Roxelana (1505–1558) later Hurrem Sultan was sold in the slave markets of the Ottoman Empire. Originally a concubine, she married the Sultan Suleiman The Mgnificient and became queen.
The story of Roxelana Hurrem Sultan is unique in the rich history of the Ottoman Empire.
She was taken into slavery and bought as a concubine for the imperial court. From there, she gained the attention of Sultan Suleiman (1494 –1566) the Magnificient and became his favorite concubine.
The love between the pair was so strong that he eventually freed her, made her his official wife the queen, and granted her significant power and influence within his administration.
By this stage, Hurrem would have been a teenage girl, and this would have been her saving grace. Young and attractive female slaves were highly valued at the slave market, so she would have been treated quite well, relatively speaking, to preserve her appeal and value.
It was at this slave market that Pargali Ibrahim Pasha allegedly purchased Hurrem as a gift for his childhood friend, Suleiman, the son of the Sultan and heir apparent of the Ottoman dynasty.
Slavic slaves were highly valued for their pale skin and fine features, and Pasha may have known what Suleiman the Magnificent found attractive in a woman. Hurrem is often depicted with red hair, a common feature among people from Ukraine, and may have been considered exotic at the Ottoman court.
Roxelana would have lived in the Old Palace, where the harem was situated during those years. The Old Palace housed the Sultan’s harem, as well as all high-ranking females of the court: the Sultan’s mother, unmarried sisters, and daughters – as well a large troupe of female servants, scribes, chefs, and entertainers.
Here too the young princes would live with their mothers until they were ready to move to the provinces and rule over their own households and harems.
When Süleyman met Roxelana he would have already had four children (and three potential male heirs), born from concubines at his province’s harem during the reign of his father.
Roxelana quickly became his favorite; he spent several months with her in the New Palace (called Topkapi from the 19th century onwards), where the Sultan exclusively resided. Within a year she bore him a son.
Historically, this would have been the end of the intimate relationship between concubine and Sultan. It was Ottoman policy that women only bear one male heir for the Sultan – she would then retire to a life of celibacy and total maternal devotion.
Princes and their mothers had incredibly strong bonds; mothers would oversee their son’s harem, ensure the prince was being educated, and, if possible, attempt to curry favor for them with the Sultan and military officials.
Who was Suleiman the Magnificent?
Suleiman the Magnificent, (1495—1566). He became sultan of the Ottoman Empire after serving as a provincial governor under his grandfather Bayezid II and his father, Selim I (r. 1512–20). He immediately began leading campaigns against the Christians, taking Belgrade (1521) and Rhodes (1522–23). At the Battle of Mohács (1526) he broke the military strength of Hungary.
In 1529 he laid siege to Vienna but failed to capture it. Further campaigns in Hungary (1541, 1543) left the region divided between Habsburg- and Ottoman-dominated areas.
Iraq and eastern Anatolia were captured during his first campaign (1534–35) against the Persian Ṣafavid dynasty; his second (1548–49) brought conquests in southern Anatolia around Lake Van; but his third (1554–55) was unsuccessful.
His navy, under Barbarossa, controlled the Mediterranean Sea. He built mosques, bridges, and aqueducts and surrounded himself with great poets and legal scholars. His reign is considered a high point of Ottoman civilization.
In a shocking break with tradition, Roxelana and Suleiman continued to share a bed.
Within five years Roxelana had four more sons. The court was astonished, some were dismayed. There were rumors of Roxelana being a witch, seducing the Sultan with her powers. In reports to Europe, ambassadors wrote that the Turkish Sultan had become monogamous and, in fact, Süleyman did not have children with any other member of the harem for the rest of his reign.
Jealousy, competition, and power plays in the harem.Roxelana’s significant influence is underlined in an account from one of the court’s European ambassadors. As the story goes, Suleiman received the gift of two beautiful Russian concubine women from a governor’s office within the Empire.
In a jealous fit, Roxelana, a new mother at the time, threw herself to the floor in anguish. The Sultan sent the women away, as gifts to neighboring nobles, so as to not upset Roxelana. This display would have been unthinkable in previous Ottoman administrations.
She facilitated the move of the harem from the Old Palace to the Sultan’s residence at Topkapi, bringing the women of the court closer to the seat of government.
She ushered in a new era, one where the wives and mothers of sultans exerted political influence, called the ‘Sultanate of Women’. Over the next 100 years, the women close to the sultan had unprecedented power, and several ruled the kingdoms as ‘Valide Sultans’ for their infant sons.
In the fall of 1521, Roxelana gave birth to a son, named Mehmed.
Suleyman had four other children already by other concubines. But shortly after Mehmed’s birth, three of them died unexpectedly. Mehmed was now the second son. And child mortality rates like that were exactly why it was now important for Suleyman to father other children.
