Inside the Royal Harems of the Ottoman Empire

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Episode: Inside the Royal Harems of the Ottoman Empire

Host: Dr. Kate Lister
Guest: Dr. Michael Talbot, Professor in Ottoman History, University of Greenwich
Release Date: December 12, 2025

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Overview:

This episode delves into the mysterious, politicized, and much-misunderstood world of the royal harems of the Ottoman Empire. Kate Lister and Dr. Michael Talbot strip away centuries of myth, Orientalist fantasy, and Western media distortion to reveal the brutal realities—and the remarkable political power—of women living within the Sultan’s harem. With humor and sensitivity, they discuss enslavement, sexual politics, unique opportunities for social mobility, and the very real power wielded by figures such as Hurrem Sultan during the era known as the Sultanate of Women.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Ottoman Empire: Context and Misperception

[03:26–07:21]

• Dr. Talbot describes his path to Ottoman studies, sparked by a sense of the empire as a Western “blind spot.”
  • “Why is it we don’t know anything about them? Why aren’t we taught about them? It’s a strange thing.” – Dr. Michael Talbot [04:08]
• The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) was a global power, spanning three continents for over 600 years.
• Western historical focus often skips the Ottomans, despite their influence on and interaction with the Roman, Mongol, Greek, and British empires.
• Western perceptions remain skewed by Orientalism, propagated especially by the Victorians:
  • “The theorist Edward Said called [it] Orientalism… sexuality is a huge part of it, either hypersexuality or repressed sexuality, but it’s also linked to power.” – Dr. Talbot [07:51]

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2. Orientalist Myths Versus Historical Reality

[07:21–12:03]

• Persistent tropes: the “hyper-erotic” harem vs. the “sexually repressive” East.
• Disney’s Aladdin is cited as a recent example steeped in these stereotypes:
  • “It’s barbaric. But hey, it’s home.” – Kate Lister quoting Aladdin [10:51]
• Harems did exist, but not at all like the paintings and 19th-century Western fantasies.
  • “The harem is a crucial institution to the state... It does not exist in the way that it was fantasized about by Western writers and artists.” – Dr. Talbot [11:42]

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3. The Realities of the Harem: Institution & Structure

[12:03–16:44]

• The term “harem” derives from a root meaning “forbidden” or “bounded”; access was rigorously restricted.
• Western men were strictly forbidden entry; rare exceptions for Western women (e.g., Mary Wortley Montagu).
• Early harems included royal wives from political alliances, but after 1481 (Mehmed the Conqueror’s reign), the harem was populated almost exclusively by enslaved women.
  • “Almost all of the enslaved women who serve as concubines within these households are white. So you have to be rich to be able to afford them.” – Dr. Talbot [15:18]
• Most concubines came from the Black Sea region, Caucasus, or were taken as war spoils or by corsair raids.

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4. The Nature and Function of Slavery in the Ottoman Empire

[18:39–23:12]

• Ottoman slavery resembled the Roman system more than chattel plantation slavery; enslaved people could wield enormous power.
  • “The most important people in the Ottoman Empire, apart from the sultan, are enslaved people.” – Dr. Talbot [19:36]
• The devshirme system forcibly conscripted Balkan Christian boys for military and administration.
• All imperial women, including the most powerful, began their palace lives as slaves.
• Eunuchs (often trafficked from Egypt and Central/East Africa) administered the harem and wielded significant political influence.
  • “Some of the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire are the chief black eunuchs... Not a life... any of them would have chosen.” – Dr. Talbot [22:40]
• Sexual exclusivity was expected; the sultan’s property included sexual rights over enslaved women.

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5. Life Inside the Palace Harem

[23:12–29:29]

• The palace harem housed hundreds of enslaved women; only a few would ever interact sexually with the Sultan.
  • “A lot of it is luck that you’re at the entertainment in his private chambers and he likes the look of you.” – Dr. Talbot [25:14]
• Women took on roles such as dancers, musicians, and teachers.
• Bearing a child for the Sultan elevated a woman’s status dramatically and removed her from the “waiting pool.”
• Under Islamic law, children of the sultan and his enslaved concubines were legitimate.
• The wife/concubine distinction was blurred: favorites (Haseki) held immense power, but formal marriage (with its rights for women) was rare, to avoid legal complications.
  • “You can’t really have a woman coming and divorcing the Sultan. So it would be a bit awkward...” – Dr. Talbot [29:02]

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6. The Sultanate of Women & Notable Figures (Hurrem Sultan/Roxelana)

[29:29–36:28]

• Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana) was the first and most famous favorite, transforming the role of women in the harem into one of genuine political power.
  • She moved the harem into Topkapi Palace, giving women proximity to the Sultan and his council.
  • “She can push for [appointments or favors]... it’s a huge power play on her part.” – Dr. Talbot [31:36]
• Women received training in literacy, art, and performance to converse and entertain at court.
• “Sultanate of Women” (1534–early 18th century): period during which favorites and, especially, Queen Mothers (Valide Sultan) often orchestrated policy, served as regents, ran patronage networks, and built major social works.
  • “Some of these women not only act as senior advisors, but... regents to their sons.” – Dr. Talbot [34:03]

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7. Intrigue, Social Mobility, and the Harem’s Political Complexity

[36:28–38:55]

• Ultimate ambition: to become Queen Mother. Being a favorite was powerful, but unstable—only the Sultan’s mother had near-unchallengeable influence.
  • Hurrem engineered the demise of her stepson Mustafa to secure succession for her own son.
• The harem was rife with intrigue: “It must have been bitchy as hell.” – Kate Lister [38:18]
• Power plays could also be fatal for eunuchs and concubines; court intrigue regularly led to murder.

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8. Life for the Majority: Beyond the Power Players

[40:52–43:09]

• Most harem women, and even eunuchs, did not attain power; many simply faded into the palace’s domestic machinery.
• Some were freed, especially after a sultan’s death; others married staff, or remained servants.
• Chief eunuchs could also rise to astonishing heights of wealth and influence; those who failed to gain favor remained teachers or caretakers.

