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The earliest Ottoman medieval silk brocade textile is preserved in Serbia, within the Studenica Monastery as a former shroud for the sacred reliquary of St. Simeon (Stefan Nemanja), founder of the Nemanjic dynasty. It features a distinctive weave intricately embroidered with gold and multicolored silk, displaying a cultural-hybrid tapestry of Egyptian, Mamluk, and Persian influence. In a classic textile style, it contains an explicit Arabic inscription woven directly into its fabric registers that continuously repeats praises of the Ottoman ruler: The first praises the ruler as al-Sultan al-alim al-adil ("The Sultan, the learned, the just"), and the second explicitly names him: Sultan Bayezid Khan azza nasruhu ("Sultan Bayezid Khan, may his victory be glorious")

How did it end up in the Studenica Monastery?

To understand how this significant tiraz ended up in a Serbian monastery, it helps to look through the distinct lenses of two different narratives. According to one story, the shroud was a joint donation from Bayezid and Olivera to the monastery around 1398. The political climate at the time was fragile. His brother-in-law, Stefan Lazarevic, was suspected of treason, and his mother, Milica Hrebeljanovic, and older sister intervened in support of his innocence and pardon. Under this 1398 lens, the textile can then be interpreted as a restored political peace by Bayezid via the influence of his wife, Olivera Lazarevic.

Bayezid’s wife was a direct Nemanjić descendant through her mother. Her maternal side belonged to the bloodline of Prince Vukan, the eldest son of Stefan Nemanja (Saint Simeon). This directly tied the sanctuary to the princess’s prestige and ancestry. Studenica was revered as a holy place by the Nemanjics and later Lazarevics, who frequently gifted to it and protected it, making it a spiritually significant monastic center. Bayezid and Olivera may have used this donation to represent the stabilization between their dynastic alliance during this tense episode. Another story, however, places responsibility on Olivera alone, omitting any contribution from her husband apart from ordering its creation.

Nonetheless, it may be one of the few remaining physical materials that has been touched by both.

I have been intrigued to engage with this topic for a moment, especially as someone who prefers early Ottoman history to its “Golden Age” or “decline.” I will not argue for what came after Mehmed II (especially the 19th and 20th centuries), because, truthfully, I have no interest in it. I first came about to write a prospectus on this topic for my history advisor. However, knowing his high archival expectations, and given that I found another topic I am more passionate about. So, instead, I will provide and archive my analytic notes on the topic here for others to possibly retrieve. 

Current Ottoman historiography often argues that the dynasty increasingly avoided reproduction with wives in favor of concubines. Presenting their “lack of reproduction” as a deliberate precaution on the part of the dynasty, an avoidance. According to this interpretation, Ottoman rulers avoided reproducing with their wives because their in-laws might threaten the “political integrity” of the dynasty. It has become associated especially with the reproductive framework developed by Ottoman historians such as Leslie Peirce and has since been repeated in both academic and popular intellectual output. Yet the evidence for a decision to avoid children with noble wives is weaker than it is often presented. While concubinage undeniably predominated the reproductive system, the predominance of concubine mothers does not itself support that noble wives were intentionally excluded from childbearing. Instead, the evidence suggests that concubinage already functioned as the normal mechanism of the dynasty from its earliest generations, while dynastic marriages existed alongside that system for diplomatic purposes.  

 
The Origin of this Particular Interpretation
Historians observed through the origin of Valide Hatuns that most later Ottoman sultans were born to enslaved concubines rather than aristocratic wives. At face value, it provides you a sufficient pattern. This theory of avoidance is not without backing. Concubinage did provide the dynasty with an outline of reproductive agents that were deprived of external networks, their loyalties were tied directly to the household, and their survival to that of the outcome of their sons. However, later summaries of a strict interpretation often move beyond what the evidence securely suggests. An alleged broader institutional tendency is frequently transformed into a much stronger claim than need be; that Ottoman rulers intentionally restricted themselves by not reproducing with their wives. Once stated in this strict tone, the argument becomes more difficult to sustain when examined against the actual evidence of the early dynasty.
 
Dominated Concubine Mothers Do Not Necessarily Mean Childless Wives
In her work, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Peirce noticed and utilized a pattern to support her argument: “More than any other Muslim dynasty, the Ottomans raised the practice of slave concubinage to a reproductive principle: after the generations of Osman and Orhan, virtually all offspring of the sultans appear to have been born of concubine mothers.” However, a lack of sources at the time she was writing this indicates otherwise. Before touching on that, however, we must differentiate the expected roles of a wife compared to a concubine. 
 
Concubines and noble wives did not occupy the same role within the Ottoman household. Concubinage was not an Ottoman innovation but a longstanding institution throughout Turco-Islamic dynasties before them. Enslaved concubines were numerous, continuously available through warfare and enslavement, and fully assimilated into the ruler’s household. Because Islamic law recognized the legitimacy of children born to concubines, rulers did not need aristocratic wives to secure dynastic continuity.
 
