Famous wives of Turkish sultans: Baffo. Women's Sultanate. The most powerful sultan in the Ottoman Empire began with Ukrainian, and ended with Ukrainian.

Anastasia-Roksolana was glorified not only in operas, ballets, books, portraits, but even in television series. That's why many people have heard about it.

Anastasia.Khurrem

Anastasia Gavrilovna Lisovskaya, or Roksolana, or Khurrem (1506-1558) - first was a concubine, and then became the wife of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Nobody knows why she was given this name, Khurrem, but in Arabic it can mean “cheerful, bright”, but about Roksolana there are serious disputes, the name goes back to the Rusyns, Russians - that was the name of all the inhabitants of Eastern Europe..

And where she was born, no one knows the exact location. Perhaps the city of Rohatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region or the city of Chemerivtsi, Khmelnitsky region. When she was little, she was kidnapped by Crimean Tatars and sold to a Turkish harem.

Life in the harem was not easy. She could die or fight. She chose wrestling and is now known throughout the world. Everyone in the harem was ready to do anything just to receive the Sultan's tenderness. Everyone wanted to survive and raise their offspring. The life of Roksolana-Nastya is well known to everyone, but there is little information about other slaves who could also escape from slavery.

Kezem Sultan

The most famous Valide Sultan Közem Sultan (1589-1651), she was the favorite concubine of Sultan Ahmet the First. During her short girlhood, she was a girl named Anastasia, the daughter of a priest from the Greek island of Tinos.

She was officially and solely at the head of the Muslim empire for many years. She was a tough woman, but she also had mercy - she freed all her slaves after 3 years.

She died a violent death, strangled on the orders of the future Valide Sultan by the chief eunuch of the harem.

Handan Sultan

Valide Sultan was also Handan (Handan) Sultan, wife of Sultan Mehmed III and mother of Sultan Ahmed I (1576-1605). Previously, she was Elena, the daughter of a priest, also Greek.

She was kidnapped into a harem, and tried by all means to get to power.

Nurbanu Sultan

Nurbanu Sultan (translated as “princess of light”, 1525-1583) was the beloved wife of Sultan Selim II (the Drunkard) and the mother of Sultan Murad III. She was of noble birth. But this did not stop the slave traders from kidnapping her and taking her to the palace.

When her husband died, she surrounded him with people to wait for her son to arrive and ascend to the throne.

The corpse lay there for 12 days.

Nurbanu was a relative of the most influential and wealthy people in Europe, for example, the senator and poet Giorgio Baffo (1694-1768). In addition, she was a relative of the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Safiye Sultan, who was Venetian by birth.

At that time, many of the Greek islands belonged to Venice. They were relatives both “on the Turkish line” and “on the Italian line”.

Nurbanu corresponded with many ruling dynasties and pursued a pro-Venetian policy, for which the Genoese hated her. (There is also a legend that she was poisoned by a Genoese agent). The Attik Valide Mosque was built in honor of Nurban not far from the capital.

Safiye Sultan

Safiye Sultan was born in 1550. She was the wife of Murad the Third and the mother of Mehmed the Third. In her freedom and maidenhood she bore the name Sofia Baffo, was the daughter of the ruler of the Greek island of Corfu and a relative of the Venetian senator and poet Giorgio Baffo.

She was also kidnapped and taken to the harem. She corresponded with European monarchs - even Queen Elizabeth I of Great Britain, who even gave her a real European carriage.

Safiye-Sultan made excursions around the city in a donated carriage; her subjects were shocked by such behavior.

She was the ancestor of all the Turkish sultans who followed her.

There is a mosque in her honor in Cairo. And the Turhan Hatis mosque, which she herself began to build, was completed by another Valide-Sultan Nadya from a small Ukrainian town. She was kidnapped when she was 12 years old.

Sultanas due to circumstances

The stories of such girls cannot be called happy. But they did not die, they did not remain imprisoned in the farthest rooms of the palace, they were not expelled. They began to rule themselves; this seemed impossible to everyone.

They achieved power by cruel means, including orders to kill. Türkiye is their second home.

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Sultan Abdul Hamid I's love for a harem concubine named Rukhshah was so great that he himself became a slave to this girl.

Here is a letter from the Sultan begging Rukhshah for love and forgiveness (the originals of all his letters are kept in the library of the Topkapi Palace Museum).

“My Rukhshah!

Your Abdul Hamid calls to you...

The Lord, the creator of all living things, has mercy and forgives, but you left your faithful servant, me, whose sin is so insignificant.

I'm on my knees, I beg you, forgive me.

Let me see you tonight; kill if you want, I will not resist, but please hear my cry, or I will die.

I fall at your feet, unable to bear it any longer.”

Also love worthy of being preserved for centuries, like the love of Sultan Suleiman and Roksolana

The Bukhara emir Seyid Abd al-Ahad Bahadur Khan (reigned 1885–1910), according to Russian travelers who visited him, had only one wife, and he kept a harem more for show.

There were other examples in history.

Rights of a Muslim wife

According to Sharia law, the Sultan could have four wives, but the number of slaves was not limited. But from the point of view of Islamic law, the status of the Kadin Efendi (the Sultan's wife) differed from the status of married women who had personal freedom. Gerard de Nerval, who traveled in the East in the 1840s, wrote: “A married woman in the Turkish Empire has the same rights as we have and can even prohibit her husband from taking a second wife, making this an indispensable condition of the marriage contract […] Don’t even think that these beauties are ready to sing and dance in order to entertain their master - in their opinion, an honest woman should not have such talents.

The Turkish woman could well have initiated a divorce herself, for which she only had to present to the court evidence of her mistreatment.

The most famous women of the Ottoman Empire

It is safe to say that Hurrem Sultan, who lived during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, during the era of the famous Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, heads the list of the most famous women of the Ottoman dynasty. Historians continue this list in this order: after the famous Hurrem, or Roksolana, aka La Sultana Rossa, comes Nurban - the wife of Hurrem’s son, Sultan Selim I; followed by the favorite concubines of the Ottoman sultans - Safiye, Mahpeyker, Hatice Turhan, Emetullah Gulnush, Saliha, Mihrishah, Bezmialem, who received the title of mother of the sultan (queen mother). But Hurrem Sultan began to be called the Queen Mother during her husband’s lifetime, before their son ascended the throne. And this is another consistent violation of traditions that followed the first - when Sultan Suleiman made Hurrem his official wife. And only a select few are allowed to break age-old traditions.

