She Ruled the Ottoman Empire for 60 Years — Then They Strangled Her in the Dark

On a night in September 1651, the most powerful person in the Ottoman Empire was hiding in a cupboard. She was around sixty-two years old. For most of the previous half-century she had been the real power in Constantinople — ambassadors reported that if you wanted a decision made, you did not go to the sultan. You went to her. Her name was Kösem. She had entered the palace decades earlier as a slave with no recorded name, and she rose through the one institution that could lift a slave woman to the summit of the state: the imperial harem. She became the mother of two sultans, the grandmother of a third, and the effective ruler of an empire of thirty million people — three times over. She governed from behind a screen, because a woman was not permitted to sit in the council. She made war and peace, controlled the treasury, appointed and dismissed the empire's most senior men, and steered the succession for a generation. She held no office. Every scrap of her power was informal — and that is exactly what killed her. Because when a younger woman climbed the same ladder and got closer to the throne, there was no procedure to remove Kösem. There was only the dark, and the men sent to find her. 00:00 September 1651 02:20 A girl with no name 05:00 What the harem actually was 08:30 The favourite of a sultan 11:00 Regent for a child 14:30 The son who executed his brothers 17:30 The last prince, and the second regency 20:00 Two women, one throne 23:00 Why it ended the way it did This is part of the same story as our episodes on the fratricide law and the Kafes. If you haven't seen those, start there. Sources: Venetian ambassadorial dispatches; Ottoman court chronicles; modern historiography on the Sultanate of Women. New videos every week. Subscribe for the history that was recorded and then left out. #OttomanEmpire #Kosem #History #SultanateOfWomen #Topkapi #DarkHistory #OttomanHistory #HistoryDocumentary #Istanbul #WomenInHistory