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9. The Decline and Abolition of Harems and Slavery

[43:09–46:46]

• Women’s formal political power declined after 1715; state institutions moved away from palace-centric governance.
• Slavery, especially of women from the Caucasus and Black Sea, persisted into the late 19th century, only formally abolished in the early 20th.
• Official laws and the closure of slave markets often just drove the institution underground; not all slaves were immediately freed.

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10. Gender, Sexuality, and Same-Sex Relationships

[46:52–52:03]

• No institutional harem for women (i.e., women with male concubines); harems were deeply patriarchal in structure and justification.
• Attractive young boys were sometimes retained as dancers, reflecting complex and fluid Ottoman sexual norms for men.
• Lesbianism was less discussed or codified, but some evidence (e.g., the poet Leyla Hanım) does exist.
• Legal and religious frameworks privileged “making babies” (with women), and same-sex relationships—even with enslaved men—were technically illicit, never formalized into a “harem” institution.

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11. Wrap-Up and Resources

[53:16–53:39]

• Dr. Talbot shares resources:
  • University of Greenwich website for bio and contact.
  • Offers reading list for deeper study.
• Dr. Lister teases future episodes and encourages listener feedback.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Orientalism and Persistent Tropes:

  • “It’s a way that… people, including in our own times, have used to explain why the west… has risen to supremacy and why the formerly powerful Ottomans… lost their power… sexuality is a huge part of it.” – Dr. Talbot [07:51]

• On the Closed Nature of the Harem:

  • “The whole point of the harem is that it’s a closed off institution… out of reach to everyone who isn’t the responsible male of that household.” – Dr. Talbot [12:06]

• On Social Mobility Through Slavery:

  • “Your chances of social mobility as a peasant from Yorkshire are zero… whereas in the Ottoman Empire, you could be… the favorite of the Sultan within 30 years.” – Dr. Talbot [33:15]

• On the Paradox of Power and Enslavement:

  • “The risks come with reward. If you were the chief black eunuch… you were one of the most powerful people in the empire.” – Dr. Talbot [42:40]

• On Gendered Double Standards:

  • “If you said to any woman, you can have 400 virgins… That’s just a nightmare situation!” – Kate Lister [52:03]

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Useful Timestamps

• 03:26 — Start of main discussion, Dr. Talbot’s introduction
• 05:33 — Overview of the Ottoman Empire’s span and power
• 07:21 — Orientalism and Western misunderstandings
• 11:34 — The harem as an institution, not Western fantasy
• 15:18 — Racial and economic dynamics of the harem
• 19:36 — Enslaved people as the Ottoman ruling elite
• 23:32 — How Ottoman harems functioned
• 29:29 — Legal status and politics of favorites
• 31:36 — Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana) revolutionizes the harem’s role
• 34:03 — The Sultanate of Women and female regency
• 40:52 — The fate of most harem women
• 43:09 — Changing roles and abolition of the harem
• 46:52 — No harems for women or queer equivalents
• 53:16 — Recommendations and listener resources

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Takeaway

This episode dismantles centuries of Orientalist myth, revealing the Ottoman harem as a space of both deep oppression and astonishing female power and agency. What emerges is a complex, sometimes contradictory story: the harem as a locus of enslavement, but also as a unique avenue for political ascension and generational change within one of the world’s great empires.

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Recommended for:
Listeners interested in women’s history, sexuality, power, Ottoman politics, or the dismantling of romanticized “exotic” historical narratives.

Transcript

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[Dr. Michael Talbot]

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[Kate Lister]

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[Kate Lister]

Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello. Welcome back. It's lovely to see you again. But before we can continue together, I do have to give you the fair dues warning. Kate. What's a fair dues warning? Well, it's the warning that we have to give you to let you know that this is an adult podcast broken by adults to other adults about adult things in an adultery way, going around subjects. You should be an adult too. And once you've heard that little lot and you keep listening, if you get upset, well, fair dues, that one's on you. We did tell you. Right, on with the show. Well, hello again, Betwixters. You join me in 16th century Istanbul, deep in Topkapi palace at the heart of the Ottoman Empire. And we've got everything here. This is a self contained city with its own kitchens, baths, schools, gardens. And its own harem. Of course it does. Within this hidden world are hundreds and hundreds of women, most of whom are enslaved. And they are here to service one man, the Sultan. But who are these women? Where did they come from? What goes on inside these walls when they're not seeing the Sultan? Well, let's do some sneaking around to find out more. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Many of you have asked and we are only too happy to respond. In today's episode, we are finally taking you in inside the royal harems of the Ottoman Empire. And wow, the Ottoman Empire really is something of a blind spot in Western understanding. And it was around for a hell of a long time, you know, from the 13th century until the 20th century. And yet it barely gets a look in when we're talking about historical fiction or dramas, at least in the West. Why would that be, I wonder? Hmm. Well, today we are bringing it front and center with the fantastic Dr. Michael Talbot, professor in the history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle east at the University of Greenwich. This was a fantastic episode, if I do say so myself. And so rest assured, we will be Coming back to the Ottomans in the future. But without further ado, let's cr. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Michael Talbot. How are you doing?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I'm fine, thank you. How are you doing, Kate? You're right.

[Kate Lister]

I'm really excited to talk to you because Ottoman Empire, your specialty, that's not a history I know a whole lot about. Obviously, I've heard of it, Ottoman Empire, but I've not researched it. I don't know very much about it at all. Can I ask you as a starter question before we get going on harems and empires, how did you come to study this?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I think I've been interested in the Middle east for as long as I can remember, but I've really started getting interested in the Ottomans when I first visited Turkey. So I traveled there when I was much younger. And I also was intrigued by this fact that I didn't know that much about them. And I'm a proper history geek. Right. I mean, I've loved this stuff since I could read, but I just didn't know anything about them. And then I started to learn, you know, they controlled parts of Europe and Africa as well as parts of Asia for 600 years. And why is it we don't know anything about them? Why aren't we taught about them? It's a strange thing. So I just became obsessed with them, and I've been obsessed with them ever since.

