ABSTRACT
Captured by Tartars during a slave raid into the Russian steppes, Turhan Sultan entered the Ottoman world of the early seventeenth century as a concubine, an odalık. There are no archival records of her birth date and place of origin, but she must have been close to 12 years old when she arrived at the Topkapı Palace in 1640.1 The young Hadice was brought to the palace by Kör Süleyman Pasha and given as a gift to Kösem Sultan, the mother of Sultan İbrahim. As a valide, it was Kösem’s responsibility to choose appropriate concubines for the sultan and she often selected them from her own retinue of slaves. Bobovi, a royal page from Poland who served in the palace from 1638 until 1657, wrote, “It is almost always from among the Sultan Valide’s slaves that the sultan chooses his mistresses. For it is only she who has the interest of the loves of her son at her heart. She always searches for beautiful girls to be presented to him.”
