Mahfiruz Hatun


Mahfiruz Sultan/Hadice Mâh-e Rûza Hatun was a concubine of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I and mother of Sultan Osman II.

Life

According to historian Baki Tezcan, nothing is known about her except her probable name and period of death. Her court name, Mahfiruz, means "Glorious crescent" in Persian. Such names were given to the women of the Imperial Harem.
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.
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The date of her death is undetermined. There are evidence that strongly suggests that she died at the latest by 1610. According to Leslie P. Peirce, she was alive when Osman was enthroned as sultan in 1618 after the deposition of incompetent Mustafa I; Peirce believes that she was not living in the palace during his son's reign nor did she act as valide sultan, as privy purse registers listed no valide sultan during Osman's reign. Also 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 hundred aspers, an indication that she was now the official stand-in for the Valide Sultan. Mahfiruz may have fallen out of favour, judging by her absence in the palace and burial in Eyüb rather than with her husband, and never have recovered her status as a royal consort. Venetian ambassador Contarini reported the beating of a woman who had irritated Kösem, ordered by the sultan, in 1612, which may be identified to Mahfiruz. She may have been a rival of Kösem, who made efforts to keep Mustafa safe from execution, and saw an obstacle in Mahfiruz. She was buried in the large sanctuary of Eyüp, Istanbul.

In popular culture

In the 2015 Turkish television series , Mahfiruz was portrayed by actress Ceyda Olguner. Historical advisors to the series noted that Mahfiruz was a Circassian by birth. In the fifth episode of the first series, she was introduced as "Çerkes güzeli Raşa" before being renamed to Mahfiruz.

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