In the Ottoman dynasty the sultan's mother, the valide, was often one of the unseen yet powerful forces of the state. One of the roots of this tradition in Amasya is Gülbahar Hatun, mother of Bayezid II. She entered the harem of Mehmed II (the Conqueror) as a concubine, lived in Amasya for roughly a quarter of a century while her son, who had been sent there at the age of seven, governed the sanjak, and in 1481, when he came to the throne, moved to Istanbul, where for some eleven years she was the most influential woman at court. Gülbahar Hatun stands for both a mother's tenderness and the shrewdness of a woman who followed affairs of state closely. Little is known about her life: the accounts of her origins contradict one another, and her date of birth is unknown. Yet the archives preserve legal deeds, imperial orders and endowment records bearing her name, together with three letters she wrote to her son. These documents shed a surprisingly vivid light on the years she spent in the princely palace at Amasya and on her last years in Istanbul.

Gülbahar Hatun's story is a reminder that Amasya was more than a provincial capital that housed princes; it was a palace city that also received their mothers, wives and large households. In the princely sanjaks the mothers of princes shouldered wide responsibilities, from running the harem to founding endowments, from overseeing the prince's upbringing to watching over the political balance around him. The endowments Gülbahar Hatun left in Amasya and the properties she acquired in the city are the tangible traces of that role.

Accounts of Her Origins

Where Gülbahar Hatun came from, and how, is not known. The sources offer conflicting accounts that make her Albanian, Serbian, Greek or French. Tayyip Gökbilgin and Franz Babinger describe her as a slave girl of Albanian origin; Babinger also notes that Turkish tradition later transformed her into a "daughter of the king of France". The nearest contemporary testimony for an Albanian origin comes from the Genoese Iacopo de Promontorio-de Campis, who wrote notes on the Ottoman state around 1475; according to him, Prince Bayezid's mother was an Albanian slave. The view that she was Greek arose largely from a confusion of names. In Bayezid's harem at Amasya there was another woman also called Gülbahar, who gave birth to his son Selim in the city in 1470. As Necdet Sakaoğlu points out, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law lived in the same harem during Bayezid's governorship of Amasya, and later writers frequently conflated the lives of the two women. The suggestion of the Albanian historian Dhimitër Shuteriqi that Gülbahar may have been a daughter of Gjergj Arianiti and Maria Muzaka has not been accepted by modern scholars.

What is certain is that she entered the palace as a concubine. The clearest proof is a legal deed (hüccet) dated Dhu al-Hijja 872 (June-July 1468), from the years when Prince Bayezid was sanjak governor of Amasya. In this document, which concerns the purchase and sale of a property in the Veled-i Kuzgun quarter of Amasya, she is named "Gülbahar bint Abdullah". It was established practice, when concubines taken into the harem were given new names, to write "Abdullah", meaning "servant of God", in place of the father's name, which marked the woman as a concubine who had converted to Islam. In the reading of Hasan Karataş, who studied village revenues around Amasya, one document gives the name as "Gülbahar bint Abdüssamed". Apart from this single reading, the documents agree on the form "bint Abdullah".

A study by Ali Açıkel and Kübra Dursun, published in 2020, examines these accounts one by one. Sydney Nettleton Fisher claimed that Gülbahar Hatun was a Turkish woman, the daughter of one of the leading families of Tokat, citing as evidence the mosque complex her son built in her name in that town. Yet the relevant page of Louis Thuasne's work on Prince Cem, which Fisher cites, does not even mention Gülbahar Hatun's name. Since sultans founded endowments in many parts of the empire, deducing a family tie from the Tokat endowment amounts to little more than fiction. The scholars conclude that it cannot be known which people Gülbahar Hatun came from, but that she was undoubtedly taken into the palace as a concubine.

