Roxelana

Hürrem Sultan (Turkish: [hyɾˈɾæm suɫˈtan]; Ottoman Turkish: خرّم سلطان, lit. 'the joyful one'; c. 1505^[2][3]– 15 April 1558), also known as Roxelana (Ukrainian: Роксолана, romanized: Roksolana), was the chief consort, the first Haseki Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the legal wife of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and the mother of Suleiman's successor Selim II. She became one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history,^[4] and the first of a series of prominent Ottoman women who reigned during the period known as the Sultanate of Women.

Presumably born in Ruthenia to a Ruthenian Orthodox family, she was captured by Crimean Tatars during a slave raid and eventually taken via the Crimean trade to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital.^[5]

She entered the Imperial Harem, rose through the ranks and became the favourite concubine of Sultan Suleiman who re-named her by giving her the slave name 'Hürrem' or 'the smiling and endearing one'. Breaking Ottoman tradition, he unprecedentedly freed and married Hürrem, making her his legal wife. Sultans had previously married only foreign freeborn noblewomen, if at all they got married on the rare occasion and even then they reproduced only through slave concubines.^[6] Hürrem was the first ever imperial consort to receive the title, created for her, Haseki Sultan. Hürrem remained in the sultan's court for the rest of her life, enjoying an extremely loving and intimate relationship with her husband, and having at least six children with him, including the future sultan, Selim II, which makes her an ancestor of all the following sultans and present descendants of the Ottoman dynasty. Of Hürrem's six known children, five were male, breaking one of the oldest Ottoman customs according to which each concubine could only give the Sultan one male child, to maintain a balance of power between the various consorts. However, not only did Hürrem bear more children to the sultan after the birth of her first son in 1521, but she was also the mother of all of Suleiman's children during his sultanate born after her entry into the harem at the very beginning of his reign.^[7]

Hürrem eventually wielded enormous power, influencing and playing a central role in the politics of the Ottoman Empire.^[8] The correspondence between Suleiman and Hürrem, unavailable until the nineteenth century, along with Suleiman’s own diaries, confirms her status as the sultan’s most trusted confidant and adviser. During his frequent absences, the pair exchanged passionate love letters. Hürrem included political information and warned of potential uprisings. She also played an active role in the affairs of the empire and even intervened in affairs between the empire and her former home, apparently helping Poland attain its privileged diplomatic status. She brought a feminine touch to diplomatic relations, sending diplomatic letters accompanied by personally embroidered articles to foreign leaders and their relatives. Two of these notable contemporaries were Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (r. 1548–1572) and Shahzada Sultanum, the favourite sister and intimate counselor of Shah Tahmasp, who exchanged official letters with Hürrem Sultan as well as with an Ottoman royal princess who was probably Mihrümah Sultan, daughter of Hürrem and Suleiman.^[9][10]

Hürrem patronized major public works (including the Haseki Sultan Complex and the Hurrem Sultan Bathhouse). She died in April 1558, in Constantinople and was buried in an elegant and beautifully adorned mausoleum adjacent to the site where her husband would join her eight years later in another mausoleum within the grand Süleymaniye Mosque complex in Istanbul.^[11]