insatiable salaciousness amongst the Women, are the effects and conferences of the same inclinations in the Men; and the Turks are so much the more execrable and abominable as to this particular, the more they are permitted a plurality of Wives.
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