Abstract:

This study focuses on the traditional audience games that the households living in the Harem section of Topkapı Palace are theme. In general, the viewing game expression is used for public dances or games played for the purpose of playing. The audience games are gathered in two groups, verbal and non-verbal. The oral games include the midgame, the doll, the Karagöz games, the hokkabazs and the mucallids, while the oral games include the cambazs, the dancers (flower, ceng, ceng, rabbit, curcunabaz, myrtrakbaz) who show up with animals and the firefighters. In the Ottoman era, the palace and its surroundings were in every period of relationship with the audience games and played an important role in both the exhibition of the games and the guardianship of the players in the palace. In this way, the palace is all played in love. The question whether the audience’s games are not observed in the palace’s harem section is the main output point of this work. In this sense, what was the situation in the harem, behind high walls and roofed windows, a sun-free glowing world? In this dark and wicked world, in a great silence, the Caryes, the Sultans, the Haches and the Valide Sultans, who walked in the mid-dark curves, living in the dark curves covered by the Chinese walls, spent the time. How would the people living in the carriers at the bottom of Harem have been entertaining in a closed world where uncomfortable, strict prohibitions were applied? Which of the traditional audience games were performed and who were participating in the entertainment? In which places were these fun events performed? In this study, to find answers to all of these questions, it was aimed at tracing traces of traditional audience games within the possibilities by applying to the stories of the period, records and the work of modern researchers. This discussion aims to seek new answers on this topic which has not been detailed so far, and to make a series of observations of the entertainment concepts and likes of the inhabitants of this closed world.

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