The Legend of the French Princess and the Account of Evliya Çelebi

The most colourful story about Gülbahar Hatun is the legend that she was a French princess. It appears in many Western works, nearly all of which go back to Joseph von Hammer, whose own source was the Seyahatnâme (Book of Travels) of Evliya Çelebi. Evliya writes that he heard the story from Sukemerli Koca Mustafa Çelebi, chief secretary of the Janissary corps. According to this account, Gülbahar, Mustafa Çelebi's paternal aunt, was one of the children of the king of France and had been betrothed to the Byzantine ruler of Constantinople. The ship carrying her to the city as a bride was seized by the Ottomans off Sarayburnu along with its precious cargo, and she was handed over to Mehmed II in the garden of the Imperial Arsenal. At the urging of Akşemseddin her brother converted to Islam, while Gülbahar hesitated, whereupon Mehmed declared, "we shall give her a good upbringing". According to the story, both Bayezid and Cem were born of this union.

Evliya supports the tale with observations of his own. He writes that on his way to dawn prayers he saw with his own eyes that the Qur'an reciters appointed to Gülbahar Hatun's tomb read with their backs turned to her cenotaph, that the tomb was always kept closed to the public, and that after dark people of Frankish origin would slip the tomb-keeper a few aspers to have it opened. According to Sukemerli Mustafa Çelebi, his aunt never truly became a Muslim. The story clearly clashes with the historical record. When Istanbul was taken in 1453, Gülbahar Hatun had long since given birth to Bayezid. All sources agree that Bayezid and Cem were born to different mothers, and no document mentions a brother of Gülbahar Hatun. Açıkel and Dursun point out that the tale fits far better the life of Cem's mother, Çiçek Hatun, who had an elder brother named Ali; Cem is known to have had a maternal uncle called Ali. John Freely likewise believes the legend grew up among the populace out of the curiosity aroused by the tomb remaining closed for so long.

Entry into the Harem and Life with Prince Mehmed

Gülbahar Hatun is said to have entered the Ottoman palace in 850 (1446). Exactly when she was introduced to Prince Mehmed and became his consort is not clear. Reasoning from the birth of her son Bayezid at Dimetoka in 1448, Feridun Emecen suggests that the relationship began after Mehmed's first accession in 1444 and his deposition in 1446, once his father Murad II, back on the throne, had summoned him from Manisa to join the campaign against Skanderbeg (İskender Bey). Between 1448 and 1450 Prince Mehmed took part, at his father's side, in the campaign against Skanderbeg, the Second Battle of Kosovo and then the operations in Albania. It is likely that Gülbahar Hatun, who appears to have been at the palace of Dimetoka where Ottoman rulers stayed from time to time, met Prince Mehmed there. Since concubines set aside for a sultan or prince are known to have received a careful training, she is thought to have been brought up in the same way.

Gülbahar Hatun was Mehmed II's first consort of concubine origin. From the founding period until the middle of the fifteenth century, Ottoman rulers had mostly married Byzantine, Serbian and Bulgarian princesses or daughters of the Turkish principalities. The reign of Mehmed II is regarded as the point at which this practice changed; from then on the sultans' children were overwhelmingly born to women of concubine origin. Gülbahar Hatun's life is one of the earliest examples of this transition. In the winter of 1450 Prince Mehmed married Sitti Hatun, daughter of Süleyman Bey of the Dulkadir dynasty, in a magnificent wedding at Edirne. Whether Gülbahar Hatun went with them to Manisa after the wedding, and where she lived after Mehmed became sultan in 1451 and took Istanbul in 1453, is unknown. It is very likely that during these years she was with her son Bayezid in Edirne.

Her Children: Bayezid and Gevherhan

Gülbahar Hatun bore Mehmed II a son and a daughter. The date of Bayezid's birth varies in the sources between late 1447 and early 1448; Babinger gives January 1448, while some sources give 3 December 1447, and all agree that he was born at Dimetoka. Bayezid was the eldest son of Mehmed II. Her daughter, Gevherhan Sultan, was married in 1474 to Uğurlu Mehmed, son of the Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan. When Mehmed II appointed his son-in-law beylerbey (governor-general) of Sivas, Gevherhan Sultan went with her husband to Sivas. After Uğurlu Mehmed was summoned to Iran and killed, she returned to Istanbul in 1477; her son Ahmed later married Aynışah Sultan, daughter of Bayezid II, and briefly sat on the Akkoyunlu throne. When Gevherhan Sultan died, she too was buried in her mother's tomb.

