Mahfiruz Hatun

Mahfiruz Hatun
Detail from a painting depicting the enthronement of Osman II, by an anonymous European artist, c. 1618[1]
Bornc. 1590
unknown
Died1610/1615 (aged 20–25)
Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Burial
Eyüp Cemetery, Istanbul, Turkey
Consort ofAhmed I
Issue
  • Osman II
  • Gevherhan Sultan (?)
  • Şehzade Bayezid
  • Şehzade Hüseyn
  • Şehzade Süleyman (?)
Names
Turkish: Hatice Mahfiruz Hatun
Ottoman Turkish: ماہ فروز خاتون
ReligionSunni Islam
(converted)

Hatice Mahfiruz Hatun[2] (Ottoman Turkish: ماه فروز خاتون, romanized: Māh-fürūz Ḫātūn, "glorious moon", "daytime moon" or "turquoise moon"; also called Mahfiruze Hatun; c. 1590 – 1610/1615) was the concubine of Ottoman sultan Ahmed I and mother of his firstborn son, Osman II.

Biography

Origins

Her origins are unknown,[3][4] although she has been described as being Greek, and that she taught Osman Greek. This hypothesis was eventually disproven by Turkish historian Baki Tezcan as based on the novel: Histoire d'Osman premier du nom, XIXe empereur des turcs, et de l'impératrice Aphendina Ashada by Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez published in 1743.[5][6][7]

Her Name

The Turkish historian Yılmaz Öztuna calls her "Hadîce Mâh-Fîrûz(e)" and the Turkish historian Necdet Sakaoğlu says she was variously called "Mahirûze, Hatice Mahfirûze, Mahfirûze, Mahfirûz, Mah-ı Feyrûz".[8] Her name was first recorded in The Chronicle of Naima (Tārīḫ-i Naʿīmā), written by Ottoman historian Mustafa Naima around 1700,[6] quoting Mahfiruz as a "noble and august" lady.[9]

Life in the harem

Contemporary portrait of Ahmed I, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art[10][11]

Mahfiruz became Ahmed I's first concubine,[12][13] and on 3 November 1604 gave birth to his firstborn son, the future Osman II, and she received the rank of Baş Hatun (mother of eldest prince) as Osman's mother, making Ahmed I the youngest Ottoman sultan to have fathered a child.[14] According to Turkish historian Ahmet Refik Altınay,[15] in the following years she bore the sultan other children, including Şehzade Bayezid in December 1612, Şehzade Hüseyn in November 1613, and perhaps Şehzade Süleyman in 1611/12 or 1615; several authors[16][17][18][19] state that foreign ambassadors reported a daughter who reached adulthood and married,[20] identified as Gevherhan Sultan,[21] and born in 1605/06 or late 1608.

She has been described as "baş haseki" (Not to be confused with baş haseki Sultan), for being the first Ahmed I's favorite consort before Kösem.[22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Therefore Mahfiruz never had the title of Sultana in the hierarchy of the harem, although she commanded respect as Baş Hatun.

Mahfiruz is depicted as participating in Osman II's enthronement procession in a painting titled "The rise of the young Osman", which was later auctioned at Sotheby's and sold to the Turkish Ministry of Culture in 2016. The work was commissioned by Austrian ambassador Hans Mollard von Reinek, who was invited to the ceremony with his entourage.[29][30][31]

The enthronement of Osman II (r. 1618–1622)

Historian Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall claimed that, provided Mahfiruz was still alive at the time, she and Kösem Sultan shouldn't have been on bad terms during Osman II's reign,[32][33] as the young sultan visited the Old Palace in April 1619 and stayed for some days on the occasion of celebrations held for him by Kösem.[32][34][32][35]

Mahfiruz is largely remembered in Eyüp because of her charity work: she ordered the building of a cüzhane (Quran reading room) in Eyüp Cemetery.[36][37][38]

Her other contributions to Eyüp included providing copies of the Quran to her cüzhane and rendering religious services at the tomb of Ahmed I. During her lifetime, she had the opportunity to create some charitable foundations in Istanbul.[39]

A devotee of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, she was nicknamed "Sâhibe-i Hayrât".[40]

According to historian Leslie P. Peirce, Mahfiruz did not become valide sultan and instead died in exile by 1620, as evidenced by the absence of a valide sultan in the privy purse records during Osman II's reign, as well as the high stipend of the sultan's wet nurse from mid-1620 onwards — an indication that she served as de facto valide sultan.[41]

