Harems and eunuchs Having two harems isn't bigamy by any chance? Alexander Kumor, Polish aphorist *My dream is a harem with fifty friends and without a single husband.? Sabrina Ferilli, Italian film actress *If the mountain does not go to Mohammed, Mohammed goes to the harem.? Gennady Malkin,

Castration was one of the first surgical operations that began to be performed on a person. As early as 4,000 years ago, the kings of ancient Assyria ordered that their inner circle be stripped of their genitals in order to prevent a violent seizure of power.

Later, priests were castrated. It was believed that if a person serves the deities, then he must lose something important. And what could be more important than the ability to procreate?

In ancient Rome, male power was considered a divine gift, therefore The Romans didn't strip their genitals even slaves. When the empire fell at the hands of the barbarians, Constantinople became the main center of life. This wonderful city mixed European with Asian, here castration was in the order of things.

When the Turks captured the capital of Byzantium in 1453, the Sultan's harem began to receive selected eunuchs straight from Egypt.

Until about the middle of the 15th century, only the testicles were cut off for eunuchs. One day, Sultan Mehmed II noticed that geldings, despite castration, did not diminish their ardor and they still climbed on mares, so he ordered cut off boys' genitals under the root.

The operation was carried out when the applicant for a place in the protection of the harem reached the age of 8. After castration, the children were inserted with bamboo sticks for urination and buried up to their throats in the sand for several days. Not everyone survived, but a better life awaited the strongest.

The first step in the career of a eunuch was a guard post. Having proven themselves in the service, they could become servants, then overseers. The most successful of them became great leaders, acquired their own houses and even got married.

However, women who married rich castrati complained that they were worse than animals in bed.

Prophet Muhammad forbade the castration of Muslims referring to the will of Allah. At first, Christians supplied eunuchs to Istanbul. However, the demands of new sultans grew, the harems expanded, more guards were required. Boys from Africa began to gain popularity.

During the reign of Murad III, the palace served only black eunuchs. The most valuable were the slaves from Sudan, they asked for the most money. Things got to the point that a black became the closest adviser to the Sultan, and the whites were gradually forced out of the environment of the ruler of the Ottoman Empire.

The intermediary between the sultan and the harem was Kizlyar-aga. All the most important information about the state of affairs in the empire passed through this person. The people in this post sold information to European ambassadors and set up ingenious corruption schemes. They also controlled a large part of the property of the lord of the empire, which brought them huge incomes.

Built an interesting career guy from Venice, Gazanfer. As a boy, he was captured by Turkish pirates. Already at a conscious age, he agreed to castration in order to enter the service in the palace of the Sultan. He really liked Sultan Selim, the father of that very Suleiman the Magnificent, who appointed him kapy-agasy - the head of the white eunuchs.

Gradually, Gazanfer gained more and more power. It got to the point that the Sultan began to value his opinion more than the advice of the Grand Vizier. However, their own skin was more expensive. When the uprising of the Janissaries took place, they gave Selim's successor, Murad, an ultimatum: either his life or the life of Gazanfer. The Sultan sacrificed a friend.

Under the influence of the chief eunuch Hadji Mustafa, the young Sultan Ahmed I built in Istanbul the famous Blue Mosque at the Hippodrome Square. Despite the empty treasury after the war with Austria and the peasant uprising.

In the 17th century, eunuchs became so powerful that they could choose who to put on the throne of the Ottoman Empire. Capy-agasy Uzun Suleiman and all killed the regent Kesem Sultan to put on the throne the insane Suleiman II, who spent 39 years in a cage, instead of his brother Mehmed IV.

The very word "eunuch" in Greek means "guardian of the bed." Contrary to current popular belief, eunuchs were deprived not of the penis, but of the testicles. Under certain conditions, eunuchs retained the ability to experience sexual arousal, which allowed them to have sex. But they could not have children under any circumstances. It is this that should be considered the main reason for the procedure of castration. Rulers and nobles similarly saved themselves from the threat of the birth of illegitimate bastard children, while maintaining the purity of the blood. Eunuchs most often guarded the harems of their overlords, put things in order there, dealt with organizational issues, were the only men on its territory. Their work was generously paid, and the risk of having an illegal heir with one of the wives or concubines was reduced to zero.

Voluntary and forced castration

Men became eunuchs both under duress and voluntarily. Many poor families gave their sons to this service. Castration in childhood was somewhat easier to experience, because young men did not fully realize what they were losing. The hormonal restructuring of the body in adolescence occurred differently, the body was rebuilt under changing circumstances, gaining extra pounds. Such voluntary eunuchs were generously rewarded by the rulers who hired them. Over time, they could reach really high positions. In most eastern countries, eunuchs could become financial advisers, military leaders, officials.

There was also forced castration. In China, for example, captured enemies were castrated. In this case, this procedure had two meanings at once. Firstly, castration humiliated the enemy, and secondly, the purity of the nation was preserved, since the castrated enemy could no longer become a father, "spoiling" family tree winners.

In some religious cults, castration was performed as a kind of sacrifice to the deity. The eunuch-monk similarly denied all carnal, sinful thoughts and gave himself completely to religious service.

