Esther Handali

Origins and early life

Esther Handali was a Sephardic Jew of Constantinople in the sixteenth century, of a family expelled from Spain — Jerez de la Frontera, by some accounts — and the wife of the merchant Elijah Handali, with whom she sold jewels, cosmetics and fine cloth to the women of the Ottoman court.

Work and career

From that trade she rose to the office of kira, the Jewish woman who was the harem's link to the world outside its walls: because the wives and mothers of the sultans could not be seen by men, it was through the kira that they bought, sold, corresponded, lent money and did politics. Esther served Nurbanu Sultan, the Venetian-born wife of Selim II and mother of Murad III, and then Safiye Sultan, Murad's favorite, for some thirty years, and became one of the most influential and wealthy women of the Empire, an intermediary in the sultanas' correspondence with Venice and a channel of favors that ambassadors courted.

She used her position for her people: she gave large sums to the Jewish community, rebuilt homes after the great fire of 1569, supported scholars and the printing of Hebrew books, and intervened, in the words of the chroniclers who compared her to the biblical Esther, to turn away the threats of persecution; a firman of Suleiman the Magnificent had exempted her family from taxes. This fiche notes what the sources note: the kiras are poorly documented, and Esther Handali has often been confused with her successor Esperanza Malchi, who was murdered in 1600. Esther herself died in Constantinople in December 1588.