(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.