Hey everyone, welcome back to our series, Autumn & Lives, looking at the cast of characters

that make up the Ottoman Empire. We're going to look now at the Unic. This is one of the most

exotic subjects in the Ottoman Empire, like something out of Arabia nights, out of a fairy tale,

set in the Middle East. And Unic's interestingly were at the center of the Ottoman government,

some of them held significant political power. But despite being at key centers of power for

over three centuries, Unic's remained something of a mystery. They always seem to be background

players and sources. They don't get biographical attention like Sultans do, there aren't long

descriptions of them or accounts of their early lives. So they're hard to track down and they're

always mentioned in passing as if they're the furniture of the Imperial Palace. Even though

they're the ones making key decisions when it comes to the Heron, when it comes to how administration

is done, when it comes to how palace court life is conducted. And the palace was the nerve center

of the Ottoman Empire, throughout its classical age. They were key power players, even though we

don't know that much about their backgrounds. But when we read about Unics, it seems like we're

reading about a bizarrely different world that was really at the heart of Istanbul until about

a hundred years ago. Well, let's go back to where Unics are in court life in the Middle East

before the Ottoman Empire. The use of Unics was not just restricted to the Ottoman Empire or

Islamic civilizations. Some people think that using Unics in the Imperial household was something

that the Ottomans adopted from the Byzantines after the conquered Constantinople in 1453.

And the seclusion of women in the Heron was something that mirrored the Byzantine practice of

women's apartments. But really, Unics show up in the great Islamic empires, beginning at least

with the Abbasids in 750 AD. East African Unics seemed to have been particularly popular as Herom

Guardians for reasons that remain unclear, but probably because that was the easiest country to

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