Ottoman monarchs from Osman I to Mehmed V

Ottoman Empire. Briefly about the main thing

The Ottoman Empire was founded in 1299, when Osman I Gazi, who went down in history as the first Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, declared the independence of his small country from the Seljuks and took the title of Sultan (although some historians believe that for the first time only his grandson, Murad I).

Soon he managed to conquer the entire western part of Asia Minor.

Osman I was born in 1258 in the Byzantine province of Bithynia. He died a natural death in the city of Bursa in 1326.

After this, power passed to his son, known as Orhan I Ghazi. Under him, the small Turkic tribe finally turned into a strong state with a strong army.

Four capitals of the Ottomans

Throughout the long history of its existence, the Ottoman Empire changed four capitals:

Seğüt (first capital of the Ottomans), 1299–1329;

Bursa (former Byzantine fortress of Brusa), 1329–1365;

Edirne (formerly the city of Adrianople), 1365–1453;

Constantinople (now the city of Istanbul), 1453–1922.

Sometimes the first capital of the Ottomans is called the city of Bursa, which is considered erroneous.

Ottoman Turks, descendants of Kaya

Historians say: in 1219, the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan fell on Central Asia, and then, saving their lives, abandoning their belongings and domestic animals, everyone who lived on the territory of the Kara-Khitan state rushed to the southwest. Among them was a small Turkic tribe, the Kays. A year later, it reached the border of the Konya Sultanate, which by that time occupied the center and east of Asia Minor. The Seljuks who inhabited these lands, like the Kays, were Turks and believed in Allah, so their Sultan considered it reasonable to allocate to the refugees a small border fief-beylik in the area of ​​the city of Bursa, 25 km from the coast of the Sea of ​​Marmara. No one could have imagined that this small piece of land would become a springboard from which lands from Poland to Tunisia would be conquered. This is how the Ottoman (Ottoman, Turkish) Empire will arise, populated by the Ottoman Turks, as the descendants of the Kayas are called.

The further the power of the Turkish sultans spread over the next 400 years, the more luxurious their court became, where gold and silver flocked from all over the Mediterranean. They were trendsetters and role models in the eyes of rulers throughout the Islamic world.

The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 is considered the last major crusade of the Middle Ages, which was never able to stop the advance of the Ottoman Turks in Europe

Seven periods of the empire

Historians divide the existence of the Ottoman Empire into seven main periods:

Formation of the Ottoman Empire (1299–1402) - the period of the reign of the first four sultans of the empire: Osman, Orhan, Murad and Bayezid.

The Ottoman Interregnum (1402–1413) was an eleven-year period that began in 1402 after the defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Angora and the tragedy of Sultan Bayezid I and his wife in captivity by Tamerlane. During this period, there was a struggle for power between the sons of Bayezid, from which the youngest son, Mehmed I Celebi, emerged victorious only in 1413.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire (1413–1453) was the reign of Sultan Mehmed I, as well as his son Murad II and grandson Mehmed II, ending with the capture of Constantinople and the destruction of the Byzantine Empire by Mehmed II, who received the nickname "Fatih" (Conqueror).

Rise of the Ottoman Empire (1453–1683) – the period of major expansion of the Ottoman Empire's borders. Continued under the reigns of Mehmed II, Suleiman I and his son Selim II, and ended with the defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna during the reign of Mehmed IV (son of Ibrahim I the Crazy).

The Stagnation of the Ottoman Empire (1683–1827) was a 144-year period that began after the Christian victory at the Battle of Vienna permanently ended the Ottoman Empire's ambitions of conquest in European lands.

Decline of the Ottoman Empire (1828–1908) – a period characterized by the loss of a large number of territories of the Ottoman state.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) is the period of reign of the last two sultans of the Ottoman state, the brothers Mehmed V and Mehmed VI, which began after the change in the form of government of the state to a constitutional monarchy, and continued until the complete cessation of the existence of the Ottoman Empire (the period covers the participation of the Ottomans in the First world war).

Historians call the main and most serious reason for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire the defeat in the First World War, caused by the superior human and economic resources of the Entente countries.

The day the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist is called November 1, 1922, when the Grand National Assembly of Turkey adopted a law dividing the sultanate and the caliphate (then the sultanate was abolished). On November 17, Mehmed VI Vahideddin, the last Ottoman monarch and the 36th in succession, left Istanbul on a British warship, the battleship Malaya.

On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, which recognized the independence of Turkey. On October 29, 1923, Turkey was declared a republic and Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk, was elected its first president.

The last representative of the Turkish Sultanic dynasty of the Ottomans

Ertogrul Osman - grandson of Sultan Abdul Hamid II

“The last representative of the Ottoman dynasty, Ertogrul Osman, has died.

Osman spent most of his life in New York. Ertogrul Osman, who would have become sultan of the Ottoman Empire if Turkey had not become a republic in the 1920s, has died in Istanbul at the age of 97.

He was the last surviving grandson of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and his official title, if he became ruler, would be His Imperial Highness Prince Shahzade Ertogrul Osman Efendi.

He was born in Istanbul in 1912, but lived modestly in New York most of his life.

12-year-old Ertogrul Osman was studying in Vienna when he learned that his family had been expelled from the country by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the modern Turkish Republic on the ruins of the old empire.

Osman eventually settled in New York, where he lived for over 60 years in an apartment above a restaurant.

Osman would have become Sultan if Ataturk had not founded the Turkish Republic. Osman always maintained that he had no political ambitions. He returned to Turkey in the early 1990s at the invitation of the Turkish government.

During a visit to his homeland, he went to the Dolmobahce Palace on the Bosphorus, which was the main residence of the Turkish sultans and in which he played as a child.

According to BBC columnist Roger Hardy, Ertogrul Osman was very modest and, in order not to attract attention to himself, he joined a group of tourists to get to the palace.

Ertogrul Osman’s wife is a relative of the last king of Afghanistan.”

Tughra as a personal sign of the ruler

Tughra (togra) is a personal sign of a ruler (Sultan, Caliph, Khan), containing his name and title. Since the time of Ulubey Orhan I, who applied to documents the impression of a palm immersed in ink, it became a custom to surround the Sultan’s signature with an image of his title and the title of his father, merging all the words in a special calligraphic style - the result is a vague resemblance to a palm. The tughra is designed in the form of an ornamentally decorated Arabic script (the text may not be in Arabic, but also in Persian, Turkic, etc.).