The institution of eunuchs itself arose among the Persians, Assyrians and Byzantines, a little later it became widespread in China. It was in China that eunuchs formed a real, strong caste that rebuffed any brave man who encroached on them. The Persians and Assyrians have always had a rather contemptuous attitude towards eunuchs, harsh warriors treated them without a drop of respect.

The word "eunuch" comes from the Greek eunuhos- Skopets. The Bible Encyclopedia deduces the meaning of the word "eunuch" from a combination of words meaning "marriage bed" and "preservation", that is, "keeper of the bed." “Although castration was positively prohibited by the law of Moses and castrated persons were not even allowed to appear in the Tabernacle (Deut. XXIII: 1), the encyclopedia reports, but the kings of the Jews considered it permissible for themselves to use the services of eunuchs delivered from other countries. According to Herodotus, in the East there was a custom to castrate prisoners - a very ancient custom, the introduction of which is attributed to Semiramis. Oriental despotism demanded that persons deprived of all human attachments serve in the royal and noble courts. This explains the high position of eunuchs in the eastern courts. ... On ancient monuments, eunuchs can be recognized by the absence of a beard and swollen faces.

Eunuchs have existed since ancient times. George Fraser's The Golden Bough says about eunuchs:

“The Gauls, the castrated priests of Attis, were known to the Romans in the days of the Republic. These eunuchs in oriental clothes, with statuettes on their chests, apparently, were a familiar sight on the streets of Rome. Carrying images of the goddess, they marched through Rome in procession to the music of cymbals, drums, flutes and horns, and amazed by the fantastic spectacle, touched by unbridled melodies, people gave them alms in abundance and threw roses at the image of the goddess and the people carrying it.

... On the Bloody Day, the newly initiated were castrated. Having brought themselves to the highest degree of religious excitement, the priests castrated themselves and threw the cut off parts of the body into the statue of the cruel goddess. Then the severed reproductive organs were carefully wrapped and buried in the ground or in the underground chambers of Cybele, where they, along with the sacrificed blood, were used to call Attis to life and hasten the resurrection of nature, which, under the rays of the warm spring sun, is dressed in an outfit of leaves and flowers. .

... If we accept our hypothesis, then it is not difficult to guess why eunuchs were also assigned to the cult of other Asian goddesses of fertility. These goddesses demanded that the priests, who personified their beloved, sacrifice their reproductive organs to them: before transferring life-giving energy to the whole world, the goddesses themselves needed to be fertilized. The priests of the great Artemis of Ephesus and the priests of the great Syrian goddess Astarte from the city of Hierapolis were eunuchs. The sanctuary of Astarte, visited by crowds of pilgrims, having grown rich on gifts flowing from Assyria, Babylonia, Arabia and Phoenicia, was the most popular in the East at the time of its highest prosperity. The castrated priests of the Syrian goddess were so similar to the priests of Cybele that some confused them. The ceremony of their initiation into the priesthood was similar.

The greatest festival of the year in Hierapolis fell at the beginning of spring, when huge crowds of people gathered to the sanctuary from Syria and the surrounding regions. To the sounds of flutes, drumming, and the cries of eunuch priests who inflicted wounds on themselves with knives, religious ecstasy, like an ocean wave, spread over the crowd of spectators, and many of them did things that they did not even imagine when they went to the holiday. One after another, they threw off their clothes and, with their hearts beating wildly from the music, with their eyes wandering from the spectacle of pouring blood, jumped out of the crowd, grabbed swords prepared especially for this purpose and castrated themselves in front of everyone. The new initiate ran through the whole city, holding a bloody piece of meat in his hand, and then launched it into one of the houses. The inhabitants of the house, which received such an honor, had to give the eunuch a woman's dress and jewelry, which he wore until the end of his life. After the religious ecstasy subsided and the person came to his senses, he must have deeply regretted his act all his life and bitterly mourned the irretrievable loss.

Delivered from carnal desires, the eunuchs used all their strength to prove that physical advantages were nothing compared to the power of the mind. And many eunuchs reached the heights of power.

In Byzantium, eunuchs had great influence, were priests and trusted servants of the rulers, and held high diplomatic and military posts. The Byzantine commander Narses, who expelled the Franks from Italy, was just a palace eunuch.

The Turks in their possessions, for example, in the Balkans, took away boys from the villages and, after castration, placed them in special schools, where they were made into ferocious warriors - Janissaries. The Janissaries (“new army”), who had no offspring and were not attached to anything, were the support of the throne, but over time they formed a special class that had to be reckoned with not only by the enemies of the Sultan, but also by the ruler himself. The Janissaries lived in special quarters, often rebelled, staged riots and fires, overthrew and even killed the sultans. Their influence acquired such dangerous proportions that in 1826 Sultan Mahmud II defeated and completely destroyed the Janissaries.

Eunuchs do not exist in the Islamic tradition, nor do they appear to have existed in the Arab countries at the time of the Prophet. However, this barbaric custom was convenient, and the use of "safe" men as guardians of harems caught on in many countries.

There were times when nature took over the unnatural manipulations of the "healers". The eunuch began to grow a beard, he had to shave in order to maintain his position at court. But this "misunderstanding" was soon revealed, and the eunuch, at best, was expelled from the seraglio. However, smarter eunuchs found ways to hide and at the same time assert their natural nature.

The connection of the harem with the outside world was also supported by eunuchs.

