Fatma Gevheri Sultan

Fatma Gevheri Sultan (; also Fatma Gevheri Osmanoğlu; 2 December 1904 – 10 December 1980) was an Ottoman princess, musician, and composer. She was the daughter of Şehzade Mehmed Seyfeddin, son of Sultan Abdulaziz.

Early life Gevheri Sultan was born on 2 December 1904 in her father's villa in Küçük Çamlıca, Üsküdar. Her father was Şehzade Mehmed Seyfeddin, son of Abdulaziz and Gevheri Kadın, and her mother was Nervaliter Hanım. She was the only daughter born to her father. She had a twin brother, Şehzade Ahmed Tevhid. She also had an elder full brother, Şehzade Mahmud Şevket, one year older than her, and an older half-brother Şehzade Mehmed Abdulaziz. She was named after her paternal grandmother.

Gevheri, who used to attend her father's musical lessons during her childhood, took tanbur and kemence lessons from Tanbûri Cemil Bey.

Exile Upon the exile of the imperial family in March 1924, Gevheri and her family moved to Nice, France, where they settled in a villa at Cimiez, After her father's death in 1927, She composed vocal and instrumental pieces in various makams. Though she did not continue her studies of Turkish music until her return to her country, she became very skilled on the tanbur in later life. Her work is preserved in recordings made by Turkish radio and TV.

Later years and death

In 1952, Gevheri returned to Istanbul after the revocation of the law of exile for princesses. She spent her last years with her cousin Mihrişah Sultan, daughter of her uncle crown prince Şehzade Yusuf Izzeddin, in a spacious apartment in Taksim Square. She died on 10 December 1980 at the age of seventy-six, and was buried in the mausoleum of her great-grandfather Sultan Mahmud II, Divanyolu, Istanbul.

Ancestry