What Happened to Mahidevran After Süleyman Executed Her Son?

In 1563 an order went out in the sultan's name to pay ten years of rent on the houses where Mahidevran was living in Bursa. Ten years earlier, Suleyman the Magnificent had his eldest son strangled in his campaign tent near Eregli. That son was Mustafa, her son. In the order the sultan calls him my late son. The Bursa court register puts the sum at 34,200 silver akce: nine years and six months at ten coins a day. The year before, another order had told the judge of Bursa to warn the butchers and grocers, because they had been serving her men last. Mahidevran had gone with Mustafa to his provincial posts, as mothers of princes did. The historian Leslie Peirce calls the idea that she was exiled from the palace incorrect. In 1553 the Venetian ambassador Bernardo Navagero wrote that she guarded her son against poison and reminded him every day that it was the one thing he had to avoid. After the execution she went to Bursa, where he was buried. In 1564 a house with its own bath was bought for her household for 120,000 akce. In 1575 she endowed her house, 100,000 silver coins and two water mills, and the endowment for her son's tomb lived on the rent of forty-two houses. She died at the start of 1581 and was buried in his tomb. A few months later the court in Bursa recorded the freeing of the twenty people she had owned, each one described by height, eyes, skin and scars. Twelve of them carry the mark of a wound. In 1923 a researcher wrote that her name was still missing from the Ottoman histories. If this file changed how you see her, write one word in the comments: register. Chapters 0:00 A rent order, ten years late 1:18 The file in four parts 1:36 One mother, one son 3:03 From Manisa to Eregli 5:25 The tent 7:35 Bursa and the market 9:46 My late son 11:43 A tomb and two mills 13:30 Twenty people 15:13 Today 16:58 One word Sources Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 1993) Sadettin Egri, Mahidevran (Gulbahar) Sultan ve Itiknamesi, Uludag Universitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakultesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 19/30 (2016), with the Bursa court register entries published by Kamil Kepecioglu in Bursa Kutugu Irfan Ozden, Kanuni'nin Oglu Sehzade Mustafa Olayi (master's thesis, Kutahya, 2011) Restorasyon Haber, 9 August 2024; Hurriyet, 13 February 2014; Kultur Portali, Sehzade Mustafa Turbesi The Venetian reports are quoted from Peirce, who cites Alberi's Relazioni. Whenever this video uses one of them, it names the envoy. Typewriter sound: lonemonk, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) Subscribe, and the next file will find you.