This distinction is important. In Christian Europe, queenship and legitimate succession were deeply linked. Kings depended upon their wives to produce heirs, making marriage central to continuation. By contrast, a Sultan could produce through concubinage alone. As a result, the predominance of concubine-born children may simply reflect demographic realities rather than an intentional exclusion of noble wives. A ruler might possess only a handful of political wives (one to four at a time) but dozens of concubines over the course of his reign. Under such conditions, it is unsurprising for concubine mothers to dominate the dynastic record even without any anti-aristocratic reproductive doctrine.
 
Case-by-Case Analysis and the Absence of a Clear Pattern
The biggest criticism against this avoidance theory is the evidence itself. Analyzing each ruler and their reigns, we find that half shared at least one child or more with a single wife:

• Orhan and Theodora produced a son
The only verifiable identity of one of the reproductive “partners” of Murad I is his former concubine and the mother of Bayezid I. Therefore, we cannot claim for and against anything in his case. 
• Bayezid I shared two to three daughters with Olivera Lazarevic as is supported by contemporary and near-contemporary Timurid sources and later Turkish researchers. Apart from this, we cannot prove he shared children with his other wives because it is said that all his sons were recorded to be from concubines, but that source is from decades after his death, so these claims must be treated cautiously. 
• Mehmed I with Emine (however, her origin is rather ambiguous)
• Murad II also shared a son with one of his wives and may have been rejected by Mara Brankovic (sexually). 
 
This evidence complicates any claim that the dynasty avoided reproducing with aristocratic wives. If noble wives repeatedly appear associated with offspring during the very era in which dynastic marriages were practiced, then the alleged pattern of “childless royal wives” becomes far less convincing. If we then treat this alleged system of avoidance as primary instead of secondary, must we find exceptional reasons for these exceptions? Moreover, concern regarding powerful in-laws was hardly unique to the Ottomans. Nearly all dynastic states worried about maternal relatives, aristocratic factions, and succession conflicts. Byzantine emperors, European kings, and Islamic dynasties alike struggled with the anxiety of competing noble networks surrounding succession and statecraft. The mere existence of concern over aristocratic maternal influence, therefore, cannot by itself demonstrate a uniquely Ottoman policy of reproductive avoidance. The difference is that European models had to almost “suck it up” for the sake of dynastic continuation. 
 
The Advantage of Wives and Their Agency
Another weakness in some interpretations is the tendency to treat noble wives primarily as reproductive instruments. Yet political marriages in the early Ottoman world may not have carried reproductive expectations to begin with. A peace-marriage could serve many purposes besides producing heirs: alliance, stabilization, symbolic submission, prestige, or political correspondence. Because the dynasty already possessed a functioning reproductive system through concubinage, wives were not necessarily required to become mothers of primary heirs without an agenda alongside it. 
 
Apart from this, wives may have also played a part in this lack of reproduction beyond being restricted from it. Several traditions and sources mention Murad II’s attraction to Mara Brankovic and her refusal and sexual rejection of him. After all, there was no political pressure on her to have relations with him, given that he had already had heirs, and she may well have exploited that fact to protect her chastity. Going from growing up thinking you alone had to provide an heir for your future husband to now having the opportunity to bypass a possible unwanted consummation by exploiting the presence of existing heirs and a system that incorporated concubines may have worked. This perspective also helps explain why the evidence appears so inconsistent. Some noble wives had children, while others apparently did not. Rather than indicating a rigid institutional rule, the evidence may instead reflect the flexible nature of this early period. Personal choice from the ruler’s attraction to the wife’s agency could play a factor. Although a European ruler had to tolerate frequent intimacies for a “greater” purpose, an Ottoman ruler didn’t. This leaves room for more humanistic choices on the part of these political actors concerning both sexual relations and reproductive output as a consequence.
 
Was There Really a “Gradual Shift” Toward Concubinage?
Historians often are tempted to describe the Ottoman dynasty as gradually shifting away from dynastic marriage and toward concubinage for concubinage. Yet this formulation may itself be misleading. Concubinage did not emerge gradually within the Ottoman dynasty. It appears to have predominated from the beginning. The more significant historical transformation may not have been a gradual rise of concubinage but rather the disappearance of politically necessary marriages after Mehmed II.
 
The overwhelming presence of concubine-born children is undeniable. Yet this fact alone does not demonstrate a systematic intention of avoiding reproduction with wives. The early evidence appears too mixed and inconsistent to support such a rigid conclusion. That leaves us with two questions: Has the theory become too totalizing relative to the actual evidence? Has historical writing moved too carelessly from treating such an act of avoidance from secondary caution to primary avoidance?
 
I hope you enjoyed what was going to be my prospectus (at least the summary of it)!

(No shade to womenoftheottomanempire, she’s not the one who called others names for this.)