Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana): From Captive to Ottoman Empress

Hürrem Sultan (c. 1502–1558), known in Europe as Roxelana, was a captive from Ruthenia who entered the harem of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent around 1520 and became his wife. Defying Ottoman custom, Suleiman freed and married her, and she became his closest confidante, a political force at court, the mother of the future Selim II and a founder of major charitable institutions. Her rise made her one of the most famous, and most debated, women of the sixteenth century.

Origins and capture

Very little is known for certain about Hürrem’s early life. She was born around 1502 to 1506 in Ruthenia, a region of the Kingdom of Poland that lies in today’s western Ukraine. Later tradition says she was the daughter of an Orthodox priest from the town of Rohatyn and gives her name as Anastasia or Aleksandra Lisowska, but these details come from sources written long after her death.

As a girl she was captured in one of the frequent raids by Crimean Tatars into Polish and Lithuanian lands, which supplied the Black Sea slave markets. She was taken to Istanbul and entered the imperial harem, the household of the sultan’s family, probably around 1520, the year Suleiman came to the throne. There she received the name Hürrem, a Persian word meaning “joyful”.

The imperial harem

In Western imagination the Ottoman harem was often pictured as a place of idle pleasure. In reality the imperial harem was a large, strictly organised household. It included the sultan’s mother, his consorts and children, and hundreds of female servants, most of them enslaved women of foreign origin, who were trained, educated and ranked in a hierarchy with salaries and duties.

Since the fifteenth century Ottoman sultans had generally not married. Instead, they had children with concubines, which kept the dynasty free from the influence of powerful in-laws. Any son of a sultan, whatever his mother’s status, could inherit the throne. The most important woman in the harem was usually the sultan’s mother, the valide sultan. When Suleiman came to the throne, this was Hafsa Sultan, who managed the household until her death in 1534.

Hürrem entered this world as one of many young women. Like others, she converted to Islam and learned Turkish and the customs of the palace. Her surviving letters to Suleiman, written in Ottoman Turkish, suggest that she became literate, although some may have been written with the help of a scribe.

Favourite of the sultan

Hürrem quickly became Suleiman’s favourite. Their first son, Mehmed, was born in 1521, followed by a daughter, Mihrimah, and the sons Abdullah, who died young, Selim, Bayezid and Cihangir.

This broke an important Ottoman custom. A royal concubine was normally expected to bear only one son and then to accompany him to his provincial post. Hürrem had several sons and remained at Suleiman’s side. She displaced Mahidevran, the mother of Suleiman’s eldest son Mustafa, and the rivalry between the two women became a subject of court gossip.

Around the early 1530s, probably in 1533 or 1534, Suleiman freed Hürrem and married her in a formal ceremony, something no sultan had done for generations. Contemporary European observers were astonished. She also received the new title of haseki sultan, “favourite of the sultan”, and from the early 1540s she lived in the main imperial palace, Topkapı, rather than the old palace where the harem had been kept.

Political influence

Hürrem acted as Suleiman’s eyes and ears in Istanbul while he was away on long military campaigns. Several of her letters to him survive, full of affection and political news. She also corresponded with foreign rulers, including King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland, to whom she sent friendly letters and gifts, supporting good relations between the two states.

Her influence was widely resented. Contemporaries, especially Venetian ambassadors whose reports were read across Europe, accused her of bewitching the sultan. She was blamed for the execution of the powerful grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha in 1536 and, above all, for the death of Prince Mustafa in 1553. In 1539 her daughter Mihrimah married Rüstem Pasha, who became grand vizier in 1544, and the two were seen as working together.

Modern historians, notably Leslie Peirce, treat these claims cautiously. Much of the evidence is rumour reported by foreign diplomats with little access to the harem. Suleiman had his own reasons to fear that Mustafa, popular with the army, might rebel as Suleiman’s father Selim I had done. Hürrem’s role is real but difficult to measure.

Charitable foundations

Like other royal women, Hürrem used her wealth for public works, which also displayed the dynasty’s piety. Her endowments included:

• The Haseki Sultan Complex in Istanbul, in the Aksaray district, designed by Mimar Sinan and built from 1538, with a mosque, school, soup kitchen and hospital. Its endowment deed of 1540 is preserved with fine illumination.
• The Haseki Hürrem Sultan Bathhouse, a large double bath for men and women facing Hagia Sophia, built by Sinan in the 1550s.
• A public soup kitchen in Jerusalem, founded in the early 1550s, which still distributes food today.
• Charitable works in Mecca, Medina and Edirne, including support for pilgrims.

Key people

• Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566), Ottoman sultan from 1520 and Hürrem’s husband.
• Mihrimah Sultan (c. 1522–1578), Hürrem’s daughter, a wealthy patron of architecture and wife of Rüstem Pasha.
• Rüstem Pasha (c. 1500–1561), grand vizier and Hürrem’s son-in-law.
• Mahidevran Sultan, mother of Prince Mustafa and Hürrem’s rival.
• Selim II (1524–1574), Hürrem’s son, who succeeded Suleiman in 1566.

Timeline

• c. 1502–1506: Hürrem is born in Ruthenia, then part of the Kingdom of Poland.
• c. 1520: She enters the harem of Suleiman, newly sultan.
• 1521: Her first son, Mehmed, is born.
• 1524: Her son Selim, the future Selim II, is born.
• c. 1533–1534: Suleiman frees and marries her.
• 1538–1540: Sinan builds her mosque complex in Istanbul.
• 1553: Prince Mustafa is executed; Hürrem’s son Cihangir dies soon after.
• 1558, 15 April: Hürrem dies in Istanbul.

Legacy and reputation

Hürrem died on 15 April 1558 and was buried in a tomb by Sinan beside the Süleymaniye Mosque, the great mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent. She did not live to see the struggle between her sons: Bayezid rebelled and was executed in 1561, and Selim became sultan in 1566.

Historians often see her as the starting point of what Turkish historian Ahmet Refik in 1916 called the “Sultanate of Women”, a period in which royal mothers and wives held great influence. Many now reject the idea that this influence weakened the empire, seeing it instead as part of the way Ottoman dynastic politics worked.

In Europe, Roxelana became a figure of plays, novels, paintings and music, including Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 63, nicknamed “La Roxelane”. In Ukraine she is remembered as a daughter of the nation, and her story reached a huge international audience through the Turkish television series Magnificent Century (2011–2014).

Why it matters

Hürrem’s career changed the Ottoman court. She showed how a woman of the harem could become a political partner of the sultan, reshaped royal family customs and left charitable foundations, still in use, in Istanbul and Jerusalem. Her life also illustrates the slave trade across the Black Sea that brought her, like thousands of others, from Eastern Europe to Istanbul.