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3 In the summer of 1776, the governor of Tunis celebrated the wedding of three of his children: his son Hammuda, his daughter Amina, and a second daughter (whose name is unknown).1 For months before that, women in the family, their domestics, and slaves were busy gathering the various articles for the trousseaus of the two brides, including diverse clothing and decorative linens, much of which was embroidered with silver thread. As they prepared for the days of festivities, 400 loaves of bread were baked, 1,800 ratls of honey were transformed into impressive quantities of zlabia (a sweet made of fried dough), and an additional 1,100 ratls of pastries were made from honey, dates, and almonds. Fruits, vegetables, and fowl were brought to the palace, and butchers were hired to slaughter nearly one hundred cows. Altogether, the expenses for these items totaled to at least 6,500 piasters and were intended as much for internal consumption as for public display.2 Through these marriages the governor —or bey, the Ottoman title that became the family surname—made a series of political alliances, just as his own marriage had done. Hammuda married the daughter of an important religious notable, Amina married her paternal cousin, and the second daughter married a prominent minister . The banquets celebrated the establishment of new households headed by these couples, publicly announced the connections between the governor ’s family and the religious elite of the capital as they consolidated family ties, and secured loyalty among the palace inner circle. Just a few years earlier, the daughter of Austria’s Habsburg monarchs had celebrated her nuptials with the grandson and heir apparent of France’s Louis XV. This union between Marie-Antoinette and the future Louis XVI was a strategic alliance, which was typical under the Bourbon dynasty (1589–1792), intended to secure the recent cooperation between these two erstwhile opponents. As the young bride and her 57-carriage cortège traveled across Austria in April and May of 1770, she was feted with banquets, town celebrations, dance performances, and fireworks. After a highly ritualized border crossing, she was conducted in a large families, households, and Palace Women in early modern court culture Introduction 4 family foundations of ottoman rule procession to Strasbourg for the first official celebrations. Soldiers saluted as they entered the city through a triumphal arch constructed for the occasion and adorned with the arms of France and Austria. That evening, the city’s chief magistrate and cardinal held an official reception, ending in a display of fireworks and a public banquet with fountains of wine and roast oxen. Additional fireworks, flowers, and speeches commemorated the arrival of her convoy in a series of small villages as they journeyed northward, towards Louis XV’s royal hunting lodge. When she finally arrived at Versailles, her ladies in waiting dressed her in a gown made of the traditional bridal cloth of silver and adorned with masses of white diamonds, while the groom wore a gold suit that was valued at 64,000 livres. Approximately six thousand aristocratic spectators gathered to watch the family procession travel through the ornate salons of the palace. Following a religious ceremony in the king’s chapel, the signing of the marriage register, and additional formal introductions, the immediate family dined in a gilded, candle-lit room under the eyes of thousands of guests seated in its surrounding lodges. The wedding entertainment continued for another nine days and nights of banquets, dancing , an opera, a ballet, and a display of fireworks for a crowd of around two hundred thousand guests.3 While ʿAli Bey (1759–1777) was the fourth consecutive governor of Tunis from the descendants of ʿAli al-Turki, he certainly did not claim a royal pedigree to the tune of the French monarchs, nor could he boast of a palace to rival that of the Sun King. If he replicated on a smaller and less opulent scale European courtly norms, he was equally attentive to the precedents set by the imperial family in Istanbul because the governors consciously aspired to belong to an early modern political elite in which power was a family prerogative. At these courts, the conspicuous consumption demonstrated in bridal gowns, trousseaus, and lavish banquets was a claim to status, and marriage was a central institution for consolidating elite identity and securing diplomatic, economic, and social alliances. As governor, king, sultan, or shah, official political sinecure was the prerogative of men, yet the celebration of...

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