It is not customary for a ceremony to be performed when the sultan marries. Only three Turkish sultans are said to have undergone a ceremony on the occasion of taking to themselves wives. When the Greek Princess Theodora was wedded to Orkhan; when Roxelana became the wife of Sultan Suleyman; and when Besma, an adopted daughter of a princess of Egypt, was married to Abd-ul-Medjid, the marriage ceremony was performed. As a mark of certain inferiority, the bride is expected to enter the nuptial bed from the back, lifting the covering with much ceremony. It is never good form for a gentleman to inquire concerning the health of another's wife. Mothers of the harem are often compelled to live in mortal fear for their infant sons, lest they be foully dealt with. For if a child have any prospect of some day being the Turkish ruler, his life is never regarded as altogether safe. The baby prince is brought up in the harem, with his mother and nurse; but since brothers and even uncles come before sons, the question of succession to the sultanate has often caused great disorder and bloodshed. On the death of Mohammed, the great Arab leader, there was no mention of a law of succession. This was partly due, doubtless, to the fact that he left no son who might assume leadership of the hosts of Islam. At length, the Seljuk Turks attained to power, after which the empire fell into minor sovereignties, which were brought together at last into the Ottoman Empire. And while of late the stability of the reigning dynasty has been the most noteworthy of the East, yet the fact that there was not early established the ordinary custom of transmitting the sovereignty from father to son has been the cause of much intrigue, crime, and uncertainty in the dominion of the Turk. Cases have not been unknown in Turkish history where several hundred women of the seraglio were drowned in the Bosphorus because of plottings to depose the sultan. They were tied in the traditional sack and dropped into the sea. It was Ibrahim I., known as the Madman, one of the very worst of Turkish rulers, who first conceived the idea of thus disposing of the old women of the seraglio. Surprised and seized in the night, the unfortunate victims of the sultan's madness were tied in sacks and then sunk to the bottom of the sea. Only one of the large company of the unfortunates escaped, by the loosing of the sack, and was picked up by a passing ship and conveyed to Paris to tell the story of the cruel death of her companions. Among the many notable instances of the tragic end to which the plottings of the harem have come may be mentioned that of Tarkhann, mother of Mohammed IV. So desirous was she that her son should reign, that she slew all the other possible male heirs to the throne. She met her nemesis, however, by strangulation. It is upon her life and that of her rival that Racine has constructed his _Bajazet_.