CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Kovaleva, Daria |
|---|---|
| Title | The Trope of Kyra as a Jewish Female Intermediary in the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Imperial Harem: Theory and Practice, Fiction and History |
| Summary | The thesis problematizes the social category of kyra, which has come to denote in both scholarly and popular literature a Jewish female intermediary, primarily engaged in commercial activities, between the early modern Ottoman Imperial harem and the world outside it. It approaches kyra as a concept and explores its elements – various Jewish women associated with the palace household, the title, and the Jewish harem intermediary – separately on the basis of a careful juxtaposition and dialogue of the already known and previously neglected early modern European, Jewish, and Ottoman narrative sources and archival material. The work argues that the explanatory framework that developed based on the supposed social category of kyra is reductionist because it privileges the notion of mediation while ignoring that Jewish women appeared in the sources in relation to the Imperial harem in other capacities (as palace favorites, healers, etc.) that suggests their more deeply institutionally embedded relation to the palace household. As for the title kyra, the thesis, furthermore, points to the fact that its precise meaning is in fact unclear not only in the sixteenth-century Ottoman palace parlance, but also beyond the Imperial household throughout this period. In addition, the work demonstrates through the juxtaposition of the letters written by a heretofore-unknown Jewish kyra, her female royal patrons, and Venetian diplomatic and governmental officials that the theory and content of the kyra paradigm and articulation of the category as a harem intermediary are based on her professional activities and biography instead of a well-established time-honored palace practice. |
| Supervisor | Krstić, Tijana; Wilke, Carsten |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/kovaleva_daria.pdf |
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