[Kate Lister]

It's a good question, because there are many empires. We know, obviously, Roman Empire, everyone knows about that one. The Greeks had a crack as well. British Empire, Mongols, people know about that one. Ottoman. That doesn't seem to register with a lot of people. I don't recall any, like, historical drama reenactments of Ottoman Empires or.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

You need to watch some more Turkish dramas. They've got loads of them, loads of them. Turkish costume dramas, they're brilliant. But the empires that you mentioned, right, they all interact with the Ottomans in one way or another. So the Ottomans are, in a way, a product of the Mongol invasions. They are a successor to the Roman Empire. They call themselves the successor to the Roman Empire, and they last until the British Empire. So they're this sort of really important node in this global history of empires, and we should know more about them. And that's my job.

[Kate Lister]

I guess that's why you're here. And we're so glad that. But for anyone listening, that's knowledge of Ottoman empires is largely based on furniture. I'm thinking I've got, like, an Ottoman that's Probably not the same thing. What period, what period of time are we talking about? You said it's modern day Turkey. What chunk of time are we looking at?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

So the empire's generally agreed to have started around 1299 and lasts until 1922. So if we talk about British history, we're saying basically the reign of Edward I up until George V, it's this huge span, one family ruling over the empire itself changes. So it starts off as this very small principality almost in what's now northwest Turkey, on the edge of the Byzantine Empire. So this successor state to the Roman Empire, and on the edge of the Islamic world on the other side. And within a century of its foundation in 1299, it expands at the expense of the Byzantine Empire into southeastern Europe, into the Balkans. A century after that, its conquest take it to the Middle east, to North Africa, to the Red Sea. At its height, it has territory that covers around a third of Europe. It covers the whole of the Middle east, from Iran to Algeria, North Africa. It contains parts of East Africa. At one point, they even have a crack at Indonesia, like, and this is in the 16th century, its height. And then as the empire sort of changes and as the world changes, their military power isn't as strong as it had been, is unable to conquer as much as it had. And then the Europeans start to get their weapons sorted out. And so really from the 18th century onwards, the empire starts to lose territory in Europe first, then in the Middle east. And by the end of the 1920s, it's left with basically the same territory it started as in this tiny corner of northwest Turkey. So its story is long and complicated. And we won't try and do it, I don't think, in a podcast like this. But it basically, because of its nature, its length and its geographic span, it covers so much of the human experience and it covers so much of global historical importance, which is why I'm so passionate about speaking about it.

[Kate Lister]

I suppose for a historian like you, or any historian that's working with non European sources, you've got to try and push past that overly romanticized image, what the theorist Edward Said called Orientalism, that largely, the Victorians, again, our favorite, did, did a real number on it. If they. That it becomes this, like, you know, Arabian Night, eroticized smoke and incense and, you know, all of that kind of stuff just. Is that difficult for you to work with?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

It is difficult. It's amazing how powerful those narratives are, even for people who don't really have a direct exposure to them, like I still have when I go to speak in schools. I have, you know, teenagers speaking about the sick man of Europe. And like, where have they got that from in 2025? I just don't understand it. So, I mean, yeah, you mentioned Orientalism. It's a really powerful trope and it's a way that not just the Victorians, but people, including in our own times, have used to explain why the west, as in the Christian, white European west, has risen to supremacy and why the formerly powerful Ottomans and other Asian empires lost their power and lost their dominance. And as you mentioned, sexuality is a huge part of it, either hypersexuality or repressed sexuality, but it's also linked to power. So as we'll hopefully touch on imperial women, many of whom, all of whom in many parts of the empire are enslaved women, their experience is linked to this alleged decline in Ottoman power. So the decline of power is a problem of having powerful women. And that's a really powerful idea still, unfortunately. So, yeah, we find that all the time.

[Kate Lister]

That's a really interesting point that you raised, because when it comes to how Western people think of sex and sexuality in the Ottoman Empire, and unfortunately, we are quite lazy when we do this, it's very easy to lump Ottoman India just over there somewhere and kind of like, it's very easy for us to fall into still quite lazy tropes about how either it's hyper eroticized and it's all belly dancers and, you know, harems, or it's completely sexually repressive and nobody is allowed to even leave the house.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

And at VAR are for various people, both of those things can be true. But yeah, to generalize an entire civilization, as I said, that spans 600 years and three continents on that basis, I'm not sure. I mean, lazy. Perhaps some people are lazy about it, but I think it's just a lack of education. I mean, scholarship on Ottoman history isn't always widely available to the public. The books can be expensive. I mean, there are some great books I'm happy to recommend as we go along, some great books on this topic. But yeah, I mean, it's also in popular culture, like my go to reference for a long time and this might be betraying my age a bit, was Disney's Aladdin.

[Kate Lister]

I was just thinking of Aladdin. Yeah, you were saying all of that.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

And you say that now.

[Kate Lister]

Don't embarrass yourself, don't do it.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

But it's the perfect example, as you say, of sort of mashing together Middle Eastern and South Asian Islamic culture all into this really fantastical world. And part of that is a long legacy of these tropes that have been reproduced over centuries and centuries and centuries and are now so deeply ingrained in our culture, like other forms of racism, that sometimes we don't even notice them until someone points them out.

[Kate Lister]

Because Disney did get some pushback for that, even at the time where they.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Well, there was the song, right.

[Kate Lister]

And the beginning there was the song.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

And it's something like, yeah, they'll cut off your head or your something if they don't like a face.

[Kate Lister]

It's barbaric. But hey, it's home.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

It hates home.

[Kate Lister]

When you actually stop and you think about it, that is really bad.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

And that was like, what, one year after the first Gulf War. Right. So it was part of this general milieu of, in the early 90s of a changing relationship with the Middle east and the Islamic world. So, yeah, all of this stuff is tied in. It's all tied in still with us. Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

And one of the things that's inescapable when you think about sex in the Ottoman Empire or anywhere, that again, it's not European. Not you, because you're a historian and you know the nuance. But if you were to just pop vox people on the street, someone might say harem. They might go for that. Because that has been a feature of Ottoman history that the west has been fascinated with for a very, very long time.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, absolutely. And it was a thing, right? We can't.

