Ismihan Sultan

Ismihan Sultan (c. 1544 – 7 August 1585) was an Ottoman princess, the daughter of Selim II (reign 1566–74) and Nurbanu Sultan. She was the granddaughter of Suleiman the Magnificent (reign 1520–66) and his favourite consort and legal wife Hürrem Sultan, sister of Sultan Murad III (reign 1574–95) and aunt of Sultan Mehmed III (reign 1595–1603).

Biography

Ismihan or Esmahan Sultan was born in 1544 at Manisa to Şehzade Selim (future Selim II) and his favourite consort Nurbanu Sultan.

In September 1566, upon the death of her grandfather Suleiman the Magnificent, she came to Istanbul with her mother and sisters, and enjoyed great power in Topkapı Palace. She was very influential in the harems of Selim II and of her brother Murad III, and was at the bottom of many palace schemes and presented a couple of concubines to her brother. She was the most powerful daughter of Selim II because she was married to the Grand Vizier. She received 300 aspers a day during the reign of her brother Murad III.

Ismihan sultan presented her brother sultan Murad III with two concubines in the early 1580s to prevent the extinction of the dynasty, since her brother remained faithful to one concubine, Safiye with whom he had two sons.^[1]

In fact, during Murad's reign there was a huge internal concurrence between the Harem factions, while Nurbanu Sultan and her daughters Esmahan, Gevherhan and Şah provided Murad with a plenty of concubines, in opposition with Safiye Sultan who was given the title of Haseki Sultan just after his accession to the throne in 1575, and was given a higher rank than all the others princesses including Esmahan's sisters and her aunt Mihrimah Sultan who supported Safiye.

After the death of the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (1579), the princess's first choice for a new husband, Ösdemiroğlu Osman Pasha was not interested. Her next choice was Kalaylıkoz Ali Pasha, the governor of Buda, who agreed to the marriage, but when the imperial order came demanding his divorce, his wife's sorrow and suffering were said to have caused the city to revolt.^[2] She later, married Ali Pasha in 1584. She died on 8 August 1585, having had issue, three sons and one daughter by her first husband and one son by her second and was buried in Hagia Sophia.

She is famous for having built the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque and Esmahan Sultan Mosque.

References

• "Turkey: The Imperial House of Osman". web.archive.org. Archived from the original on May 2, 2006. Retrieved 6 February 2014.
• Narodna biblioteka "Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodiĭ. Orientalski otdel, International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, Research Centre for Islamic History, Art, and Culture (2003). Inventory of Ottoman Turkish documents about Waqf preserved in the Oriental Department at the St. St. Cyril and Methodius National Library: Registers. Narodna biblioteka "Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodiĭ.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• Peirce, Leslie P., The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-19-508677-5 (paperback).
• Yavuz Bahadıroğlu, Resimli Osmanlı Tarihi, Nesil Yayınları (Ottoman History with Illustrations, Nesil Publications), 15th Ed., 2009, ISBN 978-975-269-299-2 (Hardcover).