Death

The Turkish historian Baki Tezcan says that Mahfiruz died in 1610, if not earlier. His theory is supported by contemporary ambassadorial accounts throughout Ahmed I's reign, extending up to the accession of Osman II in 1618, such as the English ambassador George Sandys, who reported in 1610, or around this time: "this also hath married his concubine, the mother of his yonger sonne, (she being dead by whom he had the eldest) who with all the practices of a politicke stepdame endevours to settle the succession on her owne...”; the Venetian ambassador Cristoforo Valier reported between 1612 and 1615 (when he died) that Ahmed had four sons: "two from the sultana who died and two from the one alive"; the Italian author Pietro della Valle also said that Osman's mother had died when he wrote about Osman II's accession to the throne: "Osman, Sultan Ahmed's firstborn son, but not son of the living sultana Kösem". That Mahfiruz is dead is also stated in a relation on the life and death of Nasuh Pasha, written sometime after Nasuh’s execution in 1614 and sent by the French ambassador Achille de Harlay on March 5, 1616, he also reported in his letter to Louis XIII: "not the son of the living sultana but the eldest named Osman, who has been motherless for ten years"; the letter is dated on 26 February 1618, the day of Osman's enthronement.[42] Tezcan argues that the document (dated 28 October 1620) cited by Uluçay as evidence for the year of Mahfiruz's death does not in fact suggest that she died that year.[43] Günhan Börekçi quoted Tezcan's theory in his "A Queen-Mother at Work: On Handan Sultan and Her Regency During the Early Reign of Ahmed I".[44]

Burial

Mahfiruz was buried in Eyüp Cemetery,[41] an unusual place for the concubine of a sultan. The chronogram on her mausoleum suggests it was built by Osman II in 1618.[45]

Issue

Portrait of Osman II, c. 1710–20

Mahfiruz had at least three or four sons:[16][17][18][19]

  • Osman II[46][47] (3 November 1604, Constantinople, Topkapı Palace – 20 May 1622, Constantinople; buried in the Ahmed I Mausoleum, Sultan Ahmed Mosque)[48][47] — his father's firstborn and the 16th sultan of the Ottoman Empire; he was killed during a janissary revolt, becoming the first Ottoman sultan to be executed
  • Şehzade Bayezid[49][47] (December 1612,[50] Constantinople – 27 July 1635, Constantinople, Topkapı Palace; buried in the Ahmed I Mausoleum, Sultan Ahmed Mosque) — executed upon the order of his elder half-brother Murad IV in 1635[18][19]
  • Şehzade Hüseyin[51][47] (November 1613,[52] Constantinople – 1617, Constantinople, Topkapı Palace; buried in the Mehmed III Mausoleum, Hagia Sophia)[18][19]

She was also possibly the mother of:

  • Gevherhan Sultan[53][54][55] (c. 1605/06 or late 1608, Constantinople – 18 April 1631,[56] Constantinople; buried in the Ahmed I Mausoleum, Sultan Ahmed Mosque)
  • Şehzade Süleyman (1611/12[57] or 1615[58] Constantinople – 27 July 1635, Constantinople, Topkapı Palace; buried in the Ahmed I Mausoleum, Sultan Ahmed Mosque) — executed upon the order of his elder half-brother Murad IV in 1635[18][19]
  • Mahfiruz is one of the characters in the 1743 historical novel "Histoire d'Osman premier du nom, XIXe empereur des turcs, et de l'impératrice Aphendina Ashada" by French authoress Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez
  • Portrayed by Rengin Arda in the 1962 film Genç Osman ve Sultan Murat Han
  • Mahfiruz is one of the characters in the 2001 historical novel "La sultana: Giacometta Beccarino da Manfredonia" by Italian essayist Vito Salierno
  • Portrayed by Öykü Çelik in the 2010 film Mahpeyker: Kösem Sultan
  • Portrayed by Dilara Aksüyek in the 2015 TV series Muhteşem Yüzyıl: Kösem[59]

