180 - ALEXIS KIBRISLI JADE BINBASI [pseudonym Osman Bey]: Les Femmes en Turquie. Paris, 1877

ALEXIS KIBRISLI JADE BINBASI [pseudonym Osman Bey]: Les Femmes en Turquie. Paris, 1877 First edition. In 8vo. Original publisher’s upper paper cover, browned and trimmed; spine and lower cover restored with modern paper. Text clean and bright. Complete: 357 p. Overall in very good condition. Published under the pseudonym Osman Bey, the author was the son of Melek Hatun Kibrisli, a Greek woman who married an Ottoman officer. In the 1860s she had published the famous Thirty Years in a Harem. The family escaped to Greece in 1865 and then to France, where the son adopted a new name. This background of the child of a mixed marriage, raised between cultures, and later integrated into a European intellectual environment-makes him uniquely suited to describe the situation of women in Ottoman society. His work offers a comprehensive account of female life in 19th-century Turkey, from enslaved girls and the harem of the Sultan to the broader social position of Muslim women. Writing in France, with a Greek mother’s heritage and a European perspective, the author was free to expose and critique the negative aspects of Ottoman gender relations. An important and valuable testimony on women in Ottoman society.