This is an enlarged and revised second edition of the book. It is NOT a novel, but a documentary history. For over seven centuries painters and writers have been fascinated by the non-Christian otherness of the Ottoman Empire and in particular its most notorious institution, the harem. In her carefully researched book, Anna Buxton cuts through the stereotypes and reveals how in an Empire, easily characterized as patriarchal, former Christian women came to exert significant power in day to day government. At the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultans sought dynastic marriages with princesses from older neighbouring royal families in order to enhance their status. These marriages would presage conquest. And when there were no more kingdoms to conquer, procreation was achieved through slaves. This enriched the sultanate gene pool. The Sultanas, whose stories are told in this book, include several Italians, two Bulgarians, two Ukrainians, several French, two Serbians and some Georgians and Byzantine/Greeks. Rising through the ranks of concubines, under constant threats of strangulation and poisoning to themselves and their children, these women came to dictate foreign and domestic policy from behind the throne of their often inadequate consorts and sons. They used networks of agents, including carefully managed Vizier sons-in-law, Jewish money lenders and powerful Eunuchs. Fascinating examples of other contacts include Dona Grazia Mendez Nasi, the head of the Jewish Mendez Bank - the first woman to want to create a Jewish state on the former Jewish lands; her nephew Joseph de Nasi - a banker, a merchant as well as a playboy and spy-master; and Catherine de Medici, who corresponded with several Sultanas. Emissaries of "the Virgin Queen" Elizabeth I came to understand the importance of the harem in gaining significant trading rights. King Charles XII of Sweden, as a guest of the Ottoman Empire for a number of years was also reliant on links to the harem. And throughout, the Sultanas rightly hold centre stage, tightrope walkers over a snake pit.
About the Author: ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anna Ivanova Buxton was born in the town of Burgas, in Bulgaria. Growing up in communism, Anna completed a degree in the Veliko Tirnovo University and later did a post-graduate course in Colchester Institute, followed by an MA in Anglia Ruskin University. After her arrival in the UK in 1980, Anna spent about 20 years teaching in Essex Secondary schools and Sixth Form colleges. She left British education in order to turn the large amount of research materials she had gathered into a book. Anna's first book was about the life of the Princess Kera Tamara - the daughter of Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria, who married Sultan Murad I. This book - "Tamara Shishman and Murad I - an Intimate story of the Rise of the Ottomans and the Fall of the Balkans" was published by Amazon Kindle. (http: //www.amazon.co.uk/Tamara-Shishman-Murad-I-Anna-Buxton-ebook) "The European Sultanas of the Ottoman Empire" is the second edition of Anna's second book. Her next projects will be about the end of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom - "From disunity to disintegration". Anna is also researching the 11th century Kievan Rus Kingdom, in order to write about Yaroslav the Wise and his daughters, queens of several kingdoms. For further information on "The European Sultanas of the Ottoman Empire", please log into www.annabuxton.co.uk.