Esperanza Malchi

In 1599, the English organ builder Thomas Dallam prepared an instrument for voyage to the Ottoman Empire, a diplomatic gift for Sultan Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603) on behalf of the English crown. Funded by merchants of the Levant Company, the instrument was installed in Constantinople in the Sultan’s harem, the female-centered space of the Ottoman court. The negotiations for this gift were entrusted to two women who navigated the space between the Sultan and the world outside the court: the Sultana, Ṣāfiye Sultan (d. 1619), and her kira , a Jewish woman by the name of Esperanza Malchi (d. 1600). Women negotiated this musical–diplomatic relationship at a time when England was fiercely pursuing trade with the East. By centering a marginalized individual whose actions were enabled by trust and knowledge, I complicate the notion that the harem was an environment in which sexual transactions were the only economy of power.