■ Datang Leiyin Temple｜Yuan Xie
Speaking of powerful eunuchs, the impression in everyone's mind is usually the stills of the teacher Donnie Yen when he was young in "New Longmen Inn".
or the "Guogong" played by Teacher Chen Kun.
However, there are still eunuchs in the world, with a low position and a weight, and their image is......the hip-hop singer. That is the black eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire.
Why did the Ottoman Empire use a large number of black people as eunuchs? Is it because of the common saying "Black people commit adultery with concubines of other skin colors, and their skin colors are different" or because of other racist reasons? Actually, none of them.
The reason why blacks were castrated by the Istanbul court is the same as the institutional root of the existence of the eunuchs in the palace: the royal family does not trust any regular subordinates and must constantly move inside and outside the court.
The institutional significance of eunuchs: The most trusted instrumental slave of imperial power,
The origin of eunuchs is not what ordinary people think of as "avoid adultery." Three-quarters of human beings' territory and history were once ruled by monarchical regimes, with more than a thousand kingdoms and empires that were upright. However, only countries that formally use palace eunuchs exist on the east and west ends of the Asian continent, and there are only a dozen.
The ancient Chinese cultural circle and the Byzantine Kingdom cultural circle are all eunuchs, and the institutional evolution is almost on the same path.
Whether it is the pre-Qin kings and princes or Alexander the Great, the royal family and his wives and concubines are not people who must be castrated. Although the use of eunuchs by the inner court was not necessarily the case, it was criticized and even criticized in the political morality at that time. If a eunuch is raised by the royal family, it will violate the political norm of "the public will not commit suicide, the doctor will not raise him, and the scholars will not be able to speak."
Because the eunuchs at that time were mostly "castrated" in China and the east of the Mediterranean. The identities of these "superior people" are basically slaves at the bottom and prisoners of foreign enemies in various wars, so they will be punished with the most severe corporal punishment. Such hostile elements and lower-class proletarians naturally cannot become legal components of their own official political system.
However, as the imperial power became more and more domineering, the emperors became more and more suspicious, and gradually distrust formal political mechanisms and formal ministers, and allocated power to their close servants as much as possible. And the emperors were worried about the close servants who did not have to be castrated before. What if these people around him hurt him like foreign ministers?
The eunuch system is the answer to this question when the imperial power develops to the most mature or corrupt. "People who are violating the rest of the world" cannot have children. Apart from the obvious benefits of avoiding adultery, they have no chance to pave the way for their offspring, and the incentives of rebellion and disobedience are weakened to a minimum.
The class and ethnic origin of the eunuchs are destined to have no support except imperial power. Whether it is Chinese eunuchs or Byzantine eunuchs, even if they are extremely rich, they have no hometown and clan to support each other, and the possibility of forming disobedient forces is minimized. Because their hometown is either a newly conquered remote war zone or a destitute zone, their clans are either killed, or rogue proletariat who eats, drinks, and gambling.
In addition to these unsatisfactory effects, the castration sentence also has a direct impact on the sentenced person. In most periods of human history, being castrated means that the social status of the eunuch is so low that it can be called "exited from humanity", and is a literal property belonging to the owner of the eunuch slave. Not only honor and disgrace, but theoretically, the life and death of eunuchs are only in the master's thoughts. This status is worse than that of ordinary slaves.
Moreover, male sexual organs were considered by the ancients to be the source of life. Not only were castrated people dead, they were dejected, and even if they were alive, their energy might gradually dry up day by day.
Therefore, eunuchs are the most satisfying and indispensable ministers for the emperor: life and death are free, punishment and reward are based on the heart, and can obey all dirty things, with the least resistance and the highest degree of trust.
The evolution of Ottoman eunuchs: from white to black, from low to noble
China and Byzantine reached the level of "eunuchs all use eunuchs" within three centuries, and reached the level of eunuchs presided over military and political affairs within nine centuries. Positions such as "Imperial Guards to Observe Military Appearance" and "Inner Privy Councilors" appeared almost at the same time on both ends of the Asian continent. The eunuch system of the Ottoman Turkic Empire completed the ten-century journey of China and Byzantium within four centuries. After the Ottoman Turks annexed the entire Byzantine Empire, they directly inherited the systematic eunuchs from the Constantinople's palace.
