Kösem Sultan

Queen consort, queen mother, and concubine

• Born: c. 1585
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: September 2, 1651
• Place of death: Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now in Istanbul, Turkey)

Kösem Sultan, the Queen Mother of two sultans and the grandmother of another, wielded sweeping powers in public decision making, in domestic and foreign policy, and in political appointments up to the time of her assassination.

Early Life

Originally christened Anastasia, Kösem Sultan (koh-SEHM-sool-TAHN) came to the palace in Constantinople in her childhood as a slave of Greek or Bosnian origin. She was attractive, intelligent, and witty, and had an excellent voice. She joined the harem at Sultan Ahmed I’s Topkapi Palace. Kösem quickly attracted the sultan’s eye, so he made her his haseki, or concubine. As his haseki, she bore three of the sultan’s sons—Murad, İbrahim, and Kasim. She was thus entitled to special privileges, such as a private apartment in the palace, a seray. As the sultan’s favorite and as the Queen Mother, given her dynamic persona, and with the cooperation of the black eunuch in charge of the harem (the harem agasi), Kösem acquired nearly absolute authority until Ahmed I’s death in 1617.

After Ahmed’s death, Kösem succeeded in having Mustafa I , the son of Mehmed III, take Ahmed’s place, thereby outmaneuvering Osman, the son of Ahmed I and his bitter rival concubine, Mahfiruz. Sultan Mustafa I (r. 1617-1618 and 1622-1623) was soon deemed insane, however, and was deposed by Kösem’s adversaries in favor of Osman II (r. 1618-1622). According to tradition, Kösem and her entourage were then relegated to the old palace, but when Osman II in turn became demented and was deposed and then assassinated, Murad IV , the son of Ahmed and Kösem, was installed and Kösem returned to Topkapi Palace as his guardian. Murad IV (r. 1623-1640), however, managed to shake off his mother’s domination until his alcoholism got the better of him and he died early from cirrhosis. (Ironically, Murad had forbidden his subjects from using alcohol under the penalty of death.) Kösem then engineered the takeover by another son, İbrahim (1640-1648).

Life’s Work

Kösem Sultan assumed the regency for her son Murad, who was then just eleven years old. At that time, given that Süleyman the Magnificent’s stress on merit had long been abandoned, the empire was rife with graft, bribery, corruption, and favoritism. Wars by the Ottoman Empire continued with Persia in the east and Austria in the west. With his mother’s help, Murad restored law and order, increased state revenues (mostly by taxing), and cut state spending. Some of the sultan’s authority was also reinstated.

When Ahmed and Kösem’s other son, İbrahim, assumed office in 1640, however, like his brother Murad, he turned out to be paranoid and degenerate, a trend Kösem encouraged because she did not wish to see another woman compete with her. İbrahim’s debauchery and alcoholism made his rule ineffective, correspondingly increasing Kösem’s influence in public affairs. With Kösem’s consent, İbrahim, called “the Mad,” was deposed and then strangled a few days later by members of the palace in 1648.

Mehmed IV (1648-1687), Kösem’s six-year-old grandson, succeeded as sultan. According to tradition, Hadice Turhan Sultan, one of İbrahim’s concubines and also Mehmed’s mother, should have become the boy’s guardian, but the young Turhan was unable to match Kösem’s dominance and rivalry. Thus, Kösem managed to promote herself and become the buyuk valide, or Grand Queen Mother, and, instead of moving off-site as was traditional, remained at Topkapi.

Turhan, though, may have had her own political ambitions, and, also, she felt marginalized by her mother-in-law. (Turhan’s yearly stipend was smaller than Kösem’s.) Turhan started to build her own network inside and outside the palace, which was never a political monolith. On getting wind of the situation, Kösem decided to replace Turhan’s son, Mehmed IV, with Süleyman II, the son of Saliha Dilasub Sultana, another of İbrahim’s concubines, whom Kösem considered more pliant. Turhan, however, came to know of the plot. On September 2, 1651, Turhan’s followers strangled Kösem with her own braids, an assassination that Turhan may have sanctioned if not instigated. Turhan was the one who, in her long career as guardian of princes, had protected her sons from the traditional practice of fratricide.

