These names could be borne by any Muslim woman, and did not have any connotation of slavery. Âbide Âdile Alemşah: Ruler of the world. From Arabic ʿālam, “world” + Persian shah Amine Asiye Atike Aynî Ayşe: Aisha, Muhammad’s favorite wife. The names Ayşe and Fâtıma were in stiff competition to be…
Istanbul was one of the great crossroads of the world, and Üsküdar was home to a mixture of Muslims, Jews, and Greek and Armenian Christians. The court records occasionally note that a petitioner is Jewish (yahudiye) or Christian (nasraniyye), but more often they simply note that the person is a…
[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:…