A Quarter of a Century in Amasya

A Mother in the Princely Palace

By Ottoman custom, princes were sent at a young age to a sanjak to learn the art of government, and their mothers went with them. Bayezid was appointed sanjak governor of Amasya when he was only seven, in 1455 or 1456; some sources give the date as 1454-1455. Gülbahar Hatun settled in Amasya with her son. She evidently attended the circumcision festivities held for Bayezid and his brother Mustafa at Edirne in the spring of 1457, and apart from this brief absence she lived in Amasya until 1481. Throughout Bayezid's twenty-seven-year governorship, which lasted until his accession, his mother stood at the head of the princely palace and its harem in Amasya.

These were years in which the fortunes of mother and son became bound together, and in which Amasya was one of the busiest centres on the eastern frontier. The flight of Alaüddevle of the Dulkadir dynasty to the Ottomans, the sack of Tokat by Akkoyunlu forces under Yusufça Mirza in 1472, and the Battle of Otlukbeli the following year, in which Bayezid commanded the right wing, all fall within Gülbahar Hatun's Amasya years. Around the prince were teachers such as Muarrifzâde, a calligrapher of the stature of Şeyh Hamdullah, and lalas (tutor-guardians) such as Çandarlı İbrahim Pasha, Yahya Pasha and Ayas Pasha. Gülbahar Hatun, who had known Ayas Pasha since her son's childhood, would years later describe him in a letter from Istanbul as "an elder left to you by your father and grandfather". Some of the statesmen of devshirme origin in Bayezid's household would later build madrasas and dervish lodges in Amasya and become the pioneers of the city's building activity at the end of the fifteenth century.

Properties, Villages and Legal Deeds

Archival documents show that Gülbahar Hatun held substantial properties in the regions of Amasya and Tokat. During the Trabzon campaign of 1461, Mehmed II granted her a village in Amasya as freehold property. According to the documents studied by Karataş, in 872 (1468) Mehmed also gave Gülbahar Hatun the village of Bağluca, which had been exempted from the obligation of supplying a cavalryman (eşkinci) for the army. Six years later, in 878 (1473), Gülbahar Hatun sold the village to Tâceddin Bey, son of Hamza Bali (d. 890/1486), who served as treasurer at Bayezid's court in Amasya. In 883 (1478) the village's exemption was abolished and it was granted back to Gülbahar Hatun, probably as a consequence of Mehmed II's land reform. A year later the same order was reissued at the request of a certain Mevlânâ Şemseddin Ahmed, which suggests that the village had not reverted to Gülbahar Hatun and had become the subject of a legal dispute. The 1468 deed concerning the property in the Veled-i Kuzgun quarter likewise shows that she took a direct part in buying and selling urban property in Amasya.

These property transactions are closely bound up with the uncertainty that hung over princely households. In Karataş's interpretation, princes rarely undertook large building projects in the cities they governed; instead they promised to make generous endowments to the city should they become sultan, while whatever income they had was mostly spent on gathering strength for a possible succession struggle. That Gülbahar Hatun was anxious about the future of her son and of her own properties can be seen from the way she converted those properties into endowments to secure them.

The Endowment to the Enderun Mosque

Gülbahar Hatun's most tangible mark on Amasya is the endowment she made to the Enderun Mosque in today's Hatuniye quarter. Known locally as the Loğ Minare Mosque, the building was most probably erected in the time of the Danishmendid ruler Şemseddin İsmail Gazi Bey (1166-1172). Hüseyin Hüsameddin writes that from 612 (1215-1216) onwards some documents refer to it as Câmi-i Enderun or Câmi-i Gazi Bey. The name Enderun is thought to derive from the building's location within the inner citadel (İçkale). In 879 (1474-1475) Gülbahar Hatun endowed the revenues of certain villages and arable fields to this mosque. One of the endowed villages, Ağılcık, was turned back into a timar village in 884 (1479) during the land reform. The fact that the mosque eventually also came to be called the "Hatuniye Mosque" is explained by the share it received from Gülbahar Hatun's endowment. In 911 (1505-1506) another woman of the palace, Gülçiçek Hatun, also endowed various revenue-producing properties to the same mosque.