[Kate Lister]

It was a thing. It's not a myth that. It's not a definite thing. Okay.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

No. So the harem is. Is a crucial institution to the state. It's also a feature of elite households across the empire from its beginning until pretty much its end. So the harem did exist. It does not exist in the way that it was fantasized about by Western writers and artists.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I mean, the art, I mean, you.

[Kate Lister]

Know, it's bordering Pawnee, isn't it?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

It's very Pawnee. But I mean, this is the whole point of the harem, is that it's a closed off institution. It's from a word that kind of means forbidden or restricted or bounded. It's out of reach to everyone who isn't the responsible male of that household. So in the palace's case, the sultan. And that means that because it's. There's no access to it, we, the observers, relied on hearsay as well as fantasy to then create these images that could sell back home.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. Were any of the Victorian art. Because if anyone, for anyone listening you can Google Victorian art harem and see what we're talking about.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

It's good. Like Angra, the French painting. Yes, yeah.

[Kate Lister]

Were they allowed into the harem?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

No.

[Kate Lister]

Then.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

No, no, never.

[Kate Lister]

Just all the fevered imagination of 19th century explorers.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I mean, sometimes on rare occasions, a Western woman might gain access. So the most famous example is Mary Wortley Montague. In the early 18th century, she was allowed in. Well, she was, yeah. She was the wife of the British ambassador in Istanbul, and she was in one of the Grand Viziers harems. And so she was invited in because she's a woman, she's allowed in and she gets entertained. Yeah. And her account isn't, you know, it's kind of sensationalized, and that helps to then confirm some of these myths that people were building and sort of like women lounging around doing nothing.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. Half nude.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah. Entertainments. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, that. No. Men get access. Very occasionally. Women do get access.

[Kate Lister]

What's some of the earliest records that we have of. See, I'm saying harim, and you're kind of saying harim. Which one?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Either's fine.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, either's fine. Okay.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I mean, the Turk, in Turkish, they would say harim.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, okay, I'm gonna say harim. Then from now on, you say how.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

You want to say it.

[Kate Lister]

I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about, even though I don't. Some of the earliest evidence that we have of the harem.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

So the Ottomans aren't the first to have this institution. It's common to a whole bunch of states that precede them, both Islamic and non Islamic. We don't have very good records for the Ottoman state for anything really, before around 1480. But we know by the time the records do emerge that the harem is there as an institution. It starts off a little bit different to the main period that we're going to focus on. So in the early centuries, so the sort of the 14th and the 15th century. Although the Ottoman sultans did have enslaved women within their harem, they also engaged in diplomatic alliances through marriage with neighboring powers, with the Byzantines and with neighboring Turkish states. So it was more common for their consort to be from foreign royalty. That changes by the end of the 15th century. So really after the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror, who dies in 1481, after his reign, it's changed quite dramatically to being almost exclusively populated by enslaved women. And we start to get decent records about that institution from that sort of period. The beginning of the 16th century.

[Kate Lister]

Could anyone Have a harem, or is it just rich? I suppose it's money, isn't it? Can you afford it? Right.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

And in a way, it's also kind of racialized. So enslavement in the Ottoman Empire had degrees of desirability, for want of a better word, with black people from Central Africa at the bottom of the hierarchy, East Africans, sort of like Ethiopia, Chad, Sudan in the middle, and then white people at the top as being the most desirable. And almost all of the enslaved women who serve as concubines within these households are white. So you have to be rich to be able to afford them.

[Kate Lister]

Where were they from then?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

They are from all over the shop. So the most common routes for white women in the 16th, 17th and 18th century is around the Black Sea. So what's now Ukraine and Russia, but also the Caucuses. So Georgia, Armenia, that sort of area. So that's the main source. In earlier periods, they were also taken as spoils of war from Ottoman conquests in Europe. So from places like Hungary and Serbia, Austria, there was another route that came from North Africa, and they had maritime enslavement, where corsairs would go and raid places, including Ireland and England, and take captives away. And they would be sold in slave markets in.

[Kate Lister]

There could have been a Yorkshire lass in a harem in the Ottoman Empire.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I don't know if they made it as far as York. There are all these tales of English women, and we know that, you know, in North Africa especially, they do appear in slave markets.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Michael after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

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[Dr. Michael Talbot]

It's more along the lines of that Roman system than it is of the plantation slavery that we're more familiar with. And in fact, the most important people in the Ottoman Empire, apart from the sultan, are enslaved people. So all of the imperial women, the military commanders from the from the 14th century, in some sources, the army is recruited as part of the system called the devshirme, which is the gathering of Christian children from the Balkans who are taken from their families, they are taken to the imperial center, they are converted to Islam, and the sort of the weedy ones get trained in administration, the bulky ones get sent to the army, and once in the army they can rise up to be generals, to be pashas, to be viziers. But they started off their lives as enslaved children. So huge amounts of Ottoman elite society can trace their roots to the practice of slavery. And it is everywhere. It's in elite households, it's in galleys, it's in industrial centers. It is a huge, huge part and still comparatively understudied part of Ottoman society.

[Kate Lister]

Isn'T that sort of an estimate that, like, 1 in 10 people in the Ottoman Empire at its height were enslaved? Is that wildly.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, I mean, it's so hard to. We don't really have censuses in that period, unfortunately. We can get some idea from people's wills that we find in the archives as to how many enslaved people, for example, they leave in their legacy or how many they free upon their death. It's a huge percentage. Whatever it is, we're never going to know the numbers. I mean, millions of people across the period of the empire are trafficked into enslavement.

[Kate Lister]

That's one of the things that Mary Beard remember her saying was that slaves could paradoxically be incredibly powerful people because they have, or at least they had close proximity to real power.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah. And that's one of the difficult things, I think, about the way that both the Hiram and its institutions have been approached by historians in the past is that we focus on the success stories, the ones who became the consort of the sultan. We don't focus on the thousands who didn't and who lived a relatively miserable and unknown life in enslavement. And also, there's a sort of barbarity to other kinds of Ottoman enslavement. So, for example, the way in which the harem in the palace is run is by eunuchs. And that practice goes on, really, until almost the end of the empire in the 20th century. And these are huge numbers of boys, mostly from East Africa, eastern Central Africa, sometimes, who are castrated and then trafficked to slave markets and sold to become the overseers of the harem. But paradoxically, by being a eunuch and being able to move between the world of women and the world of men, in the 16th and 17th century, some of the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire are the chief black eunuchs. And that's a difficult story to tell because they become hugely powerful and hugely rich. But it's not a life that I'm sure any of them would have chosen for themselves.

