Naime Sultan

Naime Sultan in 1882, aged seven

Naime Sultan was born on 3 September 1876 in the Dolmabahçe Palace,[1] four days after her father's accession to the throne.[2][1] Her father was Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and her mother was Bidar Kadın,[3][4] the daughter of Prince Ibrahim Talustan and Princess Şahika İffet Lortkipanidze.[5] She was the fourth child, and third daughter of her father and the eldest child of her mother. She had one brother, Şehzade Mehmed Abdülkadir, two years younger than her.[6][7] The room where Naime she was born is located on the corridor following the second largest hall (Pink Hall) of the Harm of Dolmabahçe Palace.[1] She was the granddaughter of Abdulmejid I and Tirimüjgan Kadın.[8]

Abdul Hamid called her "My accession daughter", because she was born four days after his accession to the throne. She was named after her late aunt, the first and only daughter of Tirimüjgan, and elder sister of her father.[9] In 1877, Naime and other members of the imperial family settled in the Yıldız Palace,[10] after Abdul Hamid moved there on 7 April 1877.[11]

Naime liked playing piano. She had learnt playing it from François Lombardi, along with her younger half-sister Ayşe Sultan.[12] When the German empress Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, visited Istanbul, Naime entertained her by playing German music on her piano.[13]

Abbas Hilmi Pasha, the khedive of Egypt asked Naime Sultan's hand in marriage. However, Abdul Hamid did not approved this marriage on the basis of political reasons.[14]

In 1898, Abdul Hamid arranged Naime's marriage to Mehmed Kemaleddin Bey, younger son of Gazi Osman Pasha,[3] whose eldest son Nureddin Pasha was husband of her elder sister, Princess Zekiye Sultan. A mansion was built for her in Ortaköy next to the household of princess Zekiye, so that the two buildings used to be called "The Twin Mansions."[15]

The marriage took place on 17 March 1898 in the Yıldız Palace.[16] Gazi Osman Pasha sent Princess Naime a tiara, while Abdul Hamid presented her new mother-in-law with the Order of Abdulmejid. No minister's wife had ever received this order. Later on Kemaleddin Bey was made a pasha.[17]

The dowry of Naime Sultan was exhibited in the small temple room at Yıldız Palace, and the exhibition was watched by all family members. Dowry gathered a week before the wedding and was taken to the sultan's palace and completed the preparations with the treasury of the treasury. Probably this dowry was transferred to the sultan's palace with a magnificent dowry regiment. Because no dowry regiment is rich enough to be compared to that of the reign.[18]

Naime Sultan's dress was white as she wanted to give a European wedding reflect.[19] Quite a few old-fashioned persons criticized the fact that her dress was white, because until that time all princesses had worn red at their weddings. But at Naime's wish and insistence, hers was white.[17]

The couple had a son, Sultanzade Mehmed Cahid Bey, born in January 1899, Mehmed married the daughter of Şehzade Mehmed Ziyaeddin Durriye Sultan on 26 March 1920,[20] they also had a daughter, Adile Hanımsultan, born on 12 November 1900.[16] Adile married Şehzade Mahmud Şevket on 4 May 1922 in the Üsküdar Palace who was three years her junior, the son of Şehzade Mehmed Seyfeddin, who was himself the son Sultan Abdulaziz and Gevheri Kadın.[21]

Hatice Sultan, daughter of Sultan Murad V, her neighbour in the adjoining villa, had been having an affair for three months with her husband, Kemaleddin Pasha. According to Filizten Hanım, the two decided to have Naime murdered so they could get married.[22]

Many of the sources reveal the same idea about how this love between Kemaleddin Pasha and Hatice Sultan emerged. According to this idea, this love story consists of a trap set by Hatice Sultan. Thus, she want to take revenge from Sultan Abdul Hamid, who has imprisoned her father in Çırağan Palace for years, left her single until the age of thirty and caused her to marry someone she never loved. The perfect way to take revenge was to ruin the marriage of Sultan favourite's daughter.[23]

However, 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 that Hatice Sultan had the Pasha's letters stolen and revealed to Sultan Abdul Hamid on purpose, in revenge for the poor husband the Sultan had chosen for her.[24]

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.[25]

Naime Sultan in exile in 1931

Following her divorce from Kemaleddin Pasha in 1904, Naime married İşkodralı Celaleddin Pasha on 11 July 1907.[26][16][27] At the exile of the imperial family in 1924, the couple settled in France and then in Italy for a short time with other members of her family. Later the two settled in Tirana, Albania, where Celaleddin Pasha died in 1944.[26]

After her husband's death, she fell into poverty, and died in 1945 in Tirana, Albania in a bombing during World War II.[28] She was buried there.[16][29]

• Order of the House of Osman[30]
• Order of the Medjidie, Jeweled[30]
• Iftikhar Sanayi Medal in Gold[30]

Together with Mehmed Kemaleddin Pasha, Naime had two children:

• Mehmed Cahid Osman Bey (1899 – 1977)[31] married Dürriye Sultan, daughter of Şehzade Mehmed Ziyaeddin and Ünsiyar Hanım. The marriage took place on 26 March 1920 at the Yıldız Palace, and was performed by Şeyhülislam Haydarîzâde İbrahim Efendi. Her dowry was 1001 purses of gold. In the prenuptial agreement she was given the right to divorce her husband. The two divorced on 6 November 1921 with Şeyhülislam Nuri Efendi's assistance. After their divorce, he married Dürriye's maternal aunt Laverans Hanım, with whom he had one son, Bülent Osman Bey.[32]
• Adile Hanımsultan (1900 – 1988)[31] married Şehzade Mahmud Şevket, who was three years her junior, son of Şehzade Mehmed Seyfeddin and Nervaliter Hanım. The marriage took place on 4 May 1922 in the Üsküdar Palace, and the couple settled in Kuruçeşme Palace as their residence. The two together had a daughter named Hamide Nermin Nezahat Sultan, born on 27 January 1923. At the exile of imperial family in March 1924, they first settled in France, then in Egypt, where the two divorced on 28 March 1928.[21]

• In the 2017 TV series Payitaht: Abdülhamid, Naime Sultan is portrayed by Turkish actress Duygu Gurcan.[33]

• List of Ottoman princesses

• Bağce, Betül Kübra (2008). II. Abdulhamid kızı Naime Sultan'in Hayati.
• 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.
• Sakaoğlu, Necdet (2008). Bu mülkün kadın sultanları: Vâlide sultanlar, hâtunlar, hasekiler, kadınefendiler, sultanefendiler. Oğlak Yayıncılık. ISBN 978-9-753-29623-6.
• Uluçay, Mustafa Çağatay (2011). Padişahların kadınları ve kızları. Ankara: Ötüken. ISBN 978-9-754-37840-5.