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Most wives of several Ottoman Sultans were ethnic Caucasians converted to Islam.
Many of the Caucasian women in the Ottoman harem were described as having "green eyes and long, dark blond hair, pale skin of translucent white colour, thin waist, slender body structure, and very good-looking hands and feet."
It is also understood from the memoirs of Princess Emily Ruete that Circassian women, who were captured in Constantinople and brought to Africa for the harem of Zanzibari Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, were envied by their rivals who considered Circassians to be of the "hateful race of blue-eyed cats."
In Henry Lindlahr's words in the early 20th century, "Blue-eyed Caucasian regiments today form the cream of the Sultan's army.β
According to the feminist Harriet Martineau, Circassians were the only saving virtue of the Egyptian harem where these Circassian mothers produced the finest children and if they were to be excluded from the harem, the upper class in Egypt would be doomed.
A consequence of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was an excess of beautiful Circassian women on the Turkish slave market, and that this was causing prices of slaves in general to plummet. Black slaves were being killed to make room for Caucasian slaves.