[Kate Lister]

It's also a very, very, dare I say it, male idea to think that just by cutting the. The genitals off someone, there will be no adultery or no love affairs.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Well, yes, indeed.

[Kate Lister]

Well, it's now impossible because the penis doesn't work. Oh, come on. The lesbians are howling with laughter.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I'm sure they are. I mean, there's a whole range of sexual practices in the harem that we'll never know for sure about because obviously they're never recorded. But we can get a sense from being human, the kind of things that probably went on that weren't recorded.

[Kate Lister]

So let's talk about the harem, then, and about these poor young boys that are castrated and trafficked there. But I'm, like, curious as to how this even functioned on an administrative level, because the idea is that you've been enslaved, presumably. Are you supposed to be, like, sexually exclusive to the person who owns the harem? Is that the idea?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, you're their property and you come in. The term that's often used is jarieh, and that is often translated as concubine, because essentially any enslaved female within the household, unless they're owned by the lady of the house, if they're owned by the master of the house, he can do whatever he wants with them sexually. So they might not be formally a sex slave, but they could just be a sort of a domestic worker. But the master of the house would still have the same rights. It is really, really grim. It is really grim. And that is replicated in elite households across the empire. The harem in the palace is different because it's the imperial harem and it's huge. It's home to many hundreds of enslaved women who, in the 16th, 17th century, we could be talking four or five hundred women in the harem at a time. We might talk about the palace in a bit. But if you ever go to Istanbul and you go to the imperial palace, Topkapa Palace, a lot of the harem still isn't open to the public, but it's a huge maze. Like, it's this maze of, like, loads of hundreds of rooms. Just. It's unbelievable, the scale of this institution, and it is an institution in that sort of sense.

[Kate Lister]

My first thought of that is appalling. My first thought is that I couldn't be bothered, like, could you, like, if. Could you be bothered with a harem, like, of hundreds of people that you had to try and deal with?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Well, thankfully, if you're the sultan, you've got people to deal with them for you, like in units. You sort of have the fun bit of it in that sense. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, you can have these hundreds of women, some of whom may never really even see the sultan or have anything to do with him. A lot of it is luck that you're at the entertainment in his private chambers and he likes the look of.

[Kate Lister]

You, so he can just summon people just like, I'll have number two along today, please.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, absolutely. And that will go on until. Or unless you bear a child. Once you bear a child for him, you're kind of removed from that part of the harem and you go into a different area where it's much more tame and domesticized, I suppose. But until that point, you're sort of waiting for your moment. You might never get that moment. You might end up in other roles. So, you know, lots of women in the harem take on different duties. They might become dancers, like one of the most important composers of Ottoman 18th century classical music, Dilhayat, she was an enslaved woman in the harem and she became a court musician and a music teacher instead. So there's different paths that these women might take within the harem, aside from necessarily being a sexual partner of the sultan.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, so it's not just like they would just be hanging around waiting to be summoned, they'd be doing other stuff.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's difficult to get into the mindset, isn't it? But I suppose if you're there, your chance to get into the sultan's bedroom and potentially to bear him a child, that's your way out of that kind of enslavement and into power, into wealth, into prestige. I mean, you're still stuck in the harem, but at least you have your own quarters. At least you have your own respectability, the potential that your child, if it's a male child, could become the next ruler.

[Kate Lister]

So the children are legitimate then?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, it's a really. It's a complicated legal framework, but yet under Islamic law, the children between the master of the house and the enslaved women are legitimate.

[Kate Lister]

See? Okay, that's interesting. What about the wife then? How does this work? Is there a wife that the sultan or whoever has, and then he's got his little harem as an enormous side piece, but it's there. Like, what's this dynamic?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, I mean, the term sometimes used is wife. I tend not to use that because I think it gives the wrong impression. The term in Ottoman Turkish that becomes used in the 16th century is Haseki, which is kind of like favourites, we might translate it as. And the sultan might have a series of 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 favorite concubines because they've borne him a son or because they just get on or he's attracted to them and they occupy a position of supreme prestige within the harem. The most prestigious that you can get, however, is if your son becomes the sultan, you then become the queen mum, the valide sultan. And in the 16th and 17th century, that is at many points the most powerful position in the Empire more powerful than anyone else. Marriage isn't in the sense that we are used to in European royal marriages. It's more about being favorited and getting extra rights and privileges as a result of being that favorite. And that starts in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. And it's his.

[Kate Lister]

What a name.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Wow. Listen, if you're going to be Suleiman, you might as well be magnificent.

[Kate Lister]

Be the magnificent, absolutely.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

So he's stolen from 1520 to 1566 and he's the one who kind of changes things because he falls in love with one of his concubines, a woman named Hurrem Sultan, who in the west they know as Roxelana. You might have encountered her perhaps in some early modern plays and paintings and things, but she becomes the first Haseki, the first favorite. And it's her kind of power that transforms the role of women within the harem to being a really powerful political one within the empire.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, okay. So it's not that there's a wife and the harem is like adultery, it's that they're all kind of his wives, but not. But like he can choose a favourite from amongst them.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, or several favourites. That's right, several favorites. And one of the reasons, I mean, marriage within Islam grants certain rights to women, for example, the right to divorce her husband. So you can't really have a woman coming and divorcing the sultan. So it would be a bit awkward if it was more formalized that way later on. There is a kind of marriage system that's more akin to normal domestic marriage in that sense. But yeah, in this period it is mostly about favourites.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, so how did Roxana, how did she overhaul the role of the harem? I'm interested in what she did.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