“Eunuchs are the first agents of this kind in their very middle position between the two great factions of the human race,” Osman Bey wrote. - Each of the courts, or daire, has ten to fifteen eunuchs, who walk around the harem to receive and carry out orders given to them by the ladies. These orders are executed by them in turn, and only the eldest of the eunuchs can appear and receive direct orders from his mistress.

Each sultana and each kadina has her first eunuch (first chamberlain), who exercises considerable power over the staff of her court.

Ascending the steps of this hierarchy of eunuchs, we will find at the head of it the first eunuch of the imperial palace, a person who is, as it were, a marshal of the empire, the second nobleman after the grand vizier. His title is "Chief Gatekeeper of the Doors of Happiness". He is entrusted with guarding the doors of the harem.

The Gothic Almanac and the Ottoman Calendar place on their pages the name of this important person; however, for some time now his name does not appear in its place, that is, immediately after the name of the Grand Vizier. This change is rather strange and difficult to explain, because it would have been necessary, in order for it to be understandable, that the first eunuch be demoted and thrown from the top of the career ladder. And since this is not really the case, the only morality that can be deduced from this is that the Ottoman government considered it necessary to skillfully hide from the eyes of civilized peoples such an outrageous feature of its hierarchical system, without changing the essence of things in the least.

The first eunuch in the full sense of the word is the most powerful pasha ... He has his own palace, his courtiers, lackeys, carriages, horses and, of course, a huge salary.

The first eunuchs of the Kadins are placed in the seraglio near the ladies, at whose court they are, of course, not in the same building as them, but ... not far from the harem.

These gentlemen also lead a luxurious life and do not deny themselves anything; their rooms are beautifully furnished, and each of them has several footmen at his service and several expensive horses in the stable. They are for the most part people who love to live well and spend their time playing backgammon and other even more childish pastimes. In general, eunuchs are great lovers of good weapons and good horses; it would seem strange, but yet it is so.

... Subordinate eunuchs live according to the barracks order: they sleep together in dormitories, where everyone has his own bed, his own chest of drawers and his own things. These rooms, and also those who occupy them, seemed to me rather dull and melancholic; poverty, or rather lack of money, makes people sad in general, and eunuchs in particular.

In order to give readers a true understanding of the service that eunuchs perform, as well as those outrages that are committed in the harem, I will tell here what I saw with my own eyes.

We once stood in a detachment at the kiosk (country residence. - Sh.K.) Chamlija, where part of the imperial harem stayed for several days. After dinner, the ladies used to walk around the fields surrounding the kiosk. An hour before the ladies left, the troops locked themselves in the barracks and about thirty eunuchs with weapons and whips ran through the fields, emitting wild piercing cries: “Galvet var! Galvet var!” “Beware! Get out!“

With these cries, everyone had to retire and clear the space in the circle formed by these jealous guards. This circle expanded so that no one could see the beauties walking through the fields. I am sure that these zealous guards embarrassed them more than any lorgnettes aimed at them could embarrass.

At different times, at the courts of the rulers, there were from several thousand to several hundred eunuchs. These were mainly Ethiopians (Abyssinians) taken out of Africa.

Castrated in childhood, such slaves were sold in the markets twice as expensive as usual, because not everyone survived after such unnatural operations. The methods of castration were very diverse, and so were the results. Not all eunuchs were the same in a physical sense. Some of them have preserved reproductive organs, although deprived of their original purpose, but still able to brighten up the weary everyday life of odalisques responsive to caresses.

Given their delicate duties in managing a restless harem, their special awareness, their ability to keep secrets, mediate between men and women, and provide other important services to their masters, good eunuchs were highly valued.

In the state hierarchy, kyzlar-aga (lord of the girls) - the chief eunuch of His Majesty followed immediately after the grand vizier.

Gerard de Nerval described his meeting with the chief eunuch of the seraglio:

“While we were walking along the pier, a majestic-looking man appeared; he was swarthy, like a mulatto, in a fine Turkish suit, but not in the new, post-reform, but in the one worn in the old days. Seeing Mr. B., he stopped; he greeted him with great respect. My friend said that this man is an important person and that when he leaves, he will need to make a ceremonial “salaam alaikum”: put his hands first on his chest, then on his lips. That's exactly what I did; in response, the mulatto bowed gracefully.

I knew it was not the Sultan I had already seen.

Who is it? I asked when the man walked away.

This is kyzlar-aga, - the artist answered me with a feeling of admiration, to which fear was mixed.

I understood everything: kyzlar-aga is the chief eunuch of the seraglio, the most influential person after the sultan, even more formidable than the first vizier.

Influential eunuchs were showered with gifts by both their wards and guests to whom the eunuchs provided secret services.

The eunuchs themselves prepared a “shift” for themselves from castrated boys, whom they bought in the slave markets.

In old age, eunuchs retired and received a pension. Some became fabulously rich and lived like nobles. They started their own slaves and odalisques, and even got married so that there was someone to decorate a well-fed old age. Often, familiar court ladies became the chosen ones of harem veterans, with whom they managed to make friends or for whom they experienced tender platonic feelings. Young ladies also became the wives of wealthy eunuchs, confident that wealth would easily make up for the lack of family happiness.

The number of eunuchs, as well as the number of women in the harem, varied at different times. In the second half of the 19th century, there were about two hundred eunuchs in the seraglio.