There would be compensations for her. Royal mothers were given a big boost in salary. As a slave, you might wonder that they are given any salary at all but remember these aren’t slaves toiling away in the field. These slaves are expected to be pretty, clean, well-dressed, etc. That takes money.
It is important to know that a “Royal mother” could no longer be sold away. She was there in the family permanently. Roxelana is no longer a slave. She has freed herself by having a son.. But under the Ottoman law, she was still called a slave until the death of her master.
Except that Suleyman defied all tradition and did not dissolve their relationship. Within months, Roxelana was pregnant again, a thing that was not supposed to happen. Over the next few years, Roxelana presented Suleyman with a total of four boys and one daughter.
How could they possibly compete against Mustafa, the oldest prince, who had his mother’s sole attention, when their mother must divide her guidance
between them? This was not a beautiful love story to them. It was a potentially dynastic disaster for the Empire.
But it didn’t save the family from violence as princes battled each other. His father had achieved the throne by means of multiple fratricides. Suleyman himself had been luckier: none of his brothers had survived to adulthood.
Mahidevran Sultan- Mother of Şehzade Mustafa and one of her favourite his chief consorts.
Suleiman already had a favorite, who was also his chief consort, known as the Haseki Sultan. Her name was Mahidevran Sultan, and she had given Suleiman a son.
Now that Hurrem was making a name for herself at court as the Sultan’s new favorite, one day Muhidevran took matters into her own hands and attacked Hurrem, scratching her face. When Suleiman called for Hurrem that night, she refused to see him on account of her appearance.
Intrigued, Suleiman called for her again and saw the marks on her face that Muhidevran had left. Hurrem’s position as the Sultan’s favorite concubine was solidified even further after this incident. These events are very telling about how clever Hurrem was, and they show that she instinctively knew how to play the political game to her best advantage.
Hafsa Mother of suleiman known by the title Valide Sultan, died in 1534
Suleiman (1494–1566) the Magnificent became Sultan in 1520, which was around the same time that Hurrem, became his concubine. She bore him their first son, Mehmed, the following year. When Suleiman’s mother, a position known by the title Valide Sultan, died in 1534, this left a vacant position of power in the harem over which she had presided.
Hafsa’s death also meant that Suleiman was now truly independent and, therefore, able to make a decision that would change the course of history.
Suleiman The Magnificient announced to marry the concubine Rexolana.
In 1533, something truly astonishing happened. Suleiman the Magnificent freed Hurrem from her concubinage in order to marry her. Islamic law forbade a Sultan to marry a slave, so in order to make Hurrem his legal wife and queen, he had to free her.
The empire was to be shaken up once again when Hurrem bore her husband yet another son.
Prior to this, it was customary that concubines only bore the Sultan one son so that she could then focus on her son’s upbringing and education. Yet, Hurrem and Suleiman had six children together in all, five sons and one daughter.
Despite the fact that Islamic law allowed the Sultan to take up to four wives and keep as many concubines as he pleased, Suleiman the Magnificent remained true to Hurrem and spent time with no other women.
When his first consort, Muhidevran, left the harem to follow her son, Şehzade Mustafa, to his first political posting (which was customary in Ottoman culture;
Concubines were accordingly educated to be able to advise their sons on matters of politics, foreign policy, and religion), this left Hurrem as the undisputed head of the harem.
Eventually, in another unprecedented move, Hurrem convinced her husband to allow her to leave the harem and join him at the Topkapı Palace, where she was given a suite of apartments next to his.
When he was away on military campaigns, he entrusted her with keeping him informed about affairs back at home. It is even speculated that Hurrem was instrumental in having Pargali Ibrahim Pasha, who was by this time Grand Vizier and now her rival, killed due to his unbridled ambition.
Hurrem had to have her wits about her if she was to protect herself and her children from the plotting and intrigue of the court. It was less the case that she was cunning and more so that she was adept at doing what she had to do to keep herself and her loved ones safe.
Whether that was a natural occurrence or not is disputed, but it appears to be Suleyman’s father, not Suleyman, who disposed of the brothers, if there were any to be disposed of Perhaps Suleyman did not want to perpetuate this system.
Roxelana was also now the head of the Old Palacesince her mother-in-law had died.
This included both day-to-day administration but also important duties like finding appropriate husbands for all the girls who had finished thei
Those children were growing up though. By tradition, an up-and-coming prince and his mother were sent to govern a distant province as practice. This is exactly what Mustafa, the oldest prince and his mother were doing. But obviously Roxelana could not accompany multiple princes to multiple provinces.
So when her oldest Mehmed became governor of Manisa at age 21, he was older than most Ottoman princes were on arrival and he lacked the guidance of the one advisor who could be counted on to have nothing but his interests at heart: his mother.