So she is an incredible character and there's a really amazing biography of her by Leslie Pierce, one of the greatest Ottoman historians. She's enslaved as a child or a young teenager, probably from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, somewhere in sort of the steppes of, of central Eastern Europe. She comes to the palace and by all accounts she manages to gain the Sultan's. This is Suleiman's eye by her beauty, but also something that's highly prized within the harem, by her intelligence and her wit. There's training that women have to undergo within the palace to make sure that they're of a suitable level to converse with or to be in the presence of the sultans. They get a sort of rudimentary form of education, the same that some of the palace page Boys would get okay. Some of them learn to sing, some of them learn to dance. Whatever she does, she does it really well. And Suleiman appears to fall in love with her now when she becomes his favorite. The harem isn't in the same palace as the sultan. So there's two palaces in Istanbul in the middle of the 16th century. There's Topkapa palace, which is the famous one where all the tourists go. In Istanbul today, that was separate. At that time, it was believed that women shouldn't be near the seat of power. That sort of the Sultan's private life should be kept somewhere else. So they were put on the other side of the city in an older palace. It's Hurrem who arranges for the harem to be moved over to this new Topkapa palace where the new harem is established. And that gives her direct access at all times to the Sultan, but also through her agents and through the eunuchs to the Imperial council that's also based in the palace. So this then allows her to start building up a patronage network of men outside the harem because she has the Sultan's ear. If someone wants a promotion or wants to push a new policy, they can contact her via her agents and she can push for it. So it's a huge power play on.

[Kate Lister]

Her part, that is, isn't it? And you mentioned training there. So I'm trying to, like, get my head around, like, what, again, what the admin of this is. So what age would young girls be enslaved and sent to the harem and then, like, go through some kind of concubine training program, essentially? What would that look like?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, so we're talking, I mean, the eight, the ages vary. It can be sort of young, eight, nine, ten, up until sort of early teens, maybe sort of mid teens at a push. They wouldn't be expected to have sexual relations generally at that point, although it's not unheard of, of course, unfortunately. They would then be trained sometimes by the eunuchs, sometimes by other harem women, by imperial princesses who are also sort of living around in the harem in the manners of being at the Ottoman court. You know, the Ottoman court in the 16th century is the most powerful court probably on the planet. Right. It makes the Tudors look like some provincial wasteland. And if you think about how formal the Tudor court was, or how formal the court of Louis XIV was later, the Ottoman court puts all that in the shadow. It's a very ritualized, formal court, high culture. And so the women are expected at least in the best of their abilities to engage in that. So basic literacy is taught, various forms of art and performance are taught, and this then allows them to enter the sultan's presence and to converse with him and to entertain him.

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Wow.

[Kate Lister]

I want to be careful how I phrase this, because I'm aware that it's all about enslavement and sexual enslavement, and it's all terrible, but it sounds reasonably okay if you have to be a slave. That sounds awful, but. I know.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

But this is the thing. I know what you're getting at, too, and if this is why it's such a hard thing to discuss. I mean, I guess if we're talking about somewhere like England, right, in the 16th century, your chances of social mobility as a peasant from Yorkshire are zero. That's right.

[Kate Lister]

That's what I'm getting at.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah. Yeah. Whereas in the Ottoman Empire, you could be the son of an Albanian pig farmer and you could command the armies within 30 years, or you could be the daughter of a priest from some remote village in Poland, and then you could be the favorite of the Sultan within 30 years. It's an awful process. And again, this is not the life these people would have chosen, but they make the best of that life, I suppose, and can become very powerful from it.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Are there any other examples of women in the harem that go on to become incredibly powerful and influential?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

After Hurrem, there's this period that became known in Ottoman historiography as the Sultanate of Women. And that lasts really from the time of her accession, which is 1534, until the beginning of the 18th century. So most of the 16th, all of the 17th, and the beginning of the 18th century, the Sultanate of Women. And this is where power is exercised sometimes via the haseki, via the favorite, but more often than not by the Queen Mum, by the Valide Sultan. And some of these women not only act as senior advisors, but at various points, regents to their sons. So, for example, Hatij Turhan Sultan, she is the mother of Sultan Mehmed iv, who comes to the throne as a boy, essentially. And so for his entire minority, she's running the show and she's dictating reformist policy. One of her predecessors, Kursem Sultan, she engages in warfare. She demands the Ottoman army go and invade Crete. And it's a whole.

[Kate Lister]

Wow, you weren't kidding. These are powerful women.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

They are super, super, super powerful. And this is done in their own right. And one of the ways that they're able to build this power and they're able to exercise political power is because living in the harem is just a part of their experience. They also have this life outside the harem that they can't participate in directly, but they live in the outside world by proxy. What I mean by that is by becoming the favorite or the queen mom, you become fabulously wealthy, right? This is an empire that controls the gold mines of Egypt and the whole of the Middle East. You know, it's hugely wealthy. So being an imperial woman means that you can get a huge amount of wealth rather than hoarding that wealth. Imperial women, Hurrem, Khercem, Hatijay, Tulhat and others engage in patronage projects for kind of social welfare institutions. So they'll build mosques and soup kitchens and bath houses that cater to the capital but also to the provinces. And then this helps to build up their political cultural capital, which further helps them to then exercise power over things like the bureaucracy and the army. So it's a really interesting way that women who are essentially confined to one space are able to make themselves felt throughout this vast empire.

[Kate Lister]

I suppose the ultimate goal then in this environment has got to be being the Sultan's mum. Because favorites, although they can wield enormous power and there's multiple examples of that happening and still happening to this very day. But favouritism can turn on a dime. Like, it's so like, all right, he fancies you now, but when we think back about our own dating past of all the people that once upon a time we were like, but I love him. And now you're like, oh God, what was I thinking? Like, it turns that quick. So being his mum now, that's harder to get rid of.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

It is. And I mean, Hurrem is probably one of the greatest examples of this. So she becomes the favorite or the chief favorite of Suleiman. But he's already had his kind of first love, I suppose, and his first love gave him a son, Mustafa. And Mustafa was like his old man. He was a talented administrator, he was an excellent soldier, he was popular with the court and with the people. But he wasn't Hurrem's son. And she had her own son Selim, who, you know, by all accounts was perhaps less talented in those areas than Mustafa. I mean, there's all sorts of intrigue and we'll never know the truth. But what we do know is that Mustafa is killed. He's murdered.