The endowment's influence lasted for centuries. In Hüseyin Hüsameddin's biographies of the scholars of Amasya it is recorded that İsmail Efendi, known as Sarı Vâiz, was preacher of the Câmi-i Enderun and received a stipend for reciting prayers "from the endowment of Gülbahar Hâtun, mother of Sultan Bayezid II". İsmail Efendi, who spent his life preaching and teaching, died on 16 Shawwal 1132 (1720). The office then passed to his sons Mehmed Şücâ' and Hasan Efendi, and after their deaths in 1138 (1725-1726) and 1147 (1734-1735) to Hasan Efendizâde Mehmed Efendi. Thus an endowment founded in the fifteenth century was still providing income to the learned circles of Amasya in the eighteenth. The mosque, whose architectural style and brickwork display twelfth-century features, had long been in a ruinous state and was reduced to a complete ruin by the earthquake of 1939. Today its red-brick minaret, about 15 metres high, still stands, its shape recalling a great stone roller (loğ taşı).

The Land Reform and the Tension between Father and Son

The land reform that Mehmed II carried out in the last years of his reign directly affected Gülbahar Hatun's life in Amasya. Under this reform a great deal of land that had passed unlawfully into private hands or been converted into endowments was taken back into state ownership (miri). In an imperial order dated Sha'ban 884 (November 1479), Mehmed states that most of Gülbahar Hatun's properties in the region had come into her possession by unlawful means, orders that these lands be distributed as timars, and demands that she supply cebelü, that is, fully equipped soldiers, in return for her freehold share. The document shows that even as a sultan's consort Gülbahar Hatun was not exempt from obligations to the state. Karataş believes that the grand vizier Karamânî Mehmed Pasha, the real architect of the land reform and a supporter of the rival princely faction, was aware of the property strategy pursued by Bayezid's household.

Prince Bayezid opposed these measures and was slow to enforce the restrictions on freeholds and endowments in his sanjak. Those who had lost their lands gradually gathered around him in Amasya. In Feridun Emecen's view, the order of 1479 is a clear sign of the stance Mehmed II took against his son in Amasya, which had become the rallying point of the opposition, and against Gülbahar Hatun. In the same years, allegations that Bayezid was using opium also reached his father's ears. Mehmed ordered the execution of two of his companions, Hızır Paşazâde Mahmud and Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman, who were said to have led him into the habit; Bayezid protected them and, in letters to his father, begged forgiveness, declaring that he had given up these "stimulants". When these letters were written, Gülbahar Hatun was with her son in Amasya. It is very likely that a mother who wished to see her son on the throne did all she could to ease the coldness between her consort and her son in this tense atmosphere.

1481 and the Struggle for the Throne

When Mehmed II died on 3 May 1481, Bayezid and his brother Cem, sanjak governor of Karaman, faced each other in a contest for the throne. The grand vizier Karamânî Mehmed Pasha favoured Cem, while İshak Pasha, the guardian of Istanbul, Bayezid's sons-in-law Sinan Bey, beylerbey of Anatolia, and Kasım, agha of the Janissaries, supported Bayezid. Bayezid received news of his father's death on 7 May, set out from Amasya with 4,000 horsemen and reached Üsküdar on 21 May. The next day the Imperial Council announced that Prince Korkut, who had been sitting on the throne in Istanbul as his father's regent, had handed the sultanate over to his father. The fact that Mehmed II's opponents had for years been gathering around Bayezid in Amasya served the prince well in these critical days.

During the tensest days of the succession struggle Gülbahar Hatun was in Amasya. When she left the city and when she reached Istanbul are unknown. Since Bayezid set off in haste, his family probably followed some time later, once preparations had been completed. A mother's presence in this difficult period had given the prince both moral support and a trustworthy guardian in the princely palace. On arriving in Istanbul, Gülbahar Hatun settled in the Old Palace set aside for the women of the dynasty and spent the rest of her life there. Also called Saray-ı Atik or the Palace of Maidens, it stood on the site of today's main building of Istanbul University; the move of the dynasty's women to Topkapı Palace would begin only in the sixteenth century, with Hürrem Sultan.