Tughra is placed on all government documents, sometimes on coins and mosque gates.

Forgery of tughra in the Ottoman Empire was punishable by death.

In the chambers of the ruler: pretentious, but tasteful

Traveler Théophile Gautier wrote about the chambers of the ruler of the Ottoman Empire: “The Sultan’s chambers are decorated in the style of Louis XIV, slightly modified in an oriental manner: here one can feel the desire to recreate the splendor of Versailles. Doors, window frames, and frames are made of mahogany, cedar or solid rosewood with elaborate carvings and expensive iron fittings strewn with gold chips. The most wonderful panorama opens from the windows - not a single monarch in the world has an equal to it in front of his palace.”

Tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent

So not only were European monarchs keen on the style of their neighbors (say, the oriental style, when they set up boudoirs as pseudo-Turkish alcoves or held oriental balls), but also the Ottoman sultans admired the style of their European neighbors.

"Lions of Islam" - Janissaries

Janissaries (Turkish yeniçeri (yenicheri) - new warrior) - regular infantry of the Ottoman Empire in 1365-1826. The Janissaries, together with the sipahis and akinci (cavalry), formed the basis of the army in the Ottoman Empire. They were part of the kapikuly regiments (the Sultan’s personal guard, consisting of slaves and prisoners). Janissary troops also performed police and punitive functions in the state.

The Janissary infantry was created by Sultan Murad I in 1365 from Christian youths 12–16 years old. Mainly Armenians, Albanians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Georgians, Serbs, who were subsequently brought up in Islamic traditions, were enlisted in the army. Children recruited in Rumelia were sent to be raised by Turkish families in Anatolia and vice versa.

Recruitment of children into the Janissaries ( devshirme- blood tax) was one of the duties of the Christian population of the empire, since it allowed the authorities to create a counterweight to the feudal Turkic army (sipahs).

The Janissaries were considered slaves of the Sultan, lived in monasteries-barracks, they were initially forbidden to marry (until 1566) and engage in housekeeping. The property of a deceased or deceased janissary became the property of the regiment. In addition to the art of war, the Janissaries studied calligraphy, law, theology, literature and languages. Wounded or old Janissaries received a pension. Many of them went on to civilian careers.

In 1683, the Janissaries also began to be recruited from Muslims.

It is known that Poland copied the Turkish army system. In the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, according to the Turkish model, their own Janissary units were formed from volunteers. King Augustus II created his personal Janissary Guard.

The armament and uniform of the Christian Janissaries completely copied Turkish models, including the military drums were of the Turkish type, but differed in color.

The Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire had a number of privileges, from the 16th century. received the right to marry, engage in trade and crafts in their free time from service. The Janissaries received salaries from the sultans, gifts, and their commanders were promoted to the highest military and administrative positions of the empire. Janissary garrisons were located not only in Istanbul, but also in all major cities of the Turkish Empire. From the 16th century their service becomes hereditary, and they turn into a closed military caste. As the Sultan's guard, the Janissaries became a political force and often intervened in political intrigues, overthrowing unnecessary ones and placing the sultans they needed on the throne.

The Janissaries lived in special quarters, often rebelled, started riots and fires, overthrew and even killed sultans. Their influence acquired such dangerous proportions that in 1826 Sultan Mahmud II defeated and completely destroyed the Janissaries.

Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire

The Janissaries were known as courageous warriors who rushed at the enemy without sparing their lives. It was their attack that often decided the fate of the battle. It’s not for nothing that they were figuratively called “lions of Islam.”

Did the Cossacks use profanity in their letter to the Turkish Sultan?

Letter from the Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan - an insulting response from the Zaporozhye Cossacks, written to the Ottoman Sultan (probably Mehmed IV) in response to his ultimatum: stop attacking the Sublime Porte and surrender. There is a legend that before sending troops to the Zaporozhye Sich, the Sultan sent the Cossacks a demand to submit to him as the ruler of the whole world and the viceroy of God on earth. The Cossacks allegedly responded to this letter with their own letter, without mincing words, denying any valor of the Sultan and cruelly mocking the arrogance of the “invincible knight.”

According to legend, the letter was written in the 17th century, when the tradition of such letters was developed among the Zaporozhye Cossacks and in Ukraine. The original letter has not survived, but several versions of the text of this letter are known, some of which are replete with swear words.

Historical sources provide the following text from a letter from the Turkish Sultan to the Cossacks.

"Mehmed IV's proposal:

I, Sultan and ruler of the Sublime Porte, son of Ibrahim I, brother of the Sun and Moon, grandson and vicegerent of God on earth, ruler of the kingdoms of Macedon, Babylon, Jerusalem, Great and Lesser Egypt, king over kings, ruler over rulers, incomparable knight, no one conquerable warrior, owner of the tree of life, persistent guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ, guardian of God himself, hope and comforter of Muslims, intimidator and great defender of Christians, I command you, Zaporozhye Cossacks, to surrender to me voluntarily and without any resistance and not to make me worry with your attacks.

Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV."

The most famous version of the Cossacks’ answer to Mohammed IV, translated into Russian, is as follows:

“Zaporozhye Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

You, Sultan, are the Turkish devil, and the damned devil’s brother and comrade, Lucifer’s own secretary. What kind of damn knight are you when you can’t kill a hedgehog with your bare ass. The devil sucks, and your army devours. You, you son of a bitch, will not have the sons of Christians under you, we are not afraid of your army, we will fight you with land and water, destroy your mother.

You are a Babylonian cook, a Macedonian charioteer, a Jerusalem brewer, an Alexandrian goatman, a swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, an Armenian thief, a Tatar sagaidak, a Kamenets executioner, a fool of all the world and the world, the grandson of the asp himself and our f... hook. You are a pig's muzzle, a mare's ass, a butcher's dog, an unbaptized forehead, motherfucker...

This is how the Cossacks answered you, you little bastard. You won’t even herd pigs for Christians. We end with this, since we don’t know the date and don’t have a calendar, the month is in the sky, the year is in the book, and our day is the same as yours, for that, kiss us on the ass!

Signed: Koshevoy Ataman Ivan Sirko with the entire Zaporozhye camp.”