[Kate Lister]

Look at that.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yes. And that then opens up for her son Selim to become Suleiman's successor and not Mustafa. There's no. In the 16th century in particular, there's no kind of logic as to who becomes the next sultan. Any son of the sultan could have a crack at it. It's not until much later that they have a system where it passes from brother to brother, then the next generation. So, yeah, your chance of becoming the queen, mom, you're quite right, is, is that's your real shot at power. And so women in Hurrem's case will do anything to make sure that it's their son that becomes the next sultan and they can become the next Valide.

[Kate Lister]

It must have been bitchy as hell.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I can't imagine it, honestly.

[Kate Lister]

I like to think, you know, the sisterhood and would all be supporting each other and cheering each other on, but that's just not what would happen to human nature being what it is. It would be bitchy as hell.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, the harem is big in the palace, but it's limited real estate, so you might want to get some more apartments, but that has to come at the expense of arrival. So how are you going to. So there's a lot, you know, the intrigue is. It's also something that we'll never know in huge amount of detail, particularly in the, in the 16th and 17th centuries. We have some written records of these women by these women, but not of that kind of.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, that level intrigue.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Michael after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

So there are examples of women going on from the harem, but they. They go on to wield enormous power. What about those that didn't do that? What about the ones that didn't give the sultan the sun and the ones like, is there a retirement program for the harem? Is there, like, where, where do you go when you edge out of this? What's the. Like, what happens to them?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Sometimes we'll never know because their lives aren't recorded in the same detail.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

If nothing's going to happen, sometimes what can happen is they can be married off to some of the enslaved men within the court. So the pages and sort of those sort of court officials on the other side of the wall, sometimes they might be freed, particularly in a case of a sultan who's just passed away. It's a very high charitable act in Islamic law to free slaves, particularly if they have converted or are going to convert to Islam. So some of them might be freed, but a lot of them sort of just disappear into this huge palace complex and will end up with lives of domestic servitude of various forms. So. Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

Was it the same with the eunuchs? Did. Did any of them, like, make it? And. And conversely, what happened if they. If they didn't?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, well, I mean, lots of them do make it. As with other political positions within the Ottoman Empire, making it can be a deadly business. So Qosem Sultan, who I mentioned earlier, the one who started this war with Crete, she gets killed by an angry mob of soldiers because they're angry with her power. Some chief black eunuchs are also killed, assassinated, murdered in political rivalries. But the risks come with reward. Right. If you were the chief black unit, particularly sort of in the 17th and the 18th century, again, you were one of the most powerful people in the empire. You were able to build mosques, you were able to build soup kitchens.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

You were able to build your own network of patronage. The ones that didn't make it, they're stuck in the palace teaching elocution lessons to these slave girls from Poland and Russia. And it's a more anonymous life. It's perhaps because there are fewer of them. There is a better sort of chance of a decent outcome for the eunuchs. You know, they have a purpose. They always have a purpose. There's always going to be women there. Whereas for the women, if they don't meet the soldier's eye and they don't fulfill the sexual function, then another life awaits them.

[Kate Lister]

That's that out on your ear. Sorry, love. Oh, God. So when do we start to see the decline of this institution, then?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

So the power of women really starts to change at the beginning of the 18th century. So the last really powerful one is Gurna Sultan. She's sort of the Valide Sultan of Sultan Mustafa ii and Ahmed III. So she dies in 1715. So that's the end of really the powerful women. After that, the Ottoman Empire starts to change in its nature. So there's this big war with the Europeans that starts with the siege of Vienna in 1683, that ends in 1699 with an Ottoman catastrophic defeat. And it really causes some soul searching and some changes in how the state is run. So, in part, the change in the role of women is reflective of that. The state administration becomes more professionalized and moves away from the palace a little bit. That's for the women. I mean, the Valide Sultan remains a powerful woman. There is still the system of hasekis of favorites. So that continues all the way until the 1920s, with the last sultan, who leaves in 1922. But for enslavement, that starts to change. As with other places in the world, sort of the middle of the 19th century, the 1830s onwards, is when slavery as an institution starts to be increasingly challenged within the Ottoman realms. It doesn't end, though. And I think it's important to note that, you know, slavery in different forms, as in. In different parts of the world that engage in abolitionist initiatives, often just changed in nature. So this shade in. In women from the Black Sea and from the Caucasus, for example, example, that goes under a profound change. So, first of all, the main supplier for the Ottomans was their sort of subject state in the Crimea, the Crimean Khanate that's conquered by Russia in 1783. So that cuts off that supply. So the Ottomans then look towards the Caucasus, an area called Circassia, sort of where Georgia is, above where Georgia is now. That area undergoes invasion by Russia across the middle of the 19th century and ethnic cleansing, and genocide, meaning that hundreds of thousands of Circassian refugees flood into the Ottoman empire in the 1860s and the 1870s. It's from these populations that this trade in enslaved concubines continues and will continue at least into the 1890s. It's not formally officially said to have stopped until 1909. I mean, there's lots of laws, right? So, I mean, the slave market in Istanbul is shut down in 1847. There's a whole bunch of laws banning the Mediterranean slave trade, the Circassian slave trade, the African slave trade between 1847 and 1857. There's another law in 1889. They sign up to the Anti Slavery Initiative in 1890. But all this does really is it pushes things under the radar. Abolishing slavery does not mean that all enslaved people are freed on abolition. And so many of the women who were still enslaved at the time of informal abolition in the 1840s and the 1850s remain enslaved in some cases until they're freed under the New Republic in 1924. It's still there as an institution. And it's not just women who are enslaved. There's all different kinds of enslavement that continues into the 19th and in some cases the early 20th century.

[Kate Lister]

So the Ottoman Empire is around doing its thing for 600 years.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, 600 years.

