Nakşidil Sultan

Nakşidil Sultan (; also called Nakşi Sultan; – 28 July 1817) was a consort of Sultan Abdul Hamid I, and Valide Sultan to their son Mahmud II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

Background

Origins According to various scholars, she came from a family with origins in the Caucasus region (via the Black Sea slave trade). Fikret Saraçoğlu has found in the archives of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul documents pertaining to her death and funeral. Others like Necdet Sakaoğlu and Ibrahim Pazan traced these origins further and claim she was actually a Georgian. By custom the consorts of the Ottoman sultans were normally concubines of Christian origin, who came to the Ottoman Imperial harem via the Ottoman slave trade, converted to Islam and were given a slave name after their arrival. She was raised in the Ottoman palace and was given thoroughly Turkish Islamic education.

Controversy over identity There is a fanciful legend that Nakşidil was Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, who had gone missing at sea in 1788, and was a distant cousin-in-law of the former Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. According to this myth, Aimée du Buc de Rivéry was captured by Barbary pirates and sold as a harem concubine, but modern historians have debunked this.

Several older myths, dating as far back as the early 16th century, claimed links between the French and Ottoman monarchies. These have turned out to be politically motivated fabrications designed to justify alliances between the two (supposedly related) monarchies. The Aimée-Nakşidil story has several clear parallels with these older stories. During the monarchy, stories of kidnapped French princesses weren't denied by French officials in order to maintain good relations with the Ottoman inventors of the stories. In later times, these and similar harem tales have been used in France to perpetuate a view of Turkey, the Middle East, and Islam in general as mysterious and despotic in nature, despite more accurate accounts.

However, fifty years later, in 1867, when Sultan Abdulaziz, son of Mahmud, went to Paris to be entertained by Napoleon III, he was greeted with great enthusiasm by Napoleon, who told the press that their grandmothers were related. Another invented tradition concerning a French woman with royal connections in the Ottoman harem was being created to support the political aspirations of the rulers of the Ottoman Empire and France. As in other examples of invented traditions, this legend was loosely connected with a historical phenomenon. Initially this legend also emphasized the relationship between the two rulers, just as the earlier myth had done.

As imperial consort Nakşidil, who had been a lady-in-waiting to Esma Sultan, daughter of Sultan Ahmed III, became one of the consorts to Abdul Hamid I in 1782. She was given the title of "Seventh Consort". On 22 October 1783, she gave birth to her first child, a son, Şehzade Murad Seyfullah, who died at the age of two of smallpox on 21 January 1785.

One year later, on 20 July 1785, she gave birth to her second child, a son, Şehzade Mahmud (future Sultan Mahmud II). One year later, on 27 November 1786, she gave birth to her third child, a daughter, Saliha Sultan, who died at the age of one on 10 April 1788. and Nakşidil became the Valide Sultan. Mahmud II (Topkapı Palace, 20 July 1785 – Istanbul, Turkey, 1 July 1839, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum), 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire; Saliha Sultan (Topkapı Palace, 27 November 1786 – Topkapı Palace, 10 April 1788);

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