In the Seraglio Museum, Théophile Gauthier discovered a mannequin depicting the chief eunuch: “The one that is in the window as a representative of the species is dressed in a red silk tunic, a luxurious caftan of patterned brocade in flowers, and wide shalwars girded with a cashmere belt. He has a red muslin turban on his head and yellow morocco boots on his feet.

The comments to the novel “Plum Flowers in a Golden Vase, or Jin, Ping, Mei” say: “... In the XV-XVI centuries in China, court eunuchs often seized power in the country, became sovereign temporary workers and, together with their adherents, often also from eunuchs, decided the fate of the country. The leading scholars of the time submitted countless petitions to the emperor, urging him to remove the eunuchs from power. And in 1567, the eunuchs were removed from the highest government posts, and Confucian scholars were appointed in their place. Subsequently, however, more than once the eunuchs again found themselves in power.

AT historical novel Luo Guanzhong "Three Kingdoms" eunuchs participate in all sorts of conspiracies, usurp power and are presented as the worst enemies of the common people. It is the court eunuchs who first of all try to destroy the fighters for justice.

“In the second month of the fourth year of the Calm Establishment period, an earthquake struck Luoyang,” writes Luo Guanzhong. - Eight years later, in the first year of the period under the motto of Shine and Consent, the hens crowed like roosters. On the new moon day of the sixth month, a huge black cloud flew into the palace. In autumn, a rainbow shone in the Jade Hall. Rocks collapsed in Wuyuan.

The adviser Cai Yong, in a report to the sovereign, explained the transformation of chickens into roosters by the fact that power had passed into the hands of women and eunuchs. Then the eunuchs slandered Cai Yong, he was exiled to the village, and the eunuchs actually began to rule the country. Outraged by their arbitrariness, the people thought of an uprising, swarms rose up like wasps, robbers and robbers.

The Gospel of Matthew says: “There are eunuchs who were born like this from their mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who are castrated out of men; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12).

Apparently following the New Testament, at the end of the 18th century, a sect of eunuchs appeared in Russia, seeking the salvation of the soul by mortifying the flesh and getting rid of bodily attachments. The sect practiced voluntary castration of both women and men, but then replaced the physical castration with a spiritual one, meaning by this a special asceticism of life and zealous service to God.

White eunuchs served in the "male half", black - in the "female". Such preferences were explained by fears that if a slave had a white child, there could be doubts about paternity, and the birth of a black child already directly indicated the offender.

Osman Bey, who, on duty, had to communicate a lot with eunuchs, divided them into categories: good and evil. “Eunuchs either plunge into a deep and gloomy hypochondria, or behave cheerfully and playfully. Accordingly, the eunuch is kind and meek or evil and demonic, like a fury. ... A eunuch is either stingy to the extreme, or the very embodiment of generosity.

But the merry eunuchs were sometimes sad, sighed heavily about their unfortunate fate and sang sad songs.

“I found friends among the eunuchs,” Melek-khanum wrote, “whose company was all the more pleasant for me because many of them were perfect poets and musicians. Fergad-aga, for example, combined both of these qualities. He was a very sweet troubadour, whose chivalrous feelings, as well as gaiety, made one forget all boredom. But, unfortunately, he had a weakness for raki (vodka), although this was natural, since Bacchus and the Muses had long lived in friendship with each other.

Good eunuchs often died in poverty, turning away from even the joys of life available to them. And the evil eunuchs seemed to be the embodiment of vices, treachery and vindictiveness. Some of them even became official executioners.

All these differences were not so noticeable in the palace, where the rules were very severe: the eunuchs there were subject to military discipline and could not show the peculiarities of their character in the same way as in private estates.

An example of the treachery of eunuchs is given by the same Melek-khanum. Ibrahim Pasha was terribly jealous. This is what the black eunuch decided to take advantage of, in love with a beautiful odalisque, which rejected his harassment. To take revenge on the concubine, he threw a man's cloak to the door of her room, and then arranged for the Pasha to discover it. And when the angry pasha asked what it was, the treacherous eunuch said that this cloak, no doubt, belonged to the one who was with the odalisque and fled when he heard the pasha's steps. Blinded by jealousy, the pasha drew a dagger and killed the unfortunate beauty.

Painful jealousy was characteristic of most eunuchs. Having no chance to count on female reciprocity, the eunuchs were always ready to punish, or even kill anyone who looked at the women they protected. During the time of Sultan Abdul-Mejid, eunuchs killed several people who tried to enter into an intimate relationship with one of the ruler's wives.

Meek eunuchs were distinguished by a philosophical mindset. They were not embarrassed by the whims of the hostesses, or other vicissitudes of fate. They could even mediate in the exchange of love letters and gifts between harem maids and their admirers. In general, eunuchs constituted a special class, distinguished from other slaves by their privileged position.

"The gloomy watchman of the khan's wives" - this is what Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin calls the eunuchs in the "Fountain of Bakhchisarai":

He knows the feminine disposition;
He experienced how cunning he is
Both in freedom and in captivity:
Gentle gaze, mute reproach tears
Have no power over his soul;
He no longer trusts them.
... He is in the harem in the darkness of the night
He wanders with inaudible steps;
Stepping quietly on the carpets
To the obedient sneaks the doors,
From bed to bed passes;
In the eternal care of the khan's wives
Luxurious watches the dream,
Night overhears babble;
Breath, sigh, the slightest thrill -
He notes everything eagerly;
And woe to the one whose whisper is sleepy
Called someone else's name
Or a kind friend
Perverse thoughts trusted!