[Kate Lister]

600. And in all of that, I think I know what you're going to say to this one. And in all of that time, was there ever a harem for women? Did that ever happen? Was there ever a sultana somewhere went, I'll have one of them, thank you very much.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

No, I mean, there are enslaved men who perform a kind of role like that, but as dancers, so they're called kerceks. And they're not really for the imperial women. They're for the benefit of the sultan. So Ottoman sexuality is a whole different podcast, I think, but it's complicated. And Ottoman sultans can like men and boys as much as they can like girls and women. So there are sort of these, these sort of nubile boys who are able as long as they are clean shaven and youthful looking. I know, I know.

[Kate Lister]

No, but it's, it's just like, it's horrendous. I'll preface everything by saying it's horrendous, but just, just looking at it is. You see that all over the place. It's this sex with men is fine as long as the, the one who's bottoming, quote unquote, is basically a proxy woman that they have to be young, they have to be clean shaven, they have to look feminine, and it's the youth that's a part of that you don't tend to get. Or at least I'm sure it'll be somewhere, but I can't think where it is. Like this idea that it's all right, just have sex with. With another bloke, that you're both of the same age and that you've both got beards and that you go to the pub for a pint afterwards. It's not that.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I mean, we do have some instances of that. I mean, one of the most famous ones is Mehmed the Conqueror, Mehmed ii, who fell in love with Vlad the Impalers younger brother Radu. And we don't know if they actually sort of engaged in sexual activity. But some of the poetry that Mehmed wrote for him is filthy. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, really, really filthy stuff. So I like that. Yeah. So although the. The new bar boy thing was a really important part of Ottoman sexuality, there is definitely other kinds of male. Male relationships.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

And in terms of women, we do, you know, we don't have that many examples for unfortunately obvious reasons about lesbians, partly because Ottoman culture just didn't recognize them as a thing. But we have some. For example, there's a poet from the Beginning of the 19th century, Leila Hannam, who seems to be, from her poetry, in love with women and has sexual relationships with women. She refuses her marriage. So what she represents, a really important, interesting period in sort of late 18th, early 19th century Ottoman history is this sort of really interesting changing of role for women outside the palace. She's an elite woman. She's not in the palace, but she sort of defines herself by casting off the expectations of male society and going off and doing her thing. And she expresses that in her poetry by taking new poetic forms and rhythms and meters. And so these women are there. They didn't have harems, unfortunately for the story here, or fortunately, I suppose, but, you know, these sorts of relationships do exist. And of course, in a place like the Harem, where hundreds of women are enclosed with each other for years, it's gonna happen, innit? It's gonna happen.

[Kate Lister]

It's gonna happen. It's interesting that lesbianism rarely gets a look in the writers, although there was. There was a book I was reading recently about the history of lesbianism in the Islamic world. And there does seem to have been some acknowledgement of this behavior, even though they don't really understand it. There's lots of reference to grinding and.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Tomatoes, which use the word rubbers.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, rubbers that's the one. Rubbers grinding, all this kind of stuff. And there was one writer whose name completely escapes me. He describes it as they're clashing shields instead of a shield and a sword. And it's this kind of. Again, back to that anathema effect. But they don't have a penis. What on earth are they doing?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Absolutely. No, there definitely are mentions of them. I mean, but the, the idea that that would constitute sex for an Ottoman male is just beyond his imagination.

[Kate Lister]

Whatever they're doing is. It's just jolly japes and it's not, it's not proper. Proper sex. Did, did we have any gay harems then? Is. I know that that's a huge question. Or is it always women?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, it's always women within the harem. And that's because the harem is defined by genitalia essentially. So yeah, any, any man who's not an immediate relative, like a boy of the sultan or the sultan himself, they can't come anywhere near it. So this doesn't mean to say that the sultan wouldn't take sexual advantage of his enslaved.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Men as he would with his enslaved women. And that same thing would go for other elite households too. But no, there's no formal harem. Partly, also because there's a legal justification to some extent making babies in it. It's making babies, but also, you know, when the Quran was written, just like when the Bible was written, slavery was normal and it's included as part of the legal system, you know, with rights and obligations for, for slave owners and, and for enslaved people. But yeah, so enslaving women and using them sexually isn't such a big deal. Whereas having relations with a man regardless of their age is technically breaking the law. It's technically adultery and sex outside marriage. So you would never have something formal for that. So it's all kind of hush, hush it, isn't it?

[Kate Lister]

I think the, even the concept of a harem is, is it's very, very male sensed. I think if you said to any woman, you can have 400 virgins to do some. That's just a nightmare situation. That's just. What on earth would you do with that?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Well, I mean, the paranoia of the Ottoman Empire is always the end of the dynasty. I mean, there's several periods where, you know, particularly in the 18th century, where we have some aging sultans who aren't as virile perhaps as they might have been in previous generations. And so it's important to have lots of options because I suppose it is I suppose if there's no. Because the idea, you know, this empire is so tied to that one family, to that one dynasty, there's no idea of what happens next. There's no alternative.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, I just, I'm just thinking of just like if you said like 400 male virgins all squeaky voiced and spotty faced and just some people would enjoy that.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

I don't know.

[Kate Lister]

Hello? Oh God, this is awful. It's just a fleet of sexual incompetence. What on earth am I supposed to do with this? Oh, Michael, you have been so fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and they should and your work, where can they find you?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Oh, I'm online in various places. University of Greenwich in London. So you're welcome to have a look at my, my website and have a look there. And I'm also happy to send in a little a reading list to share if.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, please do. Yes, people always want book recommendations. And will you come back and tell us more about, about this fascinating history?

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Listen, whenever you want me back, I will be here.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you so much. You've been marvelous.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Thank you.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Michael for joining us. And if you like what you heard, please do give us a review a like and follow along. Wherever it is you get your podcasts, it does actually really help us. And coming up we've got an episode on the sex life of Freud. Oh, how very Freudian. And another which revisits a feature favorite episode from earlier this year. And we will be asking who was the Virgin Mary? Essential information just in time for Christmas. And if you would like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email [e-mail] this podcast was edited by Tim Arstel and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again. Betwixt the Sheets the History of Sex Scandal in Society. A podcast by History Hit foreign.

[Dr. Michael Talbot]

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[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Huh, that sounds easier than I thought.

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[Dr. Michael Talbot]

Yeah, I do now. Where did I put my keys?

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