#ummi sultan daughter of mehmed iv

[ottomanladies]

Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire + daughters who reached adulthood

[ottomanladies]

Hey ! Can you tell me more about Ummi Sultan and Ayşe Sultan ( how did you find her ? So Küçük Sultan neber existed ?) the daughters of Mehmet IV ? And how many childrens have Emetullah before 1675 ( the list of one of the ambassador ) thank you very much !

Giacomo Quirini or Querini (it depends) was the Venetian ambassador to the Sublime Porte from 1671 to 1675. His relazione is dated 1675 but was read to the Senate of Venice in 1676. 

Unfortunately I don’t have the actual relazione but only notes I took when I read it. In it, Querini talks about 4 children:

Mustafa is eleven, delicate but very intelligent, is called Efendi for his inclinations. The sultan likes to take him to the mosque sometimes

Ahmed is three

Aidé Sultan is seven and already betrothed to Culoglu Musahip

Hadice is two and is promised to Carà Mustafa Caimacan

(these are my actual notes)

Now the princes’ ages are right but Hatice’s is not because she was actually the eldest daughter and - more importantly - she was never bethroted to Kara Mustafa Paşa… she was, on the other hand, betrothed to a Musahip Paşa (whom she later married: Dâmâd Muşâhib Mustafa Paşa, also called Kuloğlu.. checks out, right?)… which is how I realised that he had mistaken one princess for the other. 

(about this I would like to digress a little: I still think that Hatice being seven is wrong, because she got married in 1675 when she was 15… I’ve read it somewhere but I literally cannot find where for the life of me. In any case, I still think that Hatice was the eldest child but often information about princesses is either scarse or wrong because they’re not interesting from the ambassadors’ povs. It’s quite unusual that Querini even gave their names!!)

The other princess was quite the enigma to me for such a long time because I knew that Gülnüş’ daughters were Hatice and Fatma Emetullah and well.. Aidé doesn’t sound like Fatma nor Emetullah… which is why I first thought to discard his information.

Then I remembered that there had been some misunderstanding in Ottoman historiography about a Küçük Sultan, which means Little Princess. While Küçük had been taken as a name, Uluçay first realised that it wasn’t at all but thought that the princess was Ümmi Sultan… but that’s where Giacomo Querini arrives with his relazione to solve the enigma: the little princess is called Ayşe (which does sound like Aidé) and she must have died in infancy because, as Uluçay says, Kara Mustafa Paşa never became a Damad (also because he was executed in 1683 but that’s another matter).

Caimacan simply means “lieutenant governor (vizier) from the old Turkish empire”, it is frequently found in European writings about the Ottoman Empire as a substitute of Vizier.

At the end of all of this, I have realised that Fatma Emetullah must have been born after 1675… which checks out as a) she got married in 1695 (pretty late, if she had been closer to Hatice’s age) and b) she died young in 1700 from post-natal complications.

About Ümmi Sultan, her date of birth is usually given as “before 1680″ and her death as 1720 (per Juliette Dumas), which makes sense as she’s supposed to have died “right before her 40th birthday”. As I have not read Querini’s successor’s relazione, I have no idea if Ümmi was Gulnus’ daughter too or not

[ottomanladies]

On this day, 10 May, in Ottoman history

10 May 1720 - death of Ümmi Sultan: daughter of Mehmed IV, she was born in Istanbul before 1680. She is called Ümmi Sultan in Silahdar Tarihi, Gülsüm Sultan in Tarih-i Raşid, and Ümmügülsüm Sultan by Surreya and Alderson. When Süleyman II moved the harem to Edirne Palace in May 1691, she’s indicated in a document as “Ümmi Sultan hazretlerinin”, the only niece in there. She was deeply loved by her uncle Ahmed II, who was the one who found her a husband. She married Silahdar Çerkes Osman Paşa on 15 December 1693, and they settled in Sinan Paşa’s Palace in Istanbul. With him she had Hatice and Fatma Hanımsultan. Ümmi Sultan died young, before her 40th birthday, and was buried in the Yeni Mosque.

10 May 1900 - wedding of Behice Hanım and Abdülhamid II: she was the niece of Sazkar Hanım and actually didn’t want to marry the sultan but her father forced her to. The wedding was held in Yıldız Palace. A year later she gave birth to the twins Princes Bedreddin and Nureddin.