𝖣еаᴛһ оf 𝖧ürrеm Ѕuⅼtаn оr Rохеⅼаnа

Death of Hürrem Sultan or Roxelana:- (late posting).
Yesterday was the anniversary of the death on 15th April 1558 of Hürrem Sultan or Roxelana, also known as La Sultana Rossa, consort of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
It is believed that Hürrem Sultan or Roxelana was born Aleksandra or Anastasia Lisowska round 1502 to 1505, possibly near the city of Lviv, then a Ruthenian province in the Kingdom of Poland, now in modern Ukraine. She may have been a daughter of an Orthodox priest. She was captured by Tatars from Crimea and sold as a slave into the imperial harem in Constantinople, while probably still in her early teens. The name Roxelana, as she was known in the West, may refer to her origins as a Ruthenian or Ukrainian. She was called Hürrem, meaning “the smiling one” or the cheerful one” in the Ottoman court. She became the favourite concubine of the Sultan Suleiman, who succeeded his father on 30th September 1520. Hürrem Sultan or Roxelana rose to become the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent and one of the most powerful women in the Empire.

Hürrem’s (Roxelana) first son Mehmed was born in 1521; that she went on to have another four sons and a daughter by Suleiman was evidence that a change had taken place in the harem as the usual Ottoman custom was of “one concubine, one son”. Ottoman practice was for a concubine to remain in the harem until her son came of age when she would accompany him to whatever province he had been sent to govern. She would only return to the palace if her son himself became Sultan. Hürrem or Roxelana, however, remained in the palace even after her sons were sent off to their provinces. In a further break with tradition Suleiman married Hürrem (Roxelana) in 1533 or 1534 in a formal ceremony breaking a long established custom that Sultans did not marry their concubines. In addition, after their marriage, he became more or less monogamous which was extremely rare among the Ottoman elite.

This devotion which Suleiman appeared to show towards Hürrem (Roxelana) was not popular among the Ottoman public, who attributed her power to witchcraft. Her main rival was Mahidevran Sultan, who had married the Sultan in 1520 and who was the mother of his eldest son, Mustafa, born in 1515. Mustafa was killed in 1553, on the orders of his father but his death was linked, at least in the public mind, to a feud between his mother and Hürrem (Roxelana); also Mustafa and Mehmed, born 1521/22, Hürrem’s eldest son, were rivals. Mustafa had been very popular and his death led to widespread protests and uprisings within the Empire and caused Hürrem (Roxelana) to become even more unpopular that she already had been. However, as Ottoman practice since roughly the time of Mehmed the Conqueror (died 1481) was for the brothers of a new Sultan to be executed in irder to ensure stability within the Empire, it is more than possible that Hürrem could have plotted against Mustafa in order to protect her own sons.

Hürrem (Roxelana) succeeded in carving a role for herself outside of the harem by engaging in large-scale charitable work such as endowing the building of mosques, schools, hospices, baths, as well as soup kitchens for the homeless in Constantinople and in other cities throughout the Empire. In addition, Hürrem (Roxelana) seem to have advised Suleiman in his diplomatic dealings with other rulers and corresponded with some of them; for example, a letter exists from Hürrem to Sigismund II Augustus, congratulating him on his accession to the Polish throne in 1548. The so-called Sultanate of Women dates from this era and was facilitated by the merging of the imperial harem with the other administrative functions of the Palace.

Hürrem was suspected of having been involved in the downfall of two Grand Viziers (chief ministers), Ibrahim Pasha who was executed in 1536 and Kara Ahmed Pasha who was executed in 1555. The downfall of these Viziers was felt by many to have been due to Hürrem’s influence over the Sultan and was greatly resented by many elements within the Ottoman administration. As exactly how involved Hürrem was in these intrigues is not known, much of this is actually speculation, though the Vizier and consort would have been rivals for influence over the Sultan as each represented diffferent power bases.

Prior to Hürrem , the most powerful woman in the empire had been the Sultan’s mother; Suleiman’s mother, Hafsa Sultan, was the first woman to be known as “Valide Sultan” (Queen Mother – very roughly). Hafsa Sultan died in 1534, around the time that Suleiman and Hürrem (Roxelana) married. Whether they would have married had Suleiman’s mother lived is impossible to know but it did mean that Hürrem was not subject to her mother-in-law. Hürrem was the first official Hazeki Sultan (very roughly chief consort [i]) but did not live long enough to become a Valide Sultan in her own right.
Much of what is known about Hürrem or Roxelana comes from reports of the Venetian ambassadors to the Ottomans, it is from their reports that she is said to have had red hair – hence the nickname La Sultana Rossa (the Red Sultana), to have been graceful and elegant and to have musical ability and a good singing voice. There is no way of knowing how much of this is true as the harem was inaccessible to outsiders, even to Ottomans. What is true is that Hürrem or Roxelana had succeeded against considerable odds in surviving at all. (The scale of the slave raids of the Crimean Tatars on Ukraine, Poland and adjacent territories was staggering and it has been estimated that in the approximately 200 year period between the fifteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century about 2.5 million Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans were kidnapped and sold into slavery, mainly, though not exclusively, into the Ottoman Empire [ii]).

Whether Hürrem (Roxelana) was beautiful cannot be known with any certainty but she must have been very attractive and clever, with considerable political acumen, in order to have succeeded in rising from a captive slave to the Sultan’s wife. It seems most likely that Suleiman fell in love with Hürrem and was prepared to break the rules for her. That he did love her is shown by the fact that she was the first woman to spend her life in the Palace, that he married her and that he was prepared to become faithful to her. A love poem from Suleiman to Hürrem survives and shows the depth of his feelings for her*.
Hürrem died on 15th April 1558. Despite her numerous enemies, her death was mourned by many and great crowds poured onto the streets of Constantinople at the news; even the Sultan himself was seen outside the palace, a very rare event. She was buried in the Süleymaniye Mosque at Fatih, Istanbul.

HG1
* Suleiman’s poem to Hürrem, written under the pen-name “Muhibbi” meaning lover or sweetheart:
“Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan
The most beautiful among the beautiful…
My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf…
My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world…
My Istanbul, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia
My Badakhshanmy Baghdad, my Khorasan
My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief…
I’ll sing your praises always
I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.”[iii].
References:
[i]: Peirce, p. 91.
[ii]: Roxelana, “The Greatest Empresse of the East”.
[iii]: A 400 Year Old Love Poem, http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/sample-10.html.
Background Reading:
The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire by Leslie P. Peirce. Oxford Univ Press, New York 1993.
Osman’s Dream, The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923: by Caroline Finkel. John Murray, London 2005.
History of the Ottoman Empire Vol. I: Empire of the Gazis: by Stanford J. Shaw, Cambridge Univ Press, 1976.
Roxelana, “The Greatest Empresse of the East”: by Galina Yermolenko, DeSales Univ, Pennsylvania, in “The Muslim World”, Volume 95, April 2005.

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