Hatice Sultan (daughter of Murad V)

Hatice Sultan was born on 5 April 1870 her father's villa in Kurbağalıdere.[1] Her father was Sultan Murad V, son of Sultan Abdulmejid I and Şevkefza Kadın,[2] and her mother was Şayan Kadın,[3][4][5] daughter of Batır Zan.[6] She was the second child, and eldest daughter of her father and the only child of her mother.[1][7] She was brought up concealed in the villa until Murad ascended the throne.[8][9]

After Murad's accession the throne on 30 May 1876, after the deposition of his uncle Sultan Abdulaziz,[10] her family settled in the Dolmabahçe Palace. After reigning for three months, he was deposed on 30 August 1876,[11] due to mental instability and was imprisoned in the Çırağan Palace. Hatice and her mother followed him into confinement.[8][12]

Çırağan Palace, where Hatice and her family were confined by Sultan Abdul Hamid for twenty-eight years until Murad's death in 1904

At the time of her family's confinement, Hatice Sultan was six years old.[13] By the time she was ten, she was already a happy, laughing, joyful girl. She loved stories and would even make up her own endings to stories while listening to them, proving both that she possessed a vivid imagination and that she was quite advanced for her age.[14]

As she grew older her sentiments quickly became more apparent. She took up novels as soon as she learned to read. She would surreptitiously pick out the novels from among her father's books, now and then staying up all night reading them. Most of these novels were the works of French authors, since she had been taught French by her stepmother, Gevherriz Hanım as well as by her father.[14]

According to Filizten Hanım, Hatice Sultan was a bit too romantic by nature.[15] She was so beautiful, that she could have been called "the star of the Princesses" of that day. She was sensitive, fiery, and exuberant woman.[16]

As years passed and Hatice matured into a fully grown woman, she quite openly longed for a husband. At length, her complaints came to her father's attention, thanks to her mother and the older kalfas. Murad had her complaints sent to Abdul Hamid. The latter consider it his duty to find husbands for her and her sister, but on one condition, that once they leave the palace they may not return.[17]

With that, the princesses were asked what they wished to do. Both preferred to leave Çırağan Palace and get married. Abdul Hamid had the two princesses brought up to Yıldız Palace. He ordered one of the villas at Ortaköy to be completely renovated and another new villa to be built. He had them completely furnished, then ordered photographs taken of them and sent the photographs to Murad.[18]

In October 1898,[19] she and her sister Fehime Sultan met with the German empress Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, when the latter visited Istanbul with her husband the German emperor Wilhelm II.[20] At that time the two were living at Yıldız Palace. Abdul Hamid realized that if he introduced his own daughters to the Empress but didn't include them they would feel quite hurt, so he had them participate in the ceremony as well.[21]

Abdul Hamid decided to get Hatice married to Kabasakal Çerkes Mehmed Pasha, widower of princesses Naile Sultan, daughter of Abdulmejid I and Esma Sultan, daughter of Abdulaziz. However, the marriage didn't materialize.[22]

Finally in 1901, Abdul Hamid arranged her marriage together with her sister Fehime Sultan, and Sultan Abdulaziz's daughter Emine Sultan[23] to one of her father's table servants who was given the title "Ali Vasıf Pasha, Code Scribe".[24] The marriage took place on 12 September 1901 in the Yıldız Palace.[25] The couple were given one of the palaces of Ortaköy as their residence.[12][26][27] The couple didn't had any children.[28]

Naime Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Abdul Hamid II had been a neighbour in the adjoining villa. Hatice Sultan had been having an affair for three months with her husband, Mehmed Kemaleddin Pasha. According to Filizten Hanım, they decided to have Naime Sultan, murdered so they could get married.[29] This episode occurred in early 1904.[12][25][30] However, several sources reveal that this was a trap set by her in order to take revenge from Abdul Hamid, who had imprisoned her father in Çırağan Palace for years, and didn't arranged her marriage until the age of thirty, and then married her to someone she never loved. Thus, the perfect way to take revenge was to ruin the marriage of Sultan's favourite daughter.[31]

The resulting scandal angered Abdul Hamid. First he had Naime Sultan divorce her husband. Then he stripped Kemaleddin Pasha of all his military honors and exiled him to Bursa. Hatice's father, Murad, was a diabetic and when he heard of the affair, the shock of his distress brought on his death a short time later.[32]

