"Observers were also concerned about Suleiman I’s other love, Ibrahim Pasha, whose trajectory in many ways paralleled Hürrem Sultan’s rise to power. Just as her life story puts a face to the idea of the harem, so, too, does Ibrahim Pasha’s biography allow us to see the individual journey of a male slave from obscurity to towering influence. (...)
Christian subjects, captured as prisoners of war, or purchased abroad. The women of his harem were likewise his Christian-born slaves. Suleiman I is remembered for his passion for two of his slaves: for his beloved Ibrahim when the sultan was a hot-blooded youth, and for his beloved Hürrem when he was mature. He was a man dominated by his passions and his loves. Handsome Ibrahim was the Greek slave who entered palace service and became young Prince Suleiman’s intimate friend and companion. Ibrahim Pasha is referred to as ‘the favourite’ for good reason.
He was born a Venetian subject in Parga, opposite Corfu, on the coast of Epirus in northwest Greece. Captured as a young boy and sold into slavery to the household of a wealthy military official, Ibrahim was presented as a gift to Prince Suleiman, who was the same age. Like Hoja and his slave in The White Castle, Suleiman and Ibrahim became inseparable; they were like one person.When Suleiman acceded to the throne in 1520, he appointed Ibrahim chief of the sultan’s privy chamber, guaranteeing him the most intimate access to the most powerful man in the realm. It was reported that they slept together in the same bed.
The following year, appropriating the Roman imperial past by revitalising Istanbul’s ceremonial core, the sultan built Ibrahim Pasha a sumptuous palace on the ancient Hippodrome, Istanbul’s main forum just outside the Hagia Sophia and Topkapı Palace. The large public space became the new site of dynastic celebrations, including Ibrahim Pasha’s two-week-long marriage festival in 1524, replete with the captured tents of the foreign rulers the Ottomans had defeated in combat. He wedded a bride name Muhsine from one of the wealthiest families in the city. Her grandfather was a convert to Islam who had established the first lodge of Rûmi’s Mevlevi order of Sufis in the capital.Yet despite being married and residing in his own palace, Ibrahim sometimes spent the night with Suleiman I at Topkapı Palace. The sultan could sleep at Ibrahim Pasha’s lodgings as well. Like the sultan, Ibrahim Pasha was devoted to beloved boys. A poet poked fun of his devotion with the couplet, ‘It’s not clear who is ruled and who rules these days / It’s a wedding feast, so who is dancing and who plays?’ Although ostensibly concerning a boyfriend of Ibrahim Pasha’s, the poem implies that Suleiman I was under Ibrahim Pasha’s spell. Perhaps this was because Ibrahim Pasha even had a private room in the harem, contrary to normal practice. His presence muddied the architectural and hierarchical distinctions between the inner and outer sections of the palace and among the inhabitants. Ibrahim Pasha, who had had poets executed for accusing him of not being a true Muslim, eventually seemed to overshadow the sultan. (...)
Despite, or perhaps because of, all his successes on military and diplomatic fronts, Ibrahim Pasha was suddenly executed on Suleiman I’s orders during the Ides of March in 1536. After no hint that he was no longer the sultan’s favourite, Ibrahim was strangled in his sleep in his bedroom in the harem of Topkapı Palace after having earlier broken the Ramadan fast with Suleiman I. The man who had been the sultan’s ‘breath and heart’ was buried in an obscure grave. The sultan could promote his inexperienced converted male favourite whom he passionately loved to the highest office in government, bestow upon him an extraordinary income and a magnificent palace to go with it, and even pay for his wedding. He could also murder this slave arbitrarily and without trial to show who was master. Ibrahim Pasha’s ruin coincided with the rise of Suleiman I’s other love, Hürrem, during his mature years.
But rather than castigating the sultan’s Rasputin-like advisor, Haydar, a geomancer whose yearly predictions the sultan kept close in his private bedroom, or Suleiman I himself, most blamed Hürrem Sultan for Ibrahim Pasha’s astonishing fall. It is possible that she had a role in it, jealous of Suleiman I’s affections for his childhood friend and former chief falconer about whom much gossip was spread. Why, they asked, was Ibrahim Pasha allowed to sleep in Topkapı Palace, despite being a grown man? The sultan was supposed to be the only adult male resident aside from the palace pages. Their relations were considered too intimate for two grown men. Before Ibrahim’s murder, Ferhad Pasha—Suleiman I’s sister Beyhan’s husband—had called him Suleiman I’s ‘whore’.
They seem to have violated the convention that powerful men could desire only beardless youths, not other powerful men. Hürrem was worried that Suleiman I loved Ibrahim Pasha more than her. He appeared to have not one, but two favourites."
- taken from the"The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs" by Marc David Baer, the chapter "Suleiman I’s Two Loves In The Palace: Hürrem Sultan And Ibrahim Pasha"
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