I entered the original version of this paper in the novice division in the 2018 St. Eligius Arts & Sciences Competition. In 16th-century Istanbul, names followed religion. Muslims, Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenian Orthodox Christians, and Jews each had their own name pools, with very little crossover even between branches of…
Ottoman Turkey was a formal, hierarchical society in love with titles–imperial titles, noble titles, military titles, religious titles, civil service titles. Alongside this love of titles was a steady downward drift of titles, as people from lower ranks tried to co-opt the status of the ranks above them by adopting…
[Page in progress] Male and female slaves were different–so different that there were different words to refer to them. Male slaves were köle, and female slaves were cariye (pronounced “jariyeh”). Cariye literally means “runner,” one who runs to perform her master’s bidding, but even now it’s synonymous with “concubine.” So…
[Page in progress] To pick a SCAdian name for my 16th-century Turkish persona, I did the geekiest, most time-consuming thing possible: dug up shari’a court records from 16th-century Constantinople and extracted all the female names. The names are solid. The etymologies are not. Abide Adile Alemşah Alime Asiye Atike Ayni Ayşe:…