Semih Mümtaz, whose father, the Governor of Bursa, was charged with guarding Kemaleddin Pasha in his internal exile, mentions nothing whatsoever about a plot to poison Naime, but rather claims that the affair between Hatice Sultan and Kemaleddin Pasha consisted of the exchange of love letters tossed over the garden wall, heated love letters on the part of the impulsive Kemaleddin Pasha. He claims Hatice Sultan had the Pasha's letters stolen and revealed to Abdul Hamid on purpose, in revenge for the poor husband the Sultan had chosen for her.[33][34]

The Western press reported only that the Sultan's son-in-law had been arrested and sent into exile as a result of the secret correspondence between him and Hatice Sultan.[33]

Hatice and her husband divorced soon after. Although she had to divorce her husband, and Kemaleddin Pasha was sent into internal exile, Abdul Hamid later forgave her and she was invited again to Yıldız Palace.[33]

Hatice Sultan in Istanbul

After Hatice Sultan divorced Ali Vasıf Pasha, she married Rauf Hayreddin Bey (1871 – 1936), son of Hayri Bey[35] on 11 May 1909.[28][36] The two together had three children, Sultanzade Osman Bey, who was born in 1910, and died in infancy on 31 January 1911,[37] Sultanzade Hayri Bey, born on 12 June 1912,[38] and Selma Hanımsultan, born in 1914.[28][39] The two divorced in 1918.[40][41]

In 1912, the "Hilal-i Ahmer Centre for Women" was organised within the "Ottoman Hilal-i Ahmer Association", a foundation established in 1877 to provide medical care in Istanbul and surrounding communities.[42] In May 1915, during the Gallipoli Campaign, as the member of this organisation, Hatice visited the Kadırga hospital distributing handkerchiefs and cigarettes amongst the soldiers and donated tea and sugar to the hospital.[43]

Hatice Sultan in exile

At the exile of the imperial family in March 1924, Hatice Sultan and her two children settled in Beirut, Lebanon.[1][40] In exile, the three of them lived on the alimony sent by her former husband Rauf Bey. However, when he was mixed up in a smuggling plot, dismissed from his job and put in prison, they were left with no money.[36]

Tomb of Hatice Sultan located in Sultan Selim Mosque, Damascus, Syria

In 1932, a double match was made for two princesses of the Ottoman family living in France, the princesses Dürrüşehvar Sultan and Nilüfer Hanımsultan. The Nizam of Hyderabad, at the time considered the richest man in the world, had won their hand in marriage for his two sons. After a simple wedding in the South of France, the two brides went off to live in India.[44] In her straitened circumstances, Hatice was under a lot of pressure to get her daughter married, the sooner the better. But it had become very hard to find suitable marriage partners for impoverished Turkish royalty. About five years later, a husband for Selma was found in India. Selma traveled to India to marry Syed Sajid Husain Ali, Raja of Kotwara, in 1937.[44][39]

Hatice was then on alimony sent by the raja, her son-in-law. She suffered a stroke, and died eventually[36] on 12 March 1938, at the age of sixty-seven. She was buried at the Sultan Selim Mosque in Damascus, Syria.[41]

• Order of the House of Osman[45]
• Order of Charity, 1st Class[46]

• In the 2012 movie The Sultan's Women, Hatice Sultan is portrayed by Turkish actress Melike Günal Kurtulmuş.[47]
• In the 2017 TV series Payitaht: Abdülhamid, Hatice Sultan is portrayed by Turkish actress Gözde Kaya.[48]
• Hatice Sultan is a character in Ayşe Osmanoğlu's historical novel The Gilded Cage on the Bosphorus (2020).[49]

• List of Ottoman princesses

• Uluçay, M. Cağatay (2011). Padişahların kadınları ve kızları. Ankara, Ötüken.
• Sakaoğlu, Necdet (2008). Bu mülkün kadın sultanları: Vâlide sultanlar, hâtunlar, hasekiler, kadınefendiler, sultanefendiler. Oğlak Yayıncılık. ISBN 978-9-753-29623-6.
• Brookes, Douglas Scott (2010). The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-78335-5.
• Bağce, Betül Kübra (2008). II. Abdulhamid kızı Naime Sultan'in Hayati.