They were some of the most powerful men who've ever lived. They waged war, forged peace,

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Hi everyone. Welcome to this bonus episode of the history on plug podcast for the Nolton's

Rangers, the history on plug premium program. We're continuing our series on Ottoman lives,

and now we're going to look at the person of the concubine, the slave girl in the Ottoman imperial

heron that might remain a concubine, but she might become the mother of a sultan. Now to talk

about this issue, we're not just talking about concubines, we're really talking about the role

of women in the Ottoman Empire, and we're probably speaking the role of women in the Middle East.

The images that probably come to mind aren't positive.

Hasn't women completely shrouded in black and forced to walk 10 paces behind their husbands,

resembling the condition for women in Saudi Arabia now, but worse. On the higher end of the

social strata, the numerous wives and concubines of the sultan are locked away in the heron and

forced to attend whatever carnal whims enter his mind. So how true is this image?

Well, in many ways, women had fewer rights in the late medieval Middle East than their European

counterparts. Sharia law allows a man to have up to four wives. Divorce between the two parties

was simple to obtain for a man. All it required was for him to repeat the dictum I divorce you three

times. It was so simple, in fact, that Ottoman court records are full of situations in which

divorce occurred by accident when one member of the party said the statement joking and didn't

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