“The sultan was followed by Kyzlar-Agasy and Kapy-Agasy, the chiefs of black and white eunuchs ... - writes Theophile Gautier. - The eunuchs no longer wear the tall white caps they put on in the comic opera: they walk in a fez and a frock coat, but their characteristic appearance makes it easy to recognize them. Kyzlar-agasy is rather ugly, its porous, devoid of vegetation skin casts a grayish tint, but kapy-agasy is even uglier, because it lacks the protective Negro mask. His pale face, swollen with unhealthy fat, is dotted with fine wrinkles, lifeless eyes squint under flabby eyelids, and a sagging lower lip makes him look like a capricious old woman. These monsters are very powerful and fantastically rich... They reign supreme over packs of mysterious houris and, as you might guess, find themselves at the center of a mass of intrigues.

... On the esplanade, in front of the artillery barracks, dandies boast of horses. Black-skinned eunuchs with puffy, devoid of vegetation faces and long legs let magnificent horses into a gallop. They race and utter short, shrill cries, caring nothing for the fatalistic red dogs sleeping in the dust with philosophical calm.

The most unusual eunuchs at the courts were dwarfs. One of them became famous for being released and marrying a young odalisque. We will talk about these miniature eunuchs later.

“I was leaving the house of a wealthy Muslim one evening, one of whose four wives was suffering from heart disease. This was already my third visit, and, as usual, my departure, as well as my arrival at the house, took place in the presence of a tall eunuch who walked in front of me and loudly repeated “Women, leave!” so that the ladies of the harem and female slaves would know about the presence of a stranger and could hide.

Going out into the courtyard, the eunuch left me alone, allowing me to leave the house on my own. As soon as I was about to open the front door, I felt the touch of someone's hand: I turned around and saw standing next to a eunuch of pretty appearance about eighteen or twenty years old. He stood and silently looked at me with eyes full of tears.

He remained silent, and I asked how I could help him. He hesitated for a moment, then seized my hand with heat and spoke in a voice choked with excitement, in which despair sounded: “Doctor, you know the cure for all ailments.

Tell me, is there a remedy to help my trouble?” I cannot express in words how his ardent entreaty affected me. I wanted to say something to him, but the words stuck in my throat. Not knowing what to say or what to do, I just opened the door and walked out. But all night and for many nights afterwards, his sad voice rang in my ears, and, I confess, more than once this memory brought tears to my eyes. Edmondo de Amicis, "Constantinople" (1896).

And here is what Alev Little Croutier, a French writer who grew up in Turkey, writes:

“At the end of the forties, as a little girl, I lived in Izmir in a large five-story house, which once housed the harem of a pasha, and knew a eunuch there. His name was Suleiman-aga. He was a man with chocolate skin and no hair on his face, so he looked younger than his age.

He always had a present for me. I don't remember what those gifts were, but I remember one very well. I sat on his lap, he took my little finger with his dark and thick fingers and put on it a ring with a bright red stone. Then he put another magnificent ring with a transparent stone on his ring finger. Next, the middle finger received a ring with a green stone. Then the index finger - a ring with a blue stone and the thumb - with a pink one. He very slowly took out each ring from his pocket, carefully watching my facial expression and clearly enjoying the spectacle. Since then, not a single person has spoiled me like that.

We lived in Ankara in the fifties, and he continued to visit us from time to time, each time bringing me a large box of chocolates with my favorite banana cream filling. He always came unannounced, often when our family sat down to dinner, but his visits were always a joy to me. My heart beat happily when I opened the door and saw his loose, sagging figure in front of me. I immediately looked into his hands, looking for a tempting box of sweets.

Sesame, open up, - he said words incomprehensible to me in a high voice, sparkling with the gold of his front teeth. He seemed to me more like a woman than a man. He walked hunched over, had a sunken belly and a soft expression on his face. His figure was like an hourglass, and he looked more like an old aunt. Behind his back, his parents called him Khadim, which means "eunuch". As my mother explained to me, this word means "beardless".

Once I heard my father say that there were very few of "them" left, and when they all die, this species will completely disappear from life, and with them that peculiar era will end. The news of his death came when I was nine years old.

Around the same time, I learned that the eunuch is a castrated man. Not being familiar with male anatomy, I assumed it was a man whose penis had been cut off. Terrible picture! I was already past the age when parents are asked these kinds of questions, and close friends knew no more than me.

In history lessons, we were told about the role of eunuchs at the time of the sultans, what position they occupied at court and how they interfered in big politics. Suleiman-aga was one of the last.

Many years have passed, and I have seen eunuchs more than once in films, in dances and in opera.

Their roles were played by athletic, half-dressed dark-skinned men in luxurious turbans and with operetta daggers. They were so unlike Suleiman-aga that it was difficult to call them all with one word "eunuch".

Origin

Eunuchs arouse enduring interest, some kind of morbid curiosity. And it's hard for me to get past this topic.

