Gender and Sexuality

This chapter reviews how gender and sexuality in early modern Ottoman society have been studied and analyzed in Ottoman historiography. Recent historical studies on Ottoman society and the everyday experiences of women and men reveal that individual experiences differ according not only to gender but also to class, age, ethnicity, and religion on a temporal and geographical basis. This chapter focuses on how scholars working on the archival sources made women, men, and children from different corners of the empire visible by mobilizing a “history from below” approach and utilizing sources creatively and comparatively to explore gender hierarchies, power relations, and sexual manifestations. It also discusses the representation of these hierarchies and relations as reflected in literary and narrative sources to reveal the diversity of gendered and erotic encounters and experiences. A closer reading of sources aims to provide a multifaceted representation of women from different classes, ethnicities, and religions, but also opens new questions on what constituted womanhood and manhood in various places and periods of the Ottoman Empire. © Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2025.