This letter, replete with profanity, is cited by the popular encyclopedia Wikipedia.

The Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan. Artist Ilya Repin

The atmosphere and mood among the Cossacks composing the text of the answer is described in the famous painting by Ilya Repin “Cossacks” (more often called: “Cossacks writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan”).

It is interesting that in Krasnodar, at the intersection of Gorky and Krasnaya streets, a monument “Cossacks writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan” (sculptor Valery Pchelin) was erected in 2008.

Roksolana is the Queen of the East. All the secrets and mysteries of the biography

Information about the origins of Roksolana, or Khyur-rem, as her beloved Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent called her, is contradictory. Because there are no documentary sources and written evidence telling about the life of Hurrem before her appearance in the harem.

We know about the origin of this great woman from legends, literary works and reports of diplomats at the court of Sultan Suleiman. Moreover, almost all literary sources mention its Slavic (Rusyn) origin.

“Roksolana, aka Khyurrem (according to historical and literary tradition, birth name - Anastasia or Alexandra Gavrilovna Lisovskaya; the exact year of birth is unknown, died on April 18, 1558) - concubine and then wife of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, mother of Sultan Selim II" , says Wikipedia.

The first details about the early years of Roksolana-Hurrem’s life before entering the harem appear in literature in the 19th century, while this amazing woman lived in the 16th century.

Captive. Artist Jan Baptist Huysmans

Therefore, you can believe such “historical” sources that arose centuries later only by virtue of your imagination.

Kidnapping by Tatars

According to some authors, the prototype of Roxolana was the Ukrainian girl Nastya Lisovskaya, who was born in 1505 into the family of the priest Gavrila Lisovsky in Rohatyn, a small town in Western Ukraine. In the XVI century. this town was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at that time was suffering from the devastating raids of the Crimean Tatars. In the summer of 1520, on the night of the attack on the settlement, the young daughter of a priest caught the eye of the Tatar invaders. Moreover, in some authors, say, N. Lazorsky, the girl is kidnapped on her wedding day. Whereas for others, she had not yet reached the age of the bride, but was a teenager. The series “Magnificent Century” also shows Roksolana’s fiancé, the artist Luka.

After the abduction, the girl ended up in the Istanbul slave market, where she was sold and then donated to the harem of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman. Suleiman was then crown prince and held a government post in Manisa. Historians do not rule out that the girl was given to 25-year-old Suleiman as a gift on the occasion of his accession to the throne (after the death of his father Selim I on September 22, 1520). Once in the harem, Roksolana received the name Khyurrem, which translated from Persian means “cheerful, laughing, giving joy.”

How the name came about: Roksolana

According to Polish literary tradition, the heroine's real name was Alexandra, she was the daughter of the priest Gavrila Lisovsky from Rohatyn (Ivano-Frankivsk region). In Ukrainian literature of the 19th century she is called Anastasia of Rohatyn. This version is colorfully presented in Pavlo Zagrebelny’s novel “Roksolana”. Whereas, according to the version of another writer - Mikhail Orlovsky, set out in the historical story “Roksolana or Anastasia Lisovskaya”, the girl was from Chemerovets (Khmelnitsky region). In those ancient times, when the future Hurrem Sultan could have been born there, both cities were located on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland.

In Europe, Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska became known as Roksolana. Moreover, this name was literally invented by Ogier Ghiselin de Busbeck, the Hamburg ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and the author of the Latin-language “Turkish Notes”. In his literary work, based on the fact that Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska came from the territory of the Roxolans or Alans tribe, he called her Roxolana.

Wedding of Sultan Suleiman and Hurrem

From the stories of the author of the “Turkish Letters”, the Austrian Ambassador Busbeck, we learned many details from the life of Roksolana. We can say that thanks to him we learned about her very existence, for the woman’s name could easily have been lost over the centuries.

In one of the letters, Busbeck reports the following: “The Sultan loved Hurrem so much that, in violation of all palace and dynastic rules, he entered into a marriage according to Turkish tradition and prepared a dowry.”

One of the portraits of Roksolana-Hurrem

This significant event in all respects took place around 1530. The Englishman George Young described it as a miracle: “This week an event occurred here that is unknown in the entire history of the local sultans. The Great Lord Suleiman took a slave from Russia named Roksolana as empress, which was celebrated with a great celebration. The wedding ceremony took place in the palace, which was dedicated to feasts on an unprecedented scale. The streets of the city are flooded with light at night and people are having fun everywhere. The houses are hung with garlands of flowers, swings are installed everywhere, and people swing on them for hours. At the old hippodrome, large stands were built with seats and a gilded grille for the Empress and her courtiers. Roksolana with her close ladies watched from there the tournament in which Christian and Muslim knights participated; musicians performed in front of the podium, wild animals were seen off, including strange giraffes with such long necks that they reached to the sky... There are a lot of different rumors about this wedding, but no one can explain what all this could mean.”

It should be pointed out that some sources say that this wedding took place only after the death of Valide Sultan, the mother of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Valide Sultan Hafsa Khatun died in 1534.

In 1555, Hans Dernshvam visited Istanbul; in his travel notes he wrote the following: “Suleiman fell in love with this girl with Russian roots, from an unknown family, more than other concubines. Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska was able to receive a document of freedom and become his legal wife in the palace. Apart from Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, there is no padishah in history who listened so much to the opinion of his wife. Whatever she wished, he immediately fulfilled.”

Roksolana-Hurrem was the only woman in the Sultan's harem with an official title - Sultana Haseki, and Sultan Suleiman shared his power with her. She made the Sultan forget about the harem forever. All of Europe wanted to know the details about the woman who, at one of the receptions in the palace in a dress of gold brocade, rose with the Sultan to the throne with her face open!

Children of Hurrem, born in love

Hurrem gave birth to 6 children to the Sultan.

Sons:

Mehmed (1521–1543)

Abdullah (1523–1526)

Daughter:

Of all the sons of Suleiman I, only Selim survived the Magnificent Father Sultan. The rest died earlier during the struggle for the throne (except Mehmed, who died in 1543 from smallpox).

Hurrem and Suleiman wrote letters to each other full of passionate declarations of love

Selim became heir to the throne. After the death of his mother in 1558, another son of Suleiman and Roksolana, Bayazid, rebelled (1559). He was defeated by his father’s troops in the battle of Konya in May 1559 and tried to take refuge in Safavid Iran, but Shah Tahmasp I handed him over to his father for 400 thousand gold, and Bayezid was executed (1561). Bayezid's five sons were also killed (the youngest of them was only three years old).

