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12 Evrim Türkçelik

and his network . As part of this centralist policy, Metin Kunt argues
6
that there was a tendency to appoint individuals linked to the central
government and close to the Palace as governor-generals or governors
for provincial posts . This tendency is further confirmed by Cornell
7
Fleischer’s assertion that identification with the Palace superseded any
other factor in the promotion expectations of the Ottoman ruling class .
8
As Leslie Peirce has demonstrated in her study of early modern Ottoman
harem, the consolidation of the power of the Valide Sultan (Queen
Mother), the growing influence of the favourite concubine and other
women of the dynasty and the palace officials, as well as the formation
of factions around their figures were among the distinguishing features
of the period . Hence, Pal Fodor has argued that, as a result of the forms
9
of government that Murad III imposed, the Palace or more specifically
the Imperial Harem became the primary decision-making centre and
weakened the Imperial Council by converting it into a sole executive
body . During his short reign, as noted by Baki Tezcan, Sultan
10
Mehmed III continued with these “absolutist” policies of his father in
alliance with his mother Safiye Sultan, the chief white eunuch Gazanfer
Ağa, and their clients in the governing elite .
11
Since its beginning, Halil Pasha’s career seems to have progressed
in line with this dynastic policy of strengthening the absolute authority
of the sultan by creating his own bonds of loyalty and network . Halil
12
Pasha, as most of the Ottoman ruling elite, had made his entry into the
service of the Ottoman dynasty through the children’s levy, devshirme,
at a time not specified, from among the Bosnian subjects of the Ottoman
Empire. He entered the sultan’s household as a page and served as
çuhadar (master of clothes) and silahdar (sword-bearer) in Murad III’s
Privy Chamber (Has Oda) between 1580 and 1584. His connection with
the closest circle of Murad III is revealed when he was appointed in 1584
as Agha of the Janissaries thanks to the recommendation of Doğancı
Mehmed Pasha (d.1589), the first official royal favourite and personal
companion of Murad III, whom Halil Pasha must have known from his

6 B. Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the
Early Modern World, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010, pp. 55-57 and 97-100.
7 M. Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Govern-
ment, 1550-1650, Columbia University Press, New York, 1983.
8 C. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: the Historian Mus-
tafa Ali (1541-1600), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1986.
9 L.P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993.
10 P. Fodor, Sultan, Imperial Council, Grand Vizier: Changes in the Ottoman Ruling
Elite and the Formation of the Grand Vizieral Telhis, «Acta Orientalia Academiae Scien-
tiarum Hungaricae», 47:1/2 (1994), pp. 67-85.
11 B. Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire cit., pp. 103-104.
12 E. Türkçelik, Damad Halil Paşa cit., p. 1638 and 1648.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Aprile 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)