期10
期0日期口神日期口神日期口神日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日本日� But soon after, the conquered parts of these places were converted to religion and believed in Islam. According to the doctrine, the chiefs of Muslim countries should not castrate those who share their faith as slaves. The conversion of these places means that eunuchs from these places can have reliance in the palace except for the sultan, and their trustworthiness will naturally decrease.
Nearly two centuries after the Ottoman Empire established its throne, the eunuch, the white leader of the inner court, indeed reached a tacit understanding of the system with the "Great Vizier" (Prince of the Pure Court) of the outer court, and shared the capital's financial, religious and military power. The suspicious and tyrannical Ottoman Sultans naturally could not accept it.
1574–Sultan Murad III , who reigned in 1595, replaced nine great Vizier in 15 years. The lowering prime ministers did not have the blessing of living in seclusion in the countryside and were all cut off their heads. When Murad III was reigned, the skin color of the eunuch in the inner court of the Ottoman Empire gradually changed from white to black - because the eunuch in the former leader from Eastern Europe was also greatly replaced by a slave bought or robbed from Black Africa south of Egypt .
Black eunuchs: From killing his wife for his master to managing his master
Black eunuchs in Istanbul started out as a coolie in the inner court, but after shouldering a key function, they began to win the most trust of the Sultans. This function is to kill the lost concubines in the harem of Sultan.
Yes, the palace fighting scenes of the Ottoman Empire are no less favorable than the Far East China, South Korea and Vietnam. But there is no such thing as a cold palace in the Golden Palace in Istanbul. The concubines in the harem lost the battle and were directly put into sacks by the black eunuchs who were approved by the imperial court and sank into the Bosbruce Strait. There was a sultan who sent a black eunuch to sank 280 concubines in the strait. The Bosbruce Strait has accumulated corpses over the years, which scared sailors so much that they dared not dive in Istanbul because the water was covered with vertical sacks that were drifting with the flow.
Since the murder of my wife is safe, the Sultan can hand over to the black eunuch. Then it is not unreasonable for the Ottoman Sultan to hand over to the inner court, the capital imperial guards, the finances of Zhili, surveillance of the kings, education of the princes, etc.
From the late 16th to the 17th century, black eunuchs in Istanbul were actually not far from their previous Ming Dynasty colleagues. In addition to not buying up literati touting themselves as "Nine Thousand Years", the things eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty could do, so could black eunuchs in Istanbul do. According to the records of envoys from various European countries at that time, from the replacement of Vizier's appointment and removal, to the abolition of the eldest son and the establishment of the young man in the throne, to the amount of money spent on repairs in Mecca, behind the scenes, the black eunuchs were indispensable.
Oil painting "Turkey's Imperial Guards and Eunuchs"
Moreover, because black eunuchs have jurisdiction over mosque foundations in the empire, they can influence Muslim priests and jurists and give various absurd religious edicts (fatwa). For example, in February 1618, the black leader eunuch bribed the group of jurists and issued an edict announcing that the Sultan was mentally ill and forced the emperor to depose and depose the emperor.
Although the harem politics of the Ottoman Empire was particularly prominent in Asia, fortunately the Turkish Empire was close to Europe. The eunuch's trajectory of chaos in politics reached the point of "unparalleled power and money", and was stopped by the Europeanized new 19th century forces and did not evolve to the point of being domineering eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty.
"Reformer" Sultan Mahamo II gradually abolished the powers of the leaders and eunuchs in the 1830s, and removed the firewood from the cauldron, announced that he would follow the European trend and abolish the system of plundering and selling slaves. No new slaves were allowed in the country, and no new eunuchs were added in the palace. The existing slaves would not be compensated for when there were any shortcomings. The remaining black eunuchs gradually died of old age in the final revitalization of the empire.
Photos of the last black eunuch
This is already a very sunny historical ending. According to the historical evil deeds created by the black eunuch system, the originally deserved ending was that the imperial dynasty collapsed and the yellow storm in the early 20th century was slaughtered in the capital by new soldiers.