His 19-year-old brother Selim was made governor of Konya at the same time. He also did not have his mother. She stayed in Istanbul with Suleyman and the younger children. No one, least of all their parents, knew what impact this would have on their chances of succeeding.
Mehmed, Roxelana’s oldest son, suddenly died.
But the news of victory from the front was followed up by terrible news. Mehmed, Roxelana’s oldest son, suddenly died after 6 days of illness. He had governed Manisa for only one year.
Suleyman’s grief is well recorded: hours of weeping, days of refusing to bury his son, over ten times the ordinary number of days of prayers for the dead. The sources are silent about Roxelana’s grief, but that does not mean it was any less.
The Şehzade Mosque in Istanbul was built as a memorial to Şehzade Mehmed, the son of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. It is a significant example of Classical Ottoman architecture.
We know only that she was the driver behind the memorial mosque that was built in Mehmed’s honor. She is even said to have sold her gold and jewels because she noticed that the janissaries who built the mosque had inadequate shoes and she wanted to provide them with a raise.
Roxelana could afford to be generous. Her daily stipend was 2,000 silver aspers per day, which conveys pretty much nothing to my mind, but is more revealing when you know that Suleyman’s sisters, who were the next highest ranking women received 200 silver aspers per day.
Strangling of Şehzade Mustafa.
Yet all was not well on the home front. Suleyman was growing older, he was sometimes gone to the wars, and there was still no clear successor. Mehmed was dead, but Mustafa, his first-born with another concubine was popular with the soldiers.
It was not at all clear whether Suleyman who had broken with tradition in the matter of his wife intended to break with tradition in the matter of succession either. Would he promote one son? Or would he and Roxelana stand by while their sons fought first Mustafa and then each other?
A partial answer was soon clear. Reports came that the army was restless, that they thought Suleyman was old and weak, that they thought Mustafa should seize the throne for himself, even while his father was still alive. Suleyman felt threatened.
He summoned Mustafa to meet him (nothing unusual in that). Many people advised Mustafa not to go, including his mother. But he went anyway. And on Suleyman’s command, he was strangled.
The grand vizier was accused of plotting against him and poisoning Suleyman’s mind against his son. Roxelana was accused of the same thing. She was a scheming witch, they said, determined to make sure that one of her sons reached the throne.
Either way, it was now quite clear that one of Roxelana’s sons would be the next sultan: no one else was left. In another sense, that was hardly comforting. According to tradition, Roxelana would have the privilege of watching her own flesh and blood kill each other, and she still had 3 living sons.
As it happens, her own health was the one that would give out first. After a lingering illness, she died on April 15, 1558, within the walls of the Old Palace, where she had been brought as a slave.
Roxelana preferred dying relatively young because at least she did not live to see her husband and her sons destroy each other over the throne.
It seems that they had been waiting only out of respect for her. Within months of her death, Bayezid began raising an army. He lost the battle and fled to Iran. Suleyman ransomed him and then executed him as a rebel. Eight years later, when Suleyman himself died, Selim, the only remaining son, would inherit the empire.
Death of Suleiman the magnificient
It was 1566, and Sultan Suleiman was now an old man, the last in a generation of colorful rulers.
The Sultan had executed his best friend long ago. Most of his children were dead. The love of his life had passed away.
Hungary was still disputed between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, as it had been for almost 40 years. Suleiman decided that he’d personally lead a campaign there, one last time.
His forces attacked the fortress of Szigetvar (in the Kingdom of Hungary), which was under the command of Croatian nobleman Nikola Zrinski. The fighting was fierce, and the Ottomans suffered heavy casualties.
Suleiman was too frail to join them. He retreated to his tent and rested. He never woke up.And with that, Suleiman the Magnificent, the conqueror who struck fear into the heart of Europe, died of natural causes.
Suleiman Iwas 72 when he died and he was on the throne for 46 years. He was the one who stayed the longest on the throne among the Ottoman sultans. His period was so magnificent that those who wrote reform projects in the 17th century, the depression years of the Ottoman Empire, spoke of this period as the “Golden Age,” to which they should return.
Fate of son’s of Suleiman
Suleiman the Magnificent, the 10th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, had several children, but his most notable son was Şehzade Mustafa.
Mustafa was the eldest son of Suleiman and his wife Mahidevran Sultan. He was initially favored to succeed his father, but his fate changed dramatically.
In 1553, Suleiman, influenced by his wife Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana) and political intrigues at court, ordered Mustafa’s execution on charges of treason.
This act caused significant turmoil within the empire and among the populace, as Mustafa was well-liked.
His death marked a turning point in the Ottoman royal family dynamics, solidifying Hurrem Sultan’s influence and paving the way for their son, Selim II, to eventually ascend to the throne after Suleiman’s death in 1566.
The End
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