But what was that world really like?įor a woman living in the Harem the only way out was to somehow find her way into the Sultan’s bed and bear him a son. Once the Sultan was the only man – the only complete man – who could pass through its iron-studded doors. ”Harem’ literally means ‘Forbidden’: Forbidden to men. As a man, he was an enigma he conquered all who stood against him with one of the world’s first full time professional armies – yet he liked to write poetry he ravaged half of Europe but he rebuilt Istanbul in marble he had teams of torturers and assassins ready to unleash at a whim – yet history remembers him as a great lawmaker. Suleiman controlled an empire of thirty million people, encompassing twenty different languages. This is the astonishing story of Suleiman, the one they called the Magnificent, and the woman he loved.įrom medieval Venice to the slave markets of Algiers, from the mountains of Persia to the forbidden seraglio of the Ottoman’s greatest sultan, this is a tale of passion and intrigue in a world where nothing is really as it seems. Why then did he forsake his harem for the love of just one woman, and marry her in defiance of the centuries-old code of the Osmanlis? He had everything a man might dream of wealth, power and the choice of hundreds of the most beautiful women in his Empire.
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