Letter from Hurrem to his master

Hurrem's letter to Sultan Suleiman was written when he was on a campaign against Hungary. But there were many such touching letters between them.

“Soul of my soul, my lord! Hail to him who raises the morning breeze; prayer to the one who gives sweetness to the lips of lovers; Praise be to him who fills the voice of his beloved with fervor; respect to the one who burns, like words of passion; boundless devotion to the one who is shone with the most pure light, like the faces and heads of the ascended; to one who is a hyacinth in the form of a tulip, perfumed with the scent of fidelity; glory to the one who holds the banner of victory in front of the army; to the one whose cry is: “Allah! Allah!" - heard in heaven; to his majesty my padishah. May God help him! – we convey the wonder of the Highest Lord and the conversations of Eternity. Enlightened conscience, which adorns my consciousness and remains the treasure of the light of my happiness and my saddened eyes; to the one who knows my deepest secrets; the peace of my aching heart and the pacification of my wounded chest; to him who is the sultan on the throne of my heart and in the light of the eyes of my happiness - the eternal slave, devoted, with a hundred thousand burns on her soul, worships him. If you, my lord, my highest tree of paradise, at least for a moment deign to think or ask about this orphan of yours, know that everyone except her is under the tent of mercy of the All-Merciful. For on that day, when the unfaithful sky, with all-encompassing pain, inflicted violence on me and, despite these poor tears, plunged numerous swords of separation into my soul, on that day of judgment, when the eternal fragrance of the flowers of paradise was taken away from me, my world turned into nothingness , my health is in ill health, and my life is in ruin. From my continuous sighs, sobs and painful screams, which did not subside day or night, human souls were filled with fire. Maybe the creator will have mercy and, responding to my melancholy, will return you to me again, the treasure of my life, in order to save me from the current alienation and oblivion. May this come true, O my lord! Day has turned into night for me, oh melancholy moon! My lord, the light of my eyes, there is no night that would not be incinerated by my hot sighs, there is no evening when my loud sobs and my longing for your sunny face would not reach the heavens. Day has turned into night for me, oh melancholy moon!”

Fashionista Roksolana on artists' canvases

Roksolana, aka Hurrem Sultan, was a pioneer in many areas of palace life. For example, this woman became the trendsetter of the new palace fashion, forcing tailors to sew loose-fitting clothes and unusual capes for herself and her loved ones. She also adored all kinds of exquisite jewelry, some of which were made by Sultan Suleiman himself, while the other part of the jewelry were purchases or gifts from ambassadors.

We can judge Hurrem’s outfits and preferences from the paintings of famous artists who tried to both restore her portrait and recreate the outfits of that era. For example, in a painting by Jacopo Tintoretto (1518 or 1519–1594), a painter of the Venetian school of the late Renaissance, Hurrem is depicted in a long-sleeved dress with a turn-down collar and a cape.

Portrait of Hürrem, kept in the Topkapi Palace Museum

The life and rise of Roxolana so excited the creative contemporaries that even the great painter Titian (1490–1576), whose student, by the way, was Tintoretto, painted a portrait of the famous sultana. A painting by Titian, painted in the 1550s, is called La Sultana Rossa, that is, the Russian sultana. Now this Titian masterpiece is kept in the Ringling Brothers Museum of Art and Circus Arts in Sarasota (USA, Florida); The museum contains unique works of painting and sculpture from the Middle Ages in Western Europe.

Another artist who lived at that time and was related to Turkey was the major German artist from Flemburg, Melchior Loris. He arrived in Istanbul as part of Busbeck's Austrian embassy to Sultan Suleiman Kanuni, and stayed in the capital of the Ottoman Empire for four and a half years. The artist made many portraits and everyday sketches, but, in all likelihood, his portrait of Roksolana could not have been made from life. Melchior Loris depicted the Slavic heroine as a little plump, with a rose in her hand, with a cape on her head decorated with precious stones and with her hair styled in a braid.

Not only paintings, but also books colorfully described the unprecedented outfits of the Ottoman queen. Vivid descriptions of the wardrobe of the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent can be found in the famous book by P. Zagrebelny “Roksolana”.

It is known that Suleiman composed a short poem that is directly related to his beloved’s wardrobe. In the mind of a lover, his beloved’s dress looks like this:

I repeated many times:
Sew my beloved dress.
Make a top out of the sun, put the moon as a lining,
Pinch the fluff from the white clouds, twist the threads
from the blue sea,
Sew buttons out of stars, and make buttonholes out of me!

Enlightened ruler

Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska managed to show her intelligence not only in love affairs, but also in communicating with people of equal status. She patronized artists and corresponded with the rulers of Poland, Venice, and Persia. It is known that she corresponded with the queens and the sister of the Persian Shah. And for the Persian prince Elkas Mirza, who was hiding in the Ottoman Empire from his enemies, she sewed a silk shirt and vest with her own hands, thereby demonstrating generous maternal love, which was supposed to evoke both the gratitude and trust of the prince.

Hurrem Haseki Sultan even received foreign envoys and corresponded with influential nobles of that time.

Historical information has been preserved that a number of Hurrem’s contemporaries, in particular Sehname-i Al-i Osman, Sehname-i Humayun and Taliki-zade el-Fenari, presented a very flattering portrait of Suleiman’s wife, as a woman revered “for her numerous charitable donations, for her patronage of students and respect for learned men, experts in religion, as well as for her acquisition of rare and beautiful things.”

Contemporaries believed that Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska bewitched Suleiman

She implemented large-scale charitable projects. Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska received the right to build religious and charitable buildings in Istanbul and other major cities of the Ottoman Empire. She created a charitable foundation in her name (Turkish: Külliye Hasseki Hurrem). With donations from this fund, the Aksaray district or women's bazaar, later also named after Haseki (Turkish: Avret Pazari), was built in Istanbul, the buildings of which included a mosque, a madrasah, an imaret, a primary school, hospitals and a fountain. It was the first complex built in Istanbul by the architect Sinan in his new position as chief architect of the ruling house, and also the third largest building in the capital, after the Mehmet II (Turkish: Fatih Camii) and Süleymaniye (Turkish: Süleymanie) complexes.