A Sultan's Mother in the Old Palace

With her son's accession, Gülbahar Hatun rose to the highest rank in the dynasty after the sultan himself. The title Valide Sultan was not yet in use; it is generally accepted that it was first used for Hafsa Sultan, mother of Süleyman the Magnificent. Gülbahar Hatun's role, however, largely matches that of the valide sultans of later centuries. As head of the harem she held authority over its expenditure, the provision of new concubines and its internal order. When the sultan visited the Old Palace he paid his respects to his mother, and Gülbahar Hatun in turn conveyed to him, through her letters, both her feelings and her views on affairs of state.

That Gülbahar Hatun involved herself in state affairs is striking in a period when the harem still stood apart from government. She knew the statesmen personally, followed political developments and spoke her mind openly when she saw fit. Her letters show that Bayezid II valued his mother's words. On these grounds Açıkel and Dursun count her among the most influential women of the dynasty in the fifteenth century and argue that she deserves to be named alongside the powerful palace women of later times, such as Hürrem Sultan, Nurbanu Sultan or Kösem Sultan. Gülbahar Hatun's influence can be seen as an early herald of the valide sultan tradition that would become institutionalised in the following centuries.

Her Letters

The principal source for Gülbahar Hatun's character is the three letters she wrote to her son, preserved in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archive. The first two were published by Çağatay Uluçay in 1956 in his Harem'den Mektuplar (Letters from the Harem). The third was opened to research after the archive's catalogues were merged with those of the State Archives, and was studied for the first time in 2020. None of the letters is dated; when they were written has to be inferred from their contents. All of them are signed "Your Mother".

A Letter of Longing

The first letter was written on the occasion of Nevruz and is devoted entirely to a mother's longing. Gülbahar Hatun wishes her son a blessed festival, complains that she has not seen him for a long time, and asks to see his face at least once before he sets out on campaign: "I long to see my fortunate one; if you do not long to see us, we long to see you. For the sake of your fortunate head, come, let me see you. My dear little lord, if you are soon going on campaign, let us see your fortune-favoured face once or twice in good health before you go. It is more than forty days now that I have not seen you. My sultan, forgive our boldness. Whom else have I but you." The letter closes with the signature "Your humble, lowly mother". Since Bayezid II, long occupied after his accession with the problem of Cem Sultan, went on his first campaign in 1483, the letter is thought to have been written while that campaign was being prepared. Where it was written from is disputed. Çağatay Uluçay believed that Gülbahar Hatun, who had not come to Istanbul with her son, may have written it from Amasya, while Necdet Sakaoğlu argues that it was written from somewhere much closer to the court, namely the Old Palace.

The Letter on the Statesmen

In the second letter a very different Gülbahar Hatun appears. The first and last pages of this three-page letter consist of Arabic prayers; the middle page, written in vowel-pointed, plain and limpid Turkish, contains her opinions on appointments of state. Gülbahar Hatun first asks permission to come and see her son, then turns to matters of state: "You have given the vizierate to Hızır Beyoğlu, and so it had to be; those who love you, we love too. My sultan, your Lala Ayas is here as well. He too is a devoted friend of yours. He is an elder left to you by your father and grandfather, a man who has seen service. My sultan, he too is fit to be at your side." She then voices her misgivings about Hersekzâde Ahmed Pasha: "Long live my sultan, but people now say that the troops do not want Hersek's son at all, that his coming to the Porte is strange, that it will be a wonder if they do not start another quarrel; so, long may you live, there are many sanjaks, my dear little lord, what need is there to let those curs have their say." The letter is signed "Your Mother, who prays for you".

The three statesmen named in the letter were men Gülbahar Hatun had known since her Amasya years. Lala Ayas had served as vizier under Mehmed II, had been Bayezid's tutor-guardian during his governorship of Amasya, and had always stood by him in the struggles among the princes. Hızır Beyoğlu, according to Açıkel and Dursun's identification, was Mehmed Pasha, son of Hızır Pasha and nephew of Yörgüç Pasha, who had been lala to Murad II and, as beylerbey of Rum, left a great mark on Amasya. Hızır Pashazade Mehmed Pasha, who became vizier in 1483, would later be appointed lala to Prince Ahmed, sanjak governor of Amasya, and is known as a local patron of building in the Amasya region. Necdet Sakaoğlu had thought that the Hızır Beyoğlu of the letter was the son of Hızır Bey, the first qadi of Istanbul; but that man is known as Sinan Pasha and never held the vizierate. Hersekzâde Ahmed Pasha, for his part, had been at Bayezid's side since his days as a prince and had supported him against Cem. Gülbahar Hatun's warning seems to have had little effect on her son. Hersekzâde became beylerbey of Anatolia in 1484, grand admiral (kapudan-ı derya) in 1489 and vizier in 1492.