See also

References

  1. ^ "'Sultan 2. Osman'ın Cülus-ı Hümayun Tablosu' Topkapı Sarayı'nda". Anadolu Ajansı (in Turkish). Anadolu Ajansı. The enthronement of Sultan Osman II (r.1618-22), by a European artist travelling with the Austrian Ambassador Hans Mollard von Reinek.
  2. ^ Sakaoğlu, Necdet [in Turkish] (2008). Bu mülkün kadın sultanları: Vâlide sultanlar, hâtunlar, hasekiler, kadınefendiler, sultanefendiler. Oğlak Publications. p. 238. ISBN 978-9-753-29623-6.
  3. ^ Tezcan 2007, pp. 349–350
  4. ^ "Türkiye Halkının Ortaçağ Tarihi". Internet Archive. p. 253. Retrieved 28 February 2026.
  5. ^ Necdet Sakaoğlu, Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları, 4. baskı, Sayfa: 223
  6. ^ a b Tezcan 2007, p. 350.
  7. ^ Tezcan, Baki (2002). "The 1622 Military Rebellion in Istanbul: A Historiographical Journey". International Journal of Turkish Studies. University of Wisconsin: 40. Stanford Shaw, the author of an Ottoman history that has been widely used as a textbook and reference work, claims, on the basis of information from an eighteenth-century French novel,84 that the sultan was "[t]rained in Latin, Greek, and Italian by his Greek mother, as well as Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian."85
  8. ^ Sakaoğlu; 2008; pag. 223
  9. ^ Mustafa Naima (1832). Annals of the Turkish Empire from 1591 to 1659 of the Christian Era. Vol. I. p. 452.
  10. ^ "Portrait of Sultan Ahmet I (r. 1603–17)". www.metmuseum.org. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  11. ^ Grube, Ernst J (January 1968). "The Ottoman Empire". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 26 (5): Item 34. doi:10.2307/3258980. Portraits such as this one, probably of Sultan Ah-met I (1603-1617), the builder of the "Blue Mosque" in Istanbul.
  12. ^ Mustafa Naima (1832). Annals of the Turkish Empire from 1591 to 1659 of the Christian Era. Vol. I. p. 452.
  13. ^ Tektaş; 2004; pag. 184: "İki kadından biri Mahfiruz Sultan'dır, diğeri Mah-peyker Sultan. İkincisi birinciden az büyük görünüyor olsa da ilk evlenen birincidir. Bunun aksi olsaydı Kösem Sultan müsa-ade etmeyebilir, Sultan Ahmed böyle bir teşebbüse (belki) gir..."
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ Uluçay 2011, p. 78 citing Kadınlar Saltanatı I p. 146
  16. ^ a b Thomas F. Madden (2016). Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World. Mahfiruz Sultan bore him four sons...
  17. ^ a b Gabriele Mandel (1992). Storia dell'harem (in Italian). Rusconi. p. 150. ISBN 978-88-18-88032-8. Ahmed I ebbe solo tre donne: Hadice Mah-firuz, da cui ebbe quattro figli (Osman, Bayezid, Süleyman e Hü-seyn)...
  18. ^ a b c d e Güler Eren; Kemal Çiçek; Cem Oğuz (1999). Osmanlı: Kültür ve sanat. 10 (in Turkish). Yeni Türkiye Yayınları. ISBN 978-975-6782-03-3. ...başka Mehmed, Süleyman, Bayezid ve Hüseyni adlı 4 şehzade doğmuştur...
  19. ^ a b c d e Aylin Görgün-Baran (2016). Şefika Şule Erçetin (ed.). A woman leader in Ottoman History: Kösem Sultan (1589-1651). Vol. Women Leaders in Chaotic Environments. p. 77. He married with his Haseki Mahfiruz Kadın and had princes called Genç Osman (1604), Mehmed (1605), Süleyman (1611), Beyazid (1612) and Hüseyin (1613)
  20. ^ Giorgio Giustinian (1627). Maria Pia Pedani (ed.). Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti al Senato (in Italian). p. 592.
  21. ^ Tezcan, Baki (31 December 2008). "The Debut of Kösem Sultan's Political Career". Turcica. 40: 356. doi:10.2143/TURC.40.0.2037143.
  22. ^ Tektaş; 2004; pagg. 184-185
  23. ^ Merlijn Olnon (2007). Köprülü Imperial Policy and the Refashioning of Izmir. p. 32.
  24. ^ Çakıroğlu; 1999; pag. 53 (volume II)
  25. ^ Necdet Sakaoğlu (2008). Bu mülkün kadın sultanları (in Turkish). p. 223. ISBN 978-975-329-623-6.