In the middle of the 16th century, one of the most famous phenomena of the Islamic world began to emerge in the Ottoman Empire - the female sultanate. Despite the fact that to this day disputes continue as to who became its first representative, history will not contradict the fact that this phenomenon completely changed the course of development of the history of not only the empire, but the entire world.

What is a female sultanate

During the monarchy in the Ottoman Empire, every woman was given a secondary role in the life of the people. They had no access to politics, were not involved in important affairs of the empire, and did not have the right to vote. Their only task was to obey their man, honor Allah and bear children. These were the Medieval laws of the greatest empire of that time. But did anything change later?

The great love and respect of the sultans for their wives and mothers allowed them to gradually intervene in political affairs: give advice to the sultans, help them get out of difficult situations, and sometimes take all power into their own hands.

It took too much courage and effort from the women of the Middle Ages to gain at least some influence in the palace. The first sultana who was not afraid to take power into her own hands and had extraordinary influence on the Sultan was Hurrem Sultan - the legal wife of Sultan Suleiman I. It cannot be said that until this time not a single woman wanted to receive more respect and power, rather the opposite. However, the excessive severity of the rulers and the belief that a woman’s place is a harem did not give them the opportunity to rise even a little in their eyes.

– a woman who has been self-educating from a young age. She knew several foreign languages, which subsequently gave her the opportunity to freely negotiate with any foreign envoy. She was well versed in politics, as evidenced by the ambassadors in their memoirs about her. At the same time, she always remained a loving woman. Suleiman I, because of his great love for his wife, allowed her more than previous sultans. This is evidenced at least by the fact that he became the first sultan to enter into a legal marriage with his concubine, which in the future became a tradition among other rulers.

It cannot be said that subsequent sultanas built their political careers only on the love of the sultans for them. Rather, on the contrary, at the time when their sons became rulers, they acquired the greatest power. Why is that? Each of the sultanas is not only a leader by nature, thirsty for power, she is also a rather complex and cunning opponent in the struggle for the throne. There is only one real case in the empire when a woman simply had to take the post of regent due to her son’s early age and his inability to govern the state. In all other cases, each sultana thirsted for power, she was no stranger to deceit and cunning, she could kill hundreds of people on the way to greatness. We should not forget about the fact that the subsequent successor always observed the current Valide Sultan, adopted her experience, learned from mistakes, and received a dose of the same thirst for power.

All this gave birth to the female sultanate, the first and last phenomenon in the Islamic world when a woman was allowed to take power. His period lasted just over 100 years until the famous Battle of Vienna in 1683. It was after these events that the Ottoman Empire entered a period of stagnation (stagnation). Influential sultana-mistresses are often accused of this.

Consequences of the female sultanate

Among the ruling women who are among the persons of the female sultanate are:

Nurbanu Sultan;

Safiye Sultan;

Turkhan Sultan.

It is not for nothing that the Sultan is not mentioned here, although it was this great and fearless woman who laid the foundation for its development. Her daughter-in-law Nurbanu Sultan followed the example of her mother-in-law. An important fact was that Sultan Selim, Nurbanu’s husband, was prone to drinking large amounts of alcohol, so he was often not very interested in political issues. His life value was the harem, in which he spent a lot of time having fun. Therefore, his wife found supporters in the Council and often independently made important decisions for the state.

The female sultanate caused the stagnation of the Ottoman Empire. The sultana-mistresses had a strong influence on the decline in the power of the empire. During their reign, campaigns were quite rare, and therefore the state lost more and more of its personal territories.

If in the first 100 years of the Women's Sultanate its influence was practically unnoticed and the empire remained one of the strongest in the world, then after 1683 it became clear to everyone that the Ottoman Empire did not have the means and strength to maintain its global authority. Every year, the lands of the monarchy began to be conquered by other states. The process could no longer be stopped, because in 1922 the Ottoman Empire completely ceased to exist, owning at that time only territories commensurate with modern Turkey.

The biggest reason is not that women began to be allowed into power. Many sons of the Sultan, from a very young age, became involved in state issues, attended the Council, studied the art of war, politics, tactics and strategy, and oratory. Sultanas were limited in such skills. Everything that they were able to independently study and assimilate was used. It is surprising that many of them were quite talented politicians.

P The last sultana of Ottoman origin was the mother of Suleiman I the Magnificent, her name was Aishe Sultan Hafsa (December 5, 1479 - March 19, 1534), according to sources, she was from Crimea and was the daughter of Khan Mengli-Girey. However, this information is controversial and has not yet been fully verified.

After Aishe, the era of the “female sultanate” (1550-1656) began, when women influenced government affairs. Naturally, they cannot be compared with European rulers (Catherine II, or Elizabeth I of England) due to the fact that these women had disproportionately less power, personal freedom and were further from absolutism. It is believed that this era began with Anastasia (Alexandra) Lisovskaya, or Roksolana known to us. She was the wife of Suleiman I the Magnificent and the mother of Selim II, and became the first sultana taken from the harem.

After Roksolana, the main women of the country became two relatives, two beautiful Venetian women from the Baffo family, Cecilia and Sofia. Both one and the other came to the top through the harem. Cecilia Baffo became Roksolana's daughter-in-law.

So, Cecilia Vernier-Baffo, or Nurbanu Sultan, was born on the island of Paros around 1525. Her father was a noble Venetian, the governor of the island of Paros, Nicolo Venier, and her mother was Violanta Baffo. The girl's parents were not married, so the girl was named Cecilia Baffo, giving her mother's surname.

According to another, less popular version, based on Ottoman sources, Nurbanu's real name was Rachel, and she was the daughter of Violanta Baffo and an unknown Spanish Jew.

Little is known about Cecilia's history.

It is known that in 1537, the pirate and admiral of the Turkish flotilla Khair ad-din Barbarossa captured Paros and 12-year-old Cecilia was enslaved. She was sold to the Sultan's harem, where Hurrem Sultan was noticed for her intelligence . Hurrem gave her the name Nurbanu, which means "Queen who exudes divine light" and sent her to serve her son, Prince Selim.

According to the chronicles, having reached adulthood in 1543, Selim was sent to Konya to take up the post due to him as heir, Cecilia Nurbanu accompanied him. At this time, the young prince was inflamed with love for his beautiful accompanying odalisque.