The Letter on the Death of Kasım Bey

The third letter was written on receiving news of the death of Kasım Bey of Karaman. Since Kasım Bey died in 1483, the letter can be dated to that year. Kasım Bey, who had taken Cem's side after Mehmed II's death, had made an agreement with him under which Karaman would be left to him should Cem win the throne, and had encouraged Cem to open contacts with the Knights of Rhodes, was one of Bayezid's most stubborn opponents. The first page of the two-page letter, opening with the address "My beloved sultan, my heart's core", consists of prayers and praise. On the second page Gülbahar Hatun greets the news with joy, congratulates her son and, while praying for his long life, utters this imprecation against all his enemies: "may as many foes and enviers as there are in the realms around the world be vanquished and abased". In a small note added later in the margin of the page, she prays for her son once more.

Read together, the three letters show a mother bound to her son by deep affection and a political personality who followed appointments, opponents and the fate of the state at close quarters, both speaking through the same pen. Gülbahar Hatun calls her son "my dear little lord" in one breath and in the next reminds him whom the Janissaries are unhappy with. This manner suggests that the experience she had gained in the princely palace at Amasya was carried over into court life in Istanbul.

The Hatuniye Complex in Tokat

The most important building Bayezid II commissioned in his mother's name is the Hatuniye Complex in the Meydan quarter of Tokat. According to the inscription over the mosque's portal, it was built in 890 (1485) in the name of Gülbahar Hatun, mother of Sultan Bayezid II. Construction had begun while Gülbahar Hatun was still alive; the endowment deed, kept in the archive of the General Directorate of Foundations, is dated 898 (1492), which indicates that the complex was completed shortly before or after her death. According to the deed, the complex comprised a mosque, a madrasa of twelve cells and a public kitchen (imaret), together with a stable, a straw barn, a bakery, a pantry, a woodshed and ablution facilities. Regarded as the first great Ottoman mosque complex in Tokat, the group of buildings is also known as the Meydan Mosque.

Built of dressed stone, the mosque follows a plan with side rooms (tabhane). Its square prayer hall is covered by a dome resting on a twelve-sided drum, and on either side lies a domed guest room. The five-domed portico, carried on columns with muqarnas and lozenge capitals, opens onto a magnificent portal built of stone in two colours. The single-balcony minaret in the northwest rises from an octagonal base. The ablution fountain in front of the mosque was rebuilt in 1331 (1913). Damaged in the earthquakes of 1939 and 1943, the mosque was thoroughly restored in 1953, when four buttresses were added. The madrasa has vanished entirely, and the imaret east of the mosque long lay in ruins. The mosque is still in use for worship today.

Gülbahar Hatun's name also lives on in Edirne. It is uncertain whether the Gülbahar Hatun Masjid, which gave its name to a quarter of Edirne and whose inscription dated 1451 survives, belonged to her. Numerous documents in the archives refer to a "Gülbahar Hatun Endowment of Edirne". As with the Enderun Mosque in Amasya, Gülbahar Hatun may have assigned revenue to an endowment that already existed; Hadice Turhan Sultan is known to have assigned it a share in the seventeenth century.

Her Death and Her Tomb at Fatih

After some eleven years as a powerful figure at court during her son's reign, Gülbahar Hatun died in Istanbul in 898 (1492). She is thought to have been in her sixties. Bayezid II built a tomb for his mother in the courtyard of the Fatih Mosque, opposite his father's tomb, and buried her there. An endowment was also established for the tomb, with a share of the revenues of the village of Eskihisar in the sanjak of Menteşe assigned to it.

