Golden Cage
The Ottoman harem was often called "the golden cage". After Ahmed III's reformation of the law of succession to Ottoman throne and decline of sancağa çıkma (system with young princes working as governors of distant cities in order for them to learn how to rule a country), male princely heirs began to live in a part of the palace that was called kafes, which translates as "cage" from Ottoman Turkish. Here the princes had to live in seclusion until they were either executed so as not be a threat to the crown prince, or be released once they became sultans. This change had a very negative effect on quality and abilities of later Ottoman sultans.
Read more about this topic: Imperial Harem
Famous quotes containing the words golden and/or cage:
“Go, throng each other’s drawing-rooms,
Ye idols of a petty clique:
Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
And make your penny-trumpets squeak:
Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
Of learning from a noble time,
And oil each other’s little heads
With mutual Flattery’s golden slime.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
““... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)