Soon Nurbanu had a daughter, Shah Sultan, and later, in 1546, a son, Murad, who was at that time the only son of Selim. Later, Nurbanu Sultan gave birth to four more daughters for Selima. And after Selim’s accession to the throne, Nurbanu becomes Haseki.

In the Ottoman Empire itself, Selim received the nickname “Drunkard” because of his passion for wine, but he was not a drunkard in the literal sense of the word. And yet, state affairs were handled by Mehmed Sokollu (Grand Vizier of Bosnian origin Boyko Sokolović), who came under the influence of Nurbanu.

As a ruler, Nurbanu corresponded with many ruling dynasties, pursued a pro-Venetian policy, for which the Genoese hated her and, judging by rumors, the Genoese ambassador poisoned her.

In honor of Nurban, the Attik Valide Mosque was built near the capital, where she was buried in 1583, bitterly mourned by her son Murad III, who often relied on his mother in his politics.

Safiye Sultan (translated from Turkish as "Pure"), born Sofia Baffo, was of Venetian origin, and was a relative of her mother-in-law, Nurban Sultan. She was born around 1550, the daughter of the ruler of the Greek island of Corfu and a relative of the Venetian senator and poet Giorgio Baffo.

Sofia, like Cecilia, was captured by corsairs and sold into a harem, where she then attracted the attention of Crown Prince Murad, for whom she became the only favorite for a long time. It was rumored that the reason for such constancy were problems in the prince’s intimate life, which only Safiye knew how to somehow overcome. These rumors are very similar to the truth, since before Murad became Sultan (in 1574, at the age of 28, after the death of his father Sultan Selim II), he only had children with Safiye.

Having become the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Murad III, obviously, recovered after some time from his intimate illness, since he moved from forced monogamy to sexual excesses, and practically devoted his future life exclusively to the pleasures of the flesh, to the detriment of state affairs. So 20 sons and 27 daughters (however, we should not forget that in the 15th-16th centuries infant mortality was very high and out of 10 newborn babies, 7 died in childhood, 2 in adolescence and young adulthood, and only one had any chance live to at least 40 years old), which Sultan Murad III left after his death - a completely natural result of his lifestyle.

in the 15th-16th centuries, infant mortality was very high and out of 10 newborn babies, 7 died in childhood, 2 in adolescence and young adulthood, and only one had any chance of surviving at least 40 years

Despite the fact that Murad never married his beloved Safiya, this did not stop her from becoming one of the most influential women of that time.

The first nine years of his reign, Murad completely shared with his mother Nurbana, obeyed her in everything. And it was Nurbanu who played an important role in his attitude towards Safiya. Despite family ties, both in state affairs and in the affairs of the harem, Venetian women constantly fought with each other for leadership. Nevertheless, as they say, youth won.

In 1583, after the death of Nurbanu Sultan, Safiye Sultan began to strengthen the position of her son Mehmed as the heir of Murad III. Mehmed was already 15 years old and he was very popular among the Janissaries, which greatly frightened his father. Murad III even prepared conspiracies, but Safiyya always managed to warn her son. This struggle continued for 12 years, until Murad’s death.

Safiye Sultan received almost unlimited power at the age of 45, simultaneously with the title of Valide Sultan, after the death of Sultan Murad III in 1595. Her son, the bloodthirsty Mehmed III, immediately after his accession to the throne, the Ottomans ordered the murder of not only his 20 younger brothers, but also all of his father’s pregnant concubines. It was he who introduced in the Sublime Porte the disastrous custom of not giving the princes the opportunity to take part in governing the state during the life of their father, but of keeping them locked up in the seraglio, in the Cafes (cage) pavilion.