Where did eunuchs come from? Who invented them and why? I found the answers in books, but not everything is clear in them either. The first traces of eunuchs were found in Mesopotamia, in the cradle of earthly civilization, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers merge and flow into the Persian Gulf. Many different tribes lived in the fertile delta, some had a matriarchy.

As early as the ninth century BC, the Assyrian queen Semiramis castrated male slaves. This practice was adopted by other mistresses. Gerard de Nerval in his book Journey to the East describes a retinue of eunuchs who accompanied the Queen of Sheba.

Types of eunuchs

Several types of eunuchs (castrates), or eunuchs, are known: those born like that, forcibly castrated and eunuchs who were castrated of their own free will in order to preserve purity and purity. “For,” says the Gospel of Matthew, “there are eunuchs who were born like this from the womb of their mother; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs from people; and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven” (19:12).

The tradition of using eunuchs spread throughout the East from Persia to China. Warlike tribes, such as the Persians, castrated their Ionian captives and, together with the most beautiful captured virgins, presented them to their kings as spoils of war. In 538 BC Persian king Cyrus, who conquered Babylon, said that eunuchs, unable to bear children and raise their own families, are the most reliable servants. We find this statement of his in the ancient historian and biographer Xenophon (fourth century BC):

“From observations of other animals, he concluded, for example, that obstinate horses from emasculation only cease to bite and kick, but by no means become less suitable for war; that bulls from emasculation also lose their former temper and stubbornness, but do not lose their strength and ability to fight. labor, and that, finally, dogs, after being emasculated, cease to run away from their masters, but do not become less fit for guarding or for hunting. diligent in carrying out orders. Xenophon. Cyropedia

The castration of men among Jews and Christians was facilitated by the belief that a woman is an obstacle to achieving holiness and purity. The Christian theologian and writer of the second century, Tertullian, argued that the Kingdom of Heaven was open to eunuchs, and encouraged many to voluntarily castrate. Many of those who went for it later regretted the decision.

Herodotus has a story about a slave trader named Panion from the island of Chios, who bought the most beautiful boys, castrated them, and then sold them again in the slave markets. Among these boys was Hermotimus, who gained great wealth and power in Sardis (Sardis is the ancient capital of Lydia), becoming a palace eunuch there. Many years later, the paths of Hermotimus and Panion crossed again.

Hermotimus decided to take revenge. He persuaded Panion to go with him to Sardis, promising great power and wealth. Panion, unaware of Hermotimus' plans, was tempted by promises, fell into a trap set by a cunning eunuch, and paid dearly. The eunuch forced his former tormentor to castrate his four sons, and then those to castrate their father.

The Catholic Church castrated boys to preserve their high soprano singing voice for the papal choir in the Sistine Chapel, a practice that continued from the Renaissance until 1878. The castrati also sang in the Italian opera, where some of them, such as Grimaldi, Farinelli and Nicolini, earned great fame.

Several hundred eunuchs were at the mosques in Mecca and Medina. They made contact with women who came to prayers, which, according to the laws of Islam, ordinary men are not allowed to do in holy places.

In the second half of the eighteenth century there was a sect of eunuchs in Russia. They believed in the unusual legend of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived, created sexless. After the fall, the remnants of the forbidden fruit were implanted into their bodies in the form of breasts and genitals. In order to regain their former immaculate purity, many themselves performed a castration ritual on themselves, disfiguring themselves with knives, pointed stones, and even glass fragments.

Eunuchs still exist in Asia Minor in the fifth century BC, the priests of the temple of Artemis in Ephesus (one of the seven wonders of the world) and the temple of the Sibyl in the Roman Capitol were eunuchs.

Later, the sacred functions of eunuchs were transformed into a profitable service for the aristocrats of Greece and the patricians of Rome. Gibbon wrote: “The strict edicts of Domitian and Nerva prevented their reproduction, the pride of Diocletian favored them, and the prudence of Constantine reduced them to a very modest position; but in the palaces of the unworthy sons of Constantine they soon multiplied and gradually acquired first acquaintance with the secret thoughts of Constantius, and then and management of them ". Gibbon E. The history of the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire

This custom existed among the inhabitants of Byzantium and passed to the Turks. As for Muslim countries, the Koran forbids the castration of Muslim men - therefore, eunuchs had to be “imported” from those places where they professed a different faith.

In the fourteenth century, the Ottomans began isolating their women, and Byzantium supplied them with eunuchs. But soon the Turks themselves established a trade in them. The recruitment of other foreigners, including Europeans, as eunuchs was carried out with the help of raids, with which the entire history of the Arabs so abounds and which were habitual for them.

In China, castration was widespread and existed until the destruction of the Grand Palace in Beijing. However, if the eunuchs in China were exclusively Chinese, then in Turkey they were anyone except the Turks themselves.

At first, white eunuchs were delivered to Turkey from the North Caucasus, from Georgia and Armenia, but the people of these peoples had a hard time enduring the operation and often died.

The black (black-skinned) eunuchs turned out to be stronger, they were more enduring and stronger. It was believed that blacks were best suited for this purpose, and therefore Arab merchants of this very specific product frequented Nubia and Abyssinia. And Egypt and Sudan also became the most profitable hunting grounds in this regard.

After the operation, the eunuchs were publicly converted to Islam and only then allowed to perform duties in the harem. Both boys and adult men were in demand.