The octagonal, single-domed tomb collapsed together with the tomb of Mehmed II in the earthquake of 1766 and was rebuilt in 1767-1768 on the old foundations by the architect Mehmed Agha, on the orders of Sultan Mustafa III. Damaged again in the Cibali fire of 1782, it was repaired by Abdülhamid I, and its present inscription was placed over the door. Built of dressed stone and very plain on the outside, the tomb is lit by windows set one above another; its only interior decoration is the simple painted ornament of the dome. The tomb holds four cenotaphs: those of Gülbahar Hatun, her daughter Gevherhan Sultan and two palace women whose identities are unknown. The tomb that Evliya Çelebi found closed in the seventeenth century is open to visitors today.

Her Traces in Amasya

Gülbahar Hatun's bond with Amasya rests on the longest and perhaps most decisive period of her life. When she came to the city as a prince's mother, having risen from the harem she had entered as a concubine, her son was seven years old; when she left, her son was sultan of the empire. Over this quarter of a century she acquired property in the Veled-i Kuzgun quarter, managed the revenues of the surrounding villages, made an endowment to the old Enderun Mosque in the Hatuniye quarter, and saw her properties taken from her under Mehmed II's land reform. The lalas and statesmen who grew up in her son's princely palace reappear in her later letters as familiar faces.

No building in Amasya directly bearing her name survives today. Yet the quarter in which the Enderun Mosque stands is called Hatuniye, and the mosque's eventual second name, the Hatuniye Mosque, is associated with Gülbahar Hatun's endowment. The biographical notes showing that her endowment was still paying prayer stipends to preachers of Amasya in the eighteenth century testify to the long life of the legacy she left the city. Gülbahar Hatun's years in Amasya are among the best illustrations of the city's character as a palace city that also housed the mothers of princes.

Chronology

1446: She is said to have entered the Ottoman palace.

1447-1448: Her son Bayezid was born at Dimetoka.

1450: Prince Mehmed married Sitti Hatun, daughter of Süleyman Bey of the Dulkadir dynasty, at Edirne.

1455-1456: On Bayezid's appointment as sanjak governor of Amasya, she settled in Amasya with her son.

1457: She attended Bayezid's circumcision festivities at Edirne.

1461: During the Trabzon campaign, Mehmed II granted her a village in Amasya as freehold property.

1468: A legal deed was drawn up concerning a property in the Veled-i Kuzgun quarter of Amasya; the village of Bağluca was granted to her.

1473: She sold the village of Bağluca to Tâceddin Bey, son of Hamza Bali.

1474: Her daughter Gevherhan Sultan married Uğurlu Mehmed, son of Uzun Hasan.

1474-1475: She endowed the revenues of villages and arable fields to the Enderun Mosque in Amasya.

1479: An order of Mehmed II dated November 1479 called for her properties around Amasya to be distributed as timars; the village of Ağılcık was turned back into a timar village.

1481: Mehmed II died on 3 May; Bayezid ascended the throne on 22 May. Some time later Gülbahar Hatun moved to Istanbul and settled in the Old Palace.

1483: She wrote to her son on the death of Kasım Bey of Karaman; her first letter is also thought to date from this year, written while a campaign was being prepared.

1485: According to its inscription, the Hatuniye Mosque in Tokat was completed in her name.

1492: She died in Istanbul and was buried in her tomb in the courtyard of the Fatih Mosque. The endowment deed of the Tokat complex was drawn up.

1720: Death of Sarı Vâiz İsmail Efendi, preacher of the Enderun Mosque, who received a prayer stipend from Gülbahar Hatun's endowment.

1766-1768: Her tomb, destroyed in the earthquake, was rebuilt on the orders of Mustafa III.

1782: The tomb, damaged in the Cibali fire, was repaired by Abdülhamid I.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 7 (biographies of the scholars of Amasya, entry "İsmail Efendi, Sarı Vâiz").

Academic studies

Books

  • Hasan Karataş, The City as a Historical Actor: The Urbanization and Ottomanization of the Halvetiye Sufi Order by the City of Amasya in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 2011: https://escholarship.org/content/qt7nv104fk/qt7nv104fk.pdf
  • Çağatay Uluçay, Harem'den Mektuplar, Istanbul 1956, pp. 18-20; Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları, Ankara.
  • Necdet Sakaoğlu, Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları, Istanbul 2008/2015.
  • Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, Princeton 1978, p. 51.
  • Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, Oxford 1993.

Other sources

Online sources