WOMEN OF SULTAN SULEYMAN It is not known how many women there were in the life of Sultan Suleiman I, but his relationships with some of them are provable. Suleiman's first woman was the Montenegrin Mukrime (Mukarrem), whom Valide Hafsa introduced to him in Caffa in 1508/09. Mukrime was born in Shokdra in 1496 (or 1494), she was the daughter of Prince Stefan (Staniš) Černoević of the Montenegrin royal family of Crnojević (Černoević) and an Albanian princess; it was given to the Sultan's court in 1507 as a tribute. Stefan Chernoevich converted to Islam after the conquest of Montenegro by the Turks (around 1507) and called himself Iskender. Selim I gave him one of his daughters as a wife and gained control of Montenegro. Thanks to his family connection with the sultan's dynasty, Stefan Cernoević (Iskender) remained governor of Montenegro until his death in 1530. Mukrime gave birth to three children: Neslihan (1510) and Meryem (1511) were born in Kaffa: both girls died during the smallpox epidemic in 1512. Seven years later, Mukrime gave birth to a son, Murad, in Sarukhan - he also died of smallpox in 1521 in the summer palace of Edirne. As a childless sultana, Mukrime remained in the shadows until 1534. After the death of her mother-in-law Hafsa, she was expelled from Istanbul along with two other women of Suleiman - Gulbahar and Mahidevran. Suleiman gave Mukrima a mansion in Edirne and she remained there until his death in 1555. Suleiman's second wife was the Albanian Gülbahar Melekcihan (also called Kadriye), who became the Sultan's concubine around 1511 in Caffa. She is often mistakenly identified with Makhidevran. Gulbahar came from an Albanian noble family and, thanks to family ties with the Ottoman dynasty, became a servant of Hafsa. It is unknown how many children she bore to Suleiman: there must have been at least two. Being a childless concubine, after Roksolana appeared in the harem, she lost her influence, and in 1534 she was expelled from Istanbul along with Mukrime and Makhidevran. She first lived in a mansion in Edirne, then in a manor near Arnavutkoy near the capital, and died there in 1559 at the age of 63. Suleiman's third wife, Makhidevran (one of the Sultan's most famous wives), was the daughter of the Circassian prince Idar. She was born in Taman in 1498; her mother, Princess Nazkan-Begum, was the daughter of the Crimean Tatar ruler Mengli 1st Giray. Mahidevran met Suleiman in the winter of 1511 in Kaffa, where she was visiting her mother. Suleiman married Mahidevran a little later, on January 5, 1512 in Kaffa. At the end of the same year she gave birth to her first child, Sehzade Mahmud, in 1515 - Sehzade Mustafa, in 1518 - Sehzade Ahmed, in 1521 - Fatma Sultan and, finally, in 1525 - Raziy Sultan: at this time Mahidevran already was not Suleiman’s first favorite, since the Slavic slave Hurrem became his favorite concubine. It was assumed that Makhidevran was also named Gulbahar, but the certificate of payment to her was not given a second name. In historical documents Mahidevran is mentioned as Valide-i Şehzade-Sultan Mustafa Mahidevran Hatun. From the documentation of expenses (1521) it is clear that Gülbahar Hatun, mother of the deceased Shehzade Abdullah (orig.: Gülbahar Hatun mader-i mürdü Şehzade Sultan Abdullah), spent 120 akçe on her stables. Another document from 1532 states that 400 akche were granted to the brother of Gulbahar Khatun - Tahir aga from Ohrit. (orig.: padişah-ı mülkü alem Sultan Suleyman Han Hazretlerinin halile-i muhteremeleri Gülbahar Hatunun karındaşı Ohritli Tahir Ağa’nın şahsi hükmüne atayayı seniyyeden 400 Akça ihsan edildi). A letter dated 1554 states: “Gulbahar Kadriye, daughter of Hasan Bey and highly respected wife of Suleiman, Shah of the World, asks from her native state the sum of 90 aspers.” (orig. Gülbahar Kadriye binti Hasan Bey, harem-i muhtereme-i Cıhan-ı Şehinşah-ı Cihan-ı Suleyman Han, hane-i ahalisi içün 90 Asper mercuu eyler). This important document shows that Gulbahar's middle name was Kadriye. This proves that Mahidevran and Gulbahar are two completely different women. In a document from 1531, Gulbahar is referred to as Melekcihan (orig. Padişah-ı mülk Sultan Suleyman Han harem-i Arnavut nesebinden Kadriye Melekcihan Hatun). Around 1517 or 1518, a woman named Kumru Khatun appears in the harem, who is said to have been Suleiman's concubine. In a document from 1518, Kumru Khatun is mentioned among the influential ladies of the harem. But since 1533 her name has not been found in any historical documents, perhaps she died or was exiled. A certain Kumru Memdukha Khatun (died in 1561) was a servant of Mukrime Khatun. Presumably these two Kumru Khatuns are identical. Hurrem, whose real name was Alexandra Lisowska, was the daughter of a peasant from Ruthenia and was born in 1505 in eastern Poland. When she was very young, she was kidnapped by Cossacks and sold to the court of the Crimean Tatars in Bakhchisarai. She remained there for a short time, and then was sent along with other slaves to the Sultan's court. As soon as she arrived in the imperial harem, she became the Sultan's mistress. In the autumn of 1520 she was already pregnant with her first child, and in early 1521 she gave birth to Şehzade Mehmed. Over the next five years, she was constantly pregnant and gave birth every year: at the end of 1521 Mihrimah Sultan was born, in 1523 - Abdullah, in 1524 - Selim, and in 1525 - Bayezid. Six years passed after the birth of Bayezid, and she again gave birth to a son, Cihangir (in December 1530). The boy probably suffered from scoliosis, which progressed throughout his life and caused severe pain. With this group of children, Hurrem strengthened her position at court and replaced her rival Mahidevran, becoming the first favorite of the Sultan. A fight began between the two women over the future of their sons. Mahidevran lost this war because Hurrem, with the help of her daughter Mihrimah and son-in-law Rustem Pasha, convinced the Sultan that Mahidevran's son, Prince Mustafa, was a traitor. Suleiman executed Mustafa. After the assassination of Prince Mustafa on October 6, 1553 in Aktepe near Konya, the path to the throne was clear for Hurrem's sons, but she did not live to see her son Selim II become the 11th Ottoman Sultan. She died after a short illness on April 15, 1558 in Istanbul. Suleiman fell into a deep depression and allegedly mourned his beloved wife until his death. Little is known about Suleiman's last women. They say that while Hurrem was still alive, he took two concubines, with whom he had children. Around 1555, he chose Merziban Khatun, an Albanian, as his concubine, and around 1557, Meleksime Khatun, a Bosnian from Mostar. The power-hungry Venetian wife of the heir Selim, Nurbanu, did not tolerate rivals in the palace, especially since Suleiman had a son with Meleksime Khatun, and the boy could be considered as a contender for the throne. Shortly after the execution of Bayezid and his sons in 1561, the little prince died unexpectedly at the age of about seven, and his mother Meleksime, as well as Merziban, were forced to leave the palace. Apparently, Suleiman did not object, because since 1564 Meleksime lived in Edirne, and Merziban lived in Kizilagac. From 6 women, Suleiman had 22 children: From Mukrime Khatun: 1. Meryem (1510 - 1512) 2. Neslihan (1511 - 1512) 3. Murad (1519 - 1521) Gulbahar Khatun: 1. daughter - name unknown (1511 - 1520) 2. Abdullah (1520 - 1521) died of smallpox 3. Hafiza (1521 - about 1560) died a widow, the name of her husband is unknown. Mahidevran Khatun: 1. Mahmud (1512 – 1521) died of smallpox 2. Mustafa (1515 – 1553) 3. Ahmed (1518 – after 1534) date of death unknown, possibly around 1540 or later. It is unknown whether Prince Ahmed died of natural causes; murder is possible. 4. Fatma (1520 - 1572) was married to Gazi Hoxha Mehmed Pasha (died 1548). Mehmed Pasha was the son of Ghazi Yahya Pasha and Princess Shahzadi (daughter of Sultan Bayezid II). 5. Raziye (1525 – 1556) died a widow, the name of her husband is unknown. Hurrem Haseki Sultan: 1. Mehmed (1521 - 1543) 2. Mihrimah (1522 - 1578) 3. Abdullah (1523 - 1523) died in infancy 4. Selim II (1524 - 1574) 5. Bayazid (1525 - 1561) 6. Cihangir (1531 – 1553) Merziban Khatun: 1. Hatice (c. 1555 – after 1575) died in youth 2. son, whose name is unknown (ca. 1556 – c. 1563) this prince may have been killed. Meleksime Khatun: 1. Orhan? (about 1556 - 1562) in other sources he is called Mehmed. However, Sehzade Bayezid also had a son named Orhan, who was killed in Bursa around 1562. Confusion is quite possible. 2. Shahikhuban (1560 - about 1595) presumably she was married and had children.