r/sultanateofwomen

Some more interesting notes about Nurbanu:

Thanks to “Kitâbü’l-Menâmât”, or Book of Dreams in English, we have the records of visionary dreams, mystical experiences, and spiritual letters of an Ottoman Sultan, Murad III to be specific. He mainly corresponded with his spiritual advisor Sheikh Şüca Dede through letters.

His mother Valide Nurbanu Sultan also made several appearances in his dreams and this post will be mainly about her appearances.

It is evident from Murad III’s letters that, following the death of Valide Nurbanu Sultan in 1583, Murad’s “correspondence” with his mother continued through his dreams. In one of his letters, the sultan states that he saw his mother in a dream and she told him, "You are closer to me than my own relatives” and that this had left him utterly distraught.

Recounting another incident, Murad III notes that during a time when he was distressed, his mother came to him and tried to sit in his chair, but he refused and said, “For God’s sake, go away.” The sultan likely perceived his deceased mother as a messenger, or perhaps, even a summoner from the afterlife, and that this caused him anxiety.

In another letter, Valide Nurbanu Sultan whom he had seen in a dream asks Murad III, “My son, is it the time for afternoon prayer yet? I’m not even finished with the noon prayer yet!” This statement shows just how devoted the Valide Sultan was to her Islamic prayers.

From another letter, we understand that Sheikh Şüca Dede was concerned by the gossip about him among the sultan’s inner circle and he must have priorly complained to the sultan about it. Sultan Murad III consoles him in this letter and advises him to send his letters directly to himself (Murad III) without even showing them to his mother Valide Nurbanu Sultan. This letter suggests that Valide Nurbanu Sultan did not always hold a favorable opinion of Sheikh Şüca Dede when she was still alive.

Source:

Devrinden Seyrine Sultan III. Murad’ın Kitâbü’l-Menâmât’taki Mektuplarına Dair Bazı Tespitler

Türkân Alvan

Sooo I recently started watching Mehmed: Fetihler Sultanı, and one thing that immediately annoyed me was hearing Hüma Hatun referred to as Başhaseki, and it got me thinking about how often Ottoman dramas seem to use Haseki as though it were simply the Ottoman equivalent of “the sultan’s favorite woman.”

The Haseki position that developed around Hürrem was something genuinely exceptional. Before Hürrem, the structure of the imperial harem was specifically designed to prevent one concubine from becoming the kind of permanent, exclusive partner she became. The one-concubine/one-son pattern, the departure of a prince and his mother to the provinces, and the absence of a formalized chief-consort position all meant that even a sultan’s favorite wasn’t necessarily going to become the central woman of his household.

Then Süleyman elevates Hürrem in a way that breaks with that structure on multiple levels. She remains with him after bearing a son, has multiple children with him, remains in Istanbul instead of following a prince to a sanjak, is eventually married to him, and acquires an unprecedented degree of wealth and political influence.

And that’s what I find particularly irritating about the way historical dramas use Haseki. It’s not just that calling Hüma a Başhaseki is anachronistic. It’s that by treating Haseki as a generic title for “the sultan’s favorite consort,” they completely flatten the historical development of the position and, in the process, make Hürrem’s elevation seem much less unusual than it actually was.

Of course, earlier sultans could have had women they personally favored. But personal favoritism is very different from creating a position in which one woman was singled out and elevated within the structure of the imperial household.

The interesting part about Hürrem’s position is that it represented a departure from the existing structure of the imperial household. Haseki wasn’t simply a fancy Ottoman word for “favorite.” Its significance came precisely from the fact that this woman was being singled out and elevated in a way that hadn’t previously been institutionalized in the same manner.

And then, much later, when multiple women could simultaneously be Haseki and you start getting distinctions like Başhaseki, the meaning of the title had changed again. So applying that later hierarchy to a woman living under Murad II isn’t just a small terminology issue, it makes the whole evolution of the institution disappear.

What I find particularly frustrating is that this is something that could be avoided so easily. If the writers simply wanted to establish Hüma as Murad’s most favored or politically influential consort, they could have conveyed that without retroactively applying a title whose meaning and institutional significance developed much later.

More broadly, I wonder why Ottoman dramas so often present titles and institutions as though they were static throughout the history of the empire, rather than acknowledging how their meanings and functions evolved over time. Haseki is perhaps one of the clearest examples of this, because treating it as a generic, transhistorical rank ultimately obscures precisely what made Hürrem’s position historically significant and unusual in the first place.