Staging an Empire: An Ottoman Circumcision Ceremony as Cultural Performance

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses an Ottoman circumcision ceremony for three princes held in the summer of 1530. The event stemmed from a new Ottoman court ceremonial, and its sundry activities, including gift exchanges, mock battles, processions, skills demonstrations, and feasts, were spread over a twenty-day period. These activities enabled individuals and groups within the Ottoman political-military elite, and within the city of Constantinople, to perform their identities and assert their place in the Ottoman social order. The ceremony allows us to discuss the origins and contents of Ottoman ceremonial culture, which borrowed themes and motifs from the Byzantines, the Venetians, and the myriad Turko-Muslim polities with whom the Ottomans maintained intense diplomatic and cultural relations. Next, it highlights the elevation of male circumcision, a fundamental ritual in all Islamic societies, to the status of a major dynastic event that addressed the entire Ottoman polity as well as its competitors in East and West. Finally, it shows how, in early modern societies, public ceremonies served as instruments of governance by creating highly visible, memorable, and relatively participatory events, and by constituting new spaces for political and cultural interactions.