Mahfiruz Hatice Sultan
| Mahfiruz Hatice Sultan | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Eudoxia (?) c. 1590 Rumelia (?) |
| Died | 26 October 1620 |
| Burial | Eyüp Cemetery, Istanbul |
| Spouse | Ahmed I |
| Issue | Osman II |
| Religion | Islam, previously Orthodoxy |
Mahfiruz Hatice Sultan (fully Devletlu İsmetlu Mahfiruz Hatice Sultan Aliyyetü'ş-Şân Hazretleri; c. 1590 – 26 October 1620) was a wife of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-1617). She was the mother of Sultan Osman II.
Life
The earlier theory of her being Greek[1] having been refuted, nothing is known about her background except that her name was probably Mahfiruz.[2] According to some dubious source she was a Serbian originally named Eudoxia.[3]
She was the first of Ahmed I's three women and bore him Osman II. With the birth of Osman, the couple's first child, Ahmed became the youngest Ottoman sultan to become father, and Osman was the first Ottoman first-born prince to be born in the Imperial capital of Istanbul.[4]
Mahfiruz was alive when her son, Osman was finally enthroned in 1618 as Sultan Osman II after the deposition of the incompetent Mustafa I. However, contrary to the assumptions of modern accounts, she did not live in the imperial palace during Osman's reign nor did she act as a Valide Sultan. Privy Purse registers no Valide Sultan during Osman's reign. Mahfiruz perhaps never entered the harem as Fatma Hatun and Akile Hatun, the daughters of Kuyucu Murad Pasha and Şeyhülislam Esad Efendi respectively. From the middle of 1620, Osman's governess, the daye hatun, began to receive an extraordinary large stipend, one thousand aspers a day rather than her usual two hundrend aspers, an indication that she was now the official stand-in for the Valide Sultan. What seems like that Mahfiruz fell into disfavour, was banished from the palace at some point before Osman's accession, and never recovered her status as a royal consort.
Banishment in disgrace would explain both Mahfiruz's absence from the palace and her burial in the popular shrine of Eyüb rather than in her husband's tomb. The Venetian ambassador Contarini reported in 1612 that the sultan had had a beating administrated to a woman who had irritated Kösem; perhaps this woman was Mahfiruz. Mahfiruz's banishment would have removed a serious obstacle to Kösem's efforts to keep Mustafa away from execution, since the party of Osman had the greatest stake in the survival of the traditional system of succession.[5] She died on 26 October 1620 and was buried in large sanctuary of Eyüp, Istanbul. There are speculations that she was murdered by the orders of her nemesis Kösem Sultan.
In popular culture
In the 2015 TV series Muhteşem Yüzyıl: Kösem, Mahfiruz Hatice Sultan is portrayed by Turkish actress Dilara Aksüyek.
See also
References
- ↑ History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Stanford Jay Shaw, Cambridge University Press, p. 191
- ↑ Baki Tezcan in Turcica. 39–40. Éditions Klincksieck. 2007. p. 350.
The only other thing we know about her is that her name was probably Mahfiruz. That she was Greek and taught Osman Latin, Greek, and Italian are products of the imagination of an eighteenth century French novelist which surprisingly ...
- ↑ Günseli İnal (2005). Semiramis: Sultan'ın gözünden şenlik. YKY. p. 27. ISBN 978-975-08-0928-6.
[Osman II's mother the Serbian Evdoksiya known as Mahfiruz Sultan]
- ↑ Baki Tezcan (13 September 2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. Cambridge University Press. pp. 115–. ISBN 978-0-521-51949-6.
- ↑ Leslie P., Peirce (1993). "Wives and Concubines: The Exercise of Political Power". The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314: Oxford University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-19-508677-5.
