A Frenchman at the Court of the Grand Turk, 1728-1729
Eighteenth-century ambassadors to the Sublime Porte found little to admire in Turkey, writes Lavender Cassels, and suffered many humiliations before they reached the Sultan’s presence.
The serail was a self-contained community. According to a contemporary chronicler, the provinces of the Ottoman Empire were required to supply it annually with very large quantities of ‘rice, sugar, peas, lentils, pepper, coffee, sena, macaroons, dates, saffron, honey, salt, plums in lemon juice, vinegar, water melons, 199,000 hens, 780 cartloads of snow, and tin for the cooking pots and fodder and forage for the horses’.1
Thus sustained and provided for, a very large number of officials attended, day and night, to the needs and personal affairs of the Shadow of God on Earth. The preparation of the Sultan’s food was presided over by the Chief Attendant of the Napkin, assisted by the Senior of the Tray Carriers, who had on his staff the Sherbet-maker, the Fruit-server and the Pickle-server. There was a Chief Turban-Folder, and Chiefs of the Laundrymen, Barbers, Bathmen and Bandsmen, each with an appropriate number of assistants.
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