Valide Sultan

Valide Sultan ( Ottoman والده سلطان; officially مهد علیای سلطنت / mehd -i ʿ Ulyā -yi saltanat /, the highest cradle of domination ') was the traditional title of the queen mother of the reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

Not only because of the informal power that brought this position by itself, but also because of the official position, which occupied the Queen Mother in the harem, the Valide Sultan was the most powerful person at times after the Sultan throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Especially in the seventeenth century, under a series of sultans who came to the throne as children or were politically disinterested, the respective Valide Sultan, therefore, exercised de facto from power. This period has gone down in history as Turkish women rule.

Whereas in the early days of the Ottoman Empire still marriages for dynastic reasons (such as with Byzantine princesses ) closed, so was the outstanding feature of the later Ottoman marriage system that the original status of the wives of the sultan was irrelevant. It could also involve a simple harem slave from abroad, in which the Sultan had fallen in love and had risen in the hierarchy of the Seraglio. The advantage of this unthinkable for Europe construction, ie a slave as a mother of the reigning sultan, were just the lack of family and dynastic ties to foreign powers and royalty.

This gave opportunity for advancement especially in the West, from fabric for romantic and adventurous legends. The Valide Sultan had in the majority of cases no Turkish background, but were often Circassian, Albanian, Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian, and Greek Osman interior, but also some Italians and French women were among them.