  26. ^ Yılmaz Öztuna (2017). Sultan Genç Osman ve Sultan IV. Murad (in Turkish). p. 18. ISBN 978-605-155-559-1.
  27. ^ Yılmaz Öztuna (1965). Bașlangıcından zamanımıza kadar Türkiye tarihi (in Turkish). Vol. 5.
  28. ^ Yılmaz Öztuna (2005). Devletler ve hanedanlar: Turkiye (1074-1990) (in Turkish). p. 179.
  29. ^ "Londra'da Satılan Genç Osman Tablosunu Kültür Bakanlığı Satın Aldı". Arkeofili.com (in Turkish). 22 April 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  30. ^ "Türkiye, 'Genç Osman'ın Cülûsu'nu 2 milyon lira'ya satın aldı". T24.com. 21 April 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  31. ^ "Genç Osman'ın Cülusu tablosu, açık artırmada Kaynak: Genç Osman'ın Cülusu tablosu, açık artırmada". risalehaber.com (in Turkish). 22 April 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  32. ^ a b c Şule Erçetin; 2016; pag. 79
  33. ^ Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1830). Storia Dell'Impero Osmano ... Illustrata Ed Arricchita Di Molte Aggiunte Dallo Stesso Autore E Recata In Italiano Per La Prima Volta Da Samuele Romanini (Epoca Quarta Dal 1574 Al 1623) (in Italian). Vol. XVI. p. 418.
  34. ^ von Hammer-Purgstall; 1830; pag. 417
  35. ^ von Hammer-Purgstall; 1830; pagg. 417-418
  36. ^ Öztuna; 2005; pag.179
  37. ^ Hafiz Hüseyin Al-Ayvansarayî (2000). The Garden of the Mosques: Guide to the Muslim Monuments of Ottoman Istanbul. p. 270.
  38. ^ "EYÜP SULTAN KÜLLİYESİ". Islam ansiklopedisi (in Turkish). 13 March 2026.
  39. ^ İbrahim Alâettin Gövsa (1947). Resimli yeni lûgat ve ansiklopedi: (ansiklopedik sözlük) (in Turkish). p. 1699.
  40. ^ Mehmed Süreyya Bey (1969). Osmanlı devletinde kim kimdi (in Turkish). p. 204.
  41. ^ a b Peirce 1993, p. 233.
  42. ^ Tezcan 2007, pp. 349–350
  43. ^ Tezcan 2007, pp. 349 n.7.
  44. ^ Günhan Börekçi-A Queen-Mother at Work: On Handan Sultan and Her Regency During the Early Reign of Ahmed I (2020)" page 51
  45. ^ Tezcan 2007, p. 349.
  46. ^ Şefika Şule Erçetin (28 November 2016). Women Leaders in Chaotic Environments:Examinations of Leadership Using Complexity Theory. Springer. p. 77. ISBN 978-3-319-44758-2.
  47. ^ a b c d Uluçay 2011, p. 78.
  48. ^ Şefika Şule Erçetin (28 November 2016). Women Leaders in Chaotic Environments:Examinations of Leadership Using Complexity Theory. Springer. p. 77. ISBN 978-3-319-44758-2.
  49. ^ Şefika Şule Erçetin (28 November 2016). Women Leaders in Chaotic Environments:Examinations of Leadership Using Complexity Theory. Springer. p. 77. ISBN 978-3-319-44758-2.
  50. ^ Gabriele Mendel (1992). Storia dell'harem (in Italian). p. 216. Şehzade Bayezid (1612-1635)
  51. ^ Şefika Şule Erçetin (28 November 2016). Women Leaders in Chaotic Environments:Examinations of Leadership Using Complexity Theory. Springer. p. 77. ISBN 978-3-319-44758-2.
  52. ^ Tezcan, Baki: The Debut of Kösem Sultan's Career; pp 354; fn 40: SAFI, Zübdetü’t-Tevârîh, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 300
  53. ^ Tezcan, Baki (31 December 2008). "The Debut of Kösem Sultan's Political Career". Turcica. 40: 347–359. doi:10.2143/TURC.40.0.2037143.
  54. ^ Giorgio Giustinian (1627). Maria Pia Pedani (ed.). Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti al Senato (in Italian). p. 592.
  55. ^ De Cesy (1628–1631) – IV Minutes et quelques copies de dépêches. p. 477.
  56. ^ De Cesy (1628–1631) – IV Minutes et quelques copies de dépêches. p. 477.
  57. ^ Alderson, Anthony Dolphin (1956). The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty. p. tab. xxxiv.
  58. ^ Gabriele Mendel (1992). Storia dell'harem (in Italian). p. 216. Şehzade Süleyman (1615-1635)
  59. ^ Fındık, Nida (10 December 2015). "Muhteşem Yüzyıl Kösem". Noluyo.tv (in Turkish). Istanbul. Archived from the original on 11 February 2016. Retrieved 7 March 2017.

Sources

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