Kösem Sultan is buried in the shrine near Sultan Ahmed I in the Ahmediye Mosque—the Blue Mosque—next to Ahmed’s tomb, even though Ahmed never formalized his relationship with Kösem through marriage, as two of his forebears had done in the sixteenth century. There was great public mourning at Kösem’s death.

Even though the record does not show that Kösem Sultan was a particularly good or caring parent—she had mercenary political motives in marrying off her daughters to the powerful, despite the tradition of arranged marriages at the time—she nevertheless seemed to have had her “soft” side. For example, one of Kösem’s several personal charities consisted in seeking out orphaned or freed slave girls who were unable to marry for lack of a dowry and to provide them with money, lodgings, and furnishings for their home. This action, incidentally, extended her clientele network outside the palace.

Significance

Kösem, the last of the great Queen Mothers, colorful and influential, managed to establish a powerful regency for herself despite the fact that regencies were not provided for by Ottoman law. Through intrigue and by astutely marrying off her daughters— Ayse, Fatma, and Handan (Hanzade)—to ministers (viziers) in high places, she bolstered her reputation with political allies essential to sustaining her regency. She wielded much of her power behind the throne to the very end, despite challenges.

Kösem Sultan left great wealth to charity, personal and institutional, and to religious endowments such as a mosque complex at Uskudar and elsewhere. The complexes represent Kösem’s major architectural legacy. Her estate originated from crown domains assigned to her from freehold property to which she had title, yielding greater income than that of any Queen Mother before her. Some have suggested, however, that her riches represented an abuse of the empire’s fiscal management.

Whatever the case, though, Kösem is remembered by Turks as the most powerful among sultanas, even greater than Roxelana, the favorite concubine and later wife of Süleyman the Magnificent. After Kösem’s death, the position of Queen Mother was to lose its special status.

Bibliography

Bon, Ottaviano. The Sultan’s Seraglio: An Intimate Portrait of Life at the Ottoman Court. London: Saqi Books, 1996. Introduced and annotated by Godfrey Goodwin. A seventeenth century Venetian ambassador’s serious attempt to describe life at the Ottoman palace during Kösem Sultan’s time. Originally published as A Description of the Grand Seignor’s Seraglio in 1650. Includes endnotes and a glossary.

Cicek, Kemal, et al., eds. The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation. 4 vols. Ankara, Turkey: Yeni Türkiye, 2000. The chapter in volume 2 by Fariba Zarinebat-Shahr, “The Wealth of Ottoman Princesses During the Tulip Age,” is especially helpful. The text describes the growing importance of Queen Mothers and their internal rivalries, such as the one between Kösem and her daughter-in-law, Turhan.

Goodwin, Godfrey. The Private World of Ottoman Women. London: Saqi Books, 1997. Topical treatment highlighting the exclusion and thus waste of potential female talent—with major exceptions such as Kösem Sultan’s—in personal and public development. Illustrations, genealogy, glossary, bibliography, index.

Goodwin, Jason. Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. A topical survey focusing on places, people, structures, and events, including the circumstances surrounding the death of Kösem. Illustrations, chronology, glossary, bibliography, index.

Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600. Translated by Norman Itzkovitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger, 1973. A good background study that describes the empire’s rise and decline, presented from historical, political, administrative, religious, cultural, social, and economic perspectives. Illustrations, genealogy, chronology, glossary, endnotes, bibliography, index.

Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Originally a Princeton University dissertation (1988), this scholarly work explains the Ottoman harem as a complex combination of social, political, and administrative structures and the role played by women in these hierarchies. Peirce’s book corrects the negative image of the harem previously depicted by Western authors as a nest of sensuality and intrigue. Illustrations, glossary, maps, genealogy, endnotes, bibliography, index.

Wheatcroft, Andrew. The Ottomans. New York: Viking, 1993. Highlighting the evolution of the harem in the seventeenth century Ottoman Empire, the author discusses the relationship between Kösem and her sons Murad IV and İbrahim and her grandson Mehmed IV. Illustrations, chronology, map, endnotes, bibliography, index.