The former were entrusted with less responsible assignments, for which they had the right to move freely between the harem and the rest of the house, and could also go outside.

They ran errands, did basic repairs, helped in the kitchen, carried firewood and water, and accompanied women and senior eunuchs when they went to the city. The husband, as a rule, did not take part in such walks.

eunuch trade

According to Islam, a prisoner of war becomes the property of the one who captures him and, like any property, can be alienated. Muslim slave traders began to establish ties with the leaders of African tribes, persuading them to sell first captive slaves, and then their fellow tribesmen. Profitable trade developed rapidly.

Most of the slaves came from the upper Nile region, Kordofan, Darfur, Dongola and the Lake Chad area. They filled the holds of large boats and carried them along the river to Alexandria and Cairo. From Darfur and Sennar in Sudan, where on foot, where on camels, they were delivered across the Sahara. Others were driven from Abyssinia to ports on the Red Sea and from there to the largest slave markets in Mecca, Medina, Beirut, Izmir and Constantinople.

Castration operation

The castration operation was again performed not by God-fearing Muslims, but by Christian Egyptians and Jews. From the mass of slaves, boys were selected and operated on right during rest stops. It was a difficult and dangerous operation, often fatal, and the dry and hot climate did not contribute to the rapid healing of wounds.

The hot sand of the desert was considered the best balm, so the castrated was simply buried up to the neck in the sand and kept in this position until the wound healed. Those who endured terrible pain, bleeding and the subsequent stay in hot sand and survived became a very expensive commodity, bringing huge profits to merchants.

The buyers were rich people, and the eunuch had a real opportunity to occupy a high position in the house of a powerful person and gain considerable power.

The dark craft of turning a normal person into a castrato was surrounded by deep mystery, and only the comparative etymology of individual terms of this case sheds some light: "pressure", "breaking", "cutting" and "stretching". According to the historian N.M. Penzer, in ancient times, eunuchs were divided into several distinct groups:

Castrates - with completely cut off penis and testicles;
Spado - removed the testicles by pulling;
Filibi - the testicles are broken and deformed, the seminal glands are damaged. This was done at a very early age.

The well-known traveler and Arabist Richard Burton gives the following classification of castrates and castration methods adopted in the East:

Sandals - no genitals. The genitals are cut off with one stroke of the razor, after which a tube is immediately inserted into the ureter. The wound is cauterized with boiling oil, and the patient is placed in a pile of fresh manure. The patient is fed with milk, the operation is performed before puberty; survival rate is high. Eunuchs with penis removed but theoretically capable of copulation and reproduction.

Filibi eunuchs. The testicles are removed with a stone knife, as well as by breaking, twisting or cauterizing them.

The methods of castration were apparently the same all over the world and differed only in methods to stop the bleeding. Here is how Carter Stent (1877) describes castration in China:

The operation was carried out as follows: to ease the bleeding, the abdomen and thighs are tightly bandaged or tied with tourniquets. The removed parts of the body are moistened three times with hot pepper tincture, while the operated person is reclining, leaning back. After washing, the genitals - testicles and penis - are cut off at the very base with a knife curved in the form of a sickle.

Castration is completed by inserting a tin tube with a tap or plug into the hole at the base of the penis. All this is covered with paper soaked in cold water and carefully tied up. After that, two people who wielded knives take the operated person by the arms and lead him around the room for two or three hours, after which he is laid down.

For the next three days, the patient is not allowed to drink at all, which makes him suffer not only from thirst and from terrible pain, but most of all from the inability to relieve his natural needs. After three days, the bandage is removed, the cork is removed, and the unfortunate person gets the opportunity to drain the urine, which spurts like a fountain. If the passage of urine proceeds safely, the patient is all right, and he is congratulated on a successful operation. If the unfortunate person fails to empty the bladder, this means that the ureter is swollen, it is impossible to help him, and he is doomed to death.

Historian Paul Rajko mentions a silver pipe that eunuchs hide in their turban. To urinate, they insert it into the ureter.

Castration was most easily tolerated by boys who had not reached puberty. Castration at a later age gave people a feeling of great irretrievable loss and despair, on the basis of which a moral breakdown occurred and a desire for revenge ripened.

Chinese eunuchs

The Forbidden City in Beijing was closed to women, and the majority of the population of the residence of the Chinese emperors were eunuchs. During the reign of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), more than a thousand eunuchs lived within the walls of the Forbidden City. This number gradually decreased, and by the time of the last Chinese emperor Pu and at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were only two hundred of them.

Most of the eunuchs within the city walls served as servants, but they had considerable opportunities for promotion, and this attracted the poor to their ranks. Castration itself was inexpensive, with a fatality rate of 4-5 percent, and the risk was considered worth it. Since the eunuchs themselves were involved in replenishment, those who wanted to get into this caste sought to make a useful acquaintance with them.

Many of the eunuchs received a good education and eventually became government officials.

Those who had good voices sang in the theater, others held secretarial positions with high-ranking nobles. According to the teachings of Confucius, in order to get to heaven, a person must be buried entirely, so the Chinese castrates carried their cut-off organs with them all their lives in special vessels with brine. Not everyone managed to keep them intact, so there was a black market for these souvenirs.

