This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of

IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.

On the night of September 2nd, 1651, the most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire found herself afraid for her life.

Just on the other side of the doors of her apartment, her 300 armed Janissaries, the troops of the Sultan, were attempting to protect her against a troop

of assassins who were led by the chief black eunuch of the imperial harem. When the woman's

chief private guard refused to let the assassins pass, they cut the guard to pieces. The woman, hearing the struggle,

tried to flee through the hidden passageways that connected her rooms to the sultans,

but she didn't have time. She hid in a closet instead, but she made a fatal mistake.

The hem of her dress was peeking out,

barely visible but visible beneath the door. One of the assassins was said to have dragged her out by her braids while she struggled mightily. She was ultimately strangled to death, blood pouring from her

nose and mouth, strangled with either, depending on your source, a cord torn from the curtains

or with her own braids. The death of Quzem Sultan in her 60s marked the end of a political career that had lasted nearly 50 years.

Her long tenure in power began in 1605 when as a young concubine, she gained the title of Favorite, or Haseki Sultan,

a title originally created for Suleiman the Magnificent's wife, Roxalana, the subject of a previous

Noble Blood episode. Qazem held power during a unique era in Ottoman history,

referred to by historians as the Sultanate of Women,

a period that began with the rise of Roxalana

from a concubine to legal wife and influential figure in her own right. From roughly 1534 to 1715,

the concubine's mothers and grandmothers of the Sultan exerted more power over the political

machinations of the empire than ever before. Notably, all of these women

began their lives enslaved in the harem, making their eventual accumulation of wealth and power

all the more exceptional. Kazem Sultan has been called both single-handedly responsible for the fall of the Ottoman Empire

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