A+ | A wonderful, well written biography about Turhan Sultan who became de facto ruler of the Ottoman Empire. This book gives you an insight to Turhan Sultan’s life as well as her architectural patronage — one of the big indicators of her power and prestige. It goes into how she used her building projects to not only make a name for herself, but also to spread a message to her son and to the people. This book is absolutely well worth the read for any history student or causal history lovers.

(this is a longer version than the one on GR because of character limits)

C-/D+ | A waste of time.

Haseki Hürrem Sultan (or Roxelana, as Peirce annoyingly refers to her throughout the book) was catapulted into the history books after she became Sultan Süleyman’s concubine. Her true name is lost to history; however, she was renamed Hürrem — a name that she used to refer to herself for the rest of her life. Captured and enslaved as a young woman, Hürrem was ultimately brought to the imperial harem, an institution Peirce thoroughly examined in her 1993 book of the same name. In this previous scholarly work, Peirce explains that “the term “harem” did not connote a space defined exclusively by sexuality […] A harem is by definition a sanctuary or a sacred precinct. By implication, it is a space to which general access is forbidden or controlled and in which the presence of certain individuals or certain modes of behaviour are forbidden.” The harem was a political institution in which reproduction was strictly controlled. For women of the harem, political power and wealth came in the postsexual years: after they had given birth to a son, left the sultan’s bed, and established their own households.

I'm going to attempt to keep this review short and sweet for now. Why? Because I read this back in January 2018 (it's December 4th 2018 right now) so until I get a chance to find and review the notes I had made back then to give more in-depth reasons why I am giving this book the grade I'm giving it, this is the review.

B+ | Recommend only if you've read The Imperial Harem by Leslie Peirce AND Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan by Lucienne Thys-Şenocak. This book definitely not a book for someone who hasn't read either one of these books (especially the latter – which I previously reviewed).