Consequences of castration
As a result of castration, the body loses hair, becomes flabby, the voice becomes squeaky, the person becomes very fat. In addition, eunuchs suffer from urinary incontinence, memory impairment, insomnia and myopia. Castrates should not consume alcohol, because alcohol deprives them of strength and causes pain in the ureter.

There is numerous evidence that the harem eunuchs loved money and everything that money can buy. They loved delicious food, adored sweets, especially chocolate and cakes. They liked stories and legends, they could listen to scary myths and fairy tales for hours, especially from the Thousand and One Nights. They enjoyed the music and dances, which brought back memories of their native Africa. "Barely visible in the clubs of fragrant smoke from the incense, dispersed by a light breeze from the Black Sea throughout the Seraglio, eunuchs and slaves swayed in the rhythm of the dance, following the melody of the warlike music of the savages." This is how Edmondo de Amicis describes it in Constantinople (1896).

Sexual attraction in castrati

Loss of sexual organs, especially in childhood, does not necessarily free a person from sexual desires. A eunuch, lacking only testicles, can have an erection and can have sex. Richard Burton, in a multi-volume translation of "A Thousand and One Nights," claims that an erection can last until the heart is able to drive blood and passion cools down. he continued to make love to her until her death.

Indeed, some eunuchs made love with the women of the harem. Montesquieu, in his Persian Letters, gives the story of such a eunuch:

“I entered the seraglio, where everything inspired me with regret for my loss: every minute I felt the excitement of feelings; thousands of natural beauties opened before me, it seemed, only to plunge me into despair.

I remember how one day, while putting a woman in a bath, I felt such excitement that my mind became clouded and I dared to touch a shameful place with my hand. When I came to my senses, I thought that my last day had come. However, I was lucky, and I escaped the most severe punishment. But the beauty, who witnessed my weakness, sold her silence to me very dearly: I completely lost power over her, and she began to force me to such indulgences that endangered my life a thousand times. Cit. Quoted from: Montesquieu, Sh. L. Persian Letters

A eunuch with a penis was able to prolong the pleasure of a partner and therefore was a particularly valuable lover for the women of the harem. In addition, there was no danger of getting pregnant with him. One of the palace guards, in his memoirs, claims that some eunuchs had their own odalisques, while others preferred young boys:

These villains fell in love with beautiful boys and kept them near them; the sinful bodies of these rascals were filled with passion. Each of them bought himself a pair of slaves and kept them locked up in his room, jealous of his colleagues. Often because of these boys, quarrels and fights broke out among them. Was it not lust that drove this treacherous man to such deeds?

Eunuchs also used drugs that enhance sexual desire, and all sorts of erotic attributes. They had contact with the outside world and bought various erotic toys there, like artificial members. They were also great masters of oral sex; women who married after liaising with eunuchs, according to the same guard, were often dissatisfied with their husbands in this regard:

You ask, what kind of sexual appetite flared up in odalisques who had sexual intercourse with eunuchs? All of Istanbul was talking about this. Those two odalisques got their freedom and got married. A week later, the husbands filed for divorce from them. The reason was the complaints of the odalisques that the husbands turned out to be worse men than eunuchs. So the husbands decided to divorce them. It happened to me, I know it.

There is no evidence from the eunuchs themselves about how they achieved their own satisfaction. Erogenous zones in eunuchs are the area near the ureter and the anal cavity. Burton cites the testimony of a eunuch's wife who claimed that her husband engaged in masturbation, fellatio and anal sex and achieved a voluptuous orgasm of prostate secretion. When approaching orgasm, she offered him a pillow, otherwise he could bite her face and chest.

It seems that the eunuchs themselves hardly ever became objects of suspicion on the part of Turkish husbands. The latter were much more concerned, and not without reason, with the problem of lesbian love, which was not such a rare occurrence in harems. The poet Fazil Bez, whose work dates back to the reign of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839), wrote in his Book of Women:

“They fall in love with each other. Many play the role of a man. Moreover, those who indulge in this unnatural love are usually very charming and attractive. Many of them belong to the highest strata of our modern society. This is a matter of habit, which at first glance is rather shameful. However, when compared with other vices, it does not seem so pernicious. Men do not feel any attraction to these women, who are only interested in their own kind and get all the pleasure from communicating with each other.

No one else piques their interest. They caress each other and at the same time use the most tender words, and this continues for some time, until they begin to make their fruitless love. Are men really of no interest to them? Can imitation compare with reality? Let them do whatever they want, but as soon as they see a young man, they are immediately trembling from the back of their heads to their very heels. For for normal human beings the road they have chosen leads nowhere. May Allah enlighten them!”

This Turkish pompous, pompous rhetoric exudes contempt rather than true concern or anxiety. If a Turk happened to catch his wife with his mistress at the moment of their intimacy, his reaction would be at least violent.

Lesbian connections inevitably had to appear among passionate oriental women, crowded together and living in luxurious conditions. It is quite obvious that sexual intercourse with the only legally available man, due to its episodic nature, could not satisfy them in any way, and they often felt left out and disappointed.

Homosexual relationships had to be kept in deep secrecy, otherwise the lovers would be severely punished by an angry husband. However, it should be noted that the punishment would certainly have been even more severe if the husband caught his wife alone with her lover. One way or another, lesbian love served as another reason for jealousy and intrigue among the inhabitants of the harem...