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Çiçek Hatun (Ottoman Turkish: چیچک خاتون‎; c. 1443 – May 1498; other names Akide, Qigek) was the fifth wife of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, and the mother of Sultan Cem.[1]

Biography

Little is known of Çiçek early life. Her ethnical background is a matter of controversy. Most claim that Çiçek was born as the daughter of an Anatolian Bey of Turkmen origin.[2][3] She also had a brother named Ali Bey and a relative named Ismail Bey. According to other sources she was a Serbian princess who entered Mehmed II's harem after the fall of Constantinople.[3]

Mehmed II married Çiçek in some what 1458 at the age of fifteen. On 22 December 1459, She gave birth to her only son Şehzade Cem, who was a pretender to the Ottoman throne in the 15th century.[4] According to Turkish tradition, all princes were expected to work as provincial governors (Sanjak-bey) as a part of their training.[4] After the death of Cem's younger brother, Şehzade Mustafa, he was assigned as the governor of Konya and Çiçek accompanied him.[4] After Cem's first defeat in the succession war following his father's death in 1481, the prince, Çiçek Hatun, and the rest of his household took refuge with the Mamluk Sultan in Cairo.[4]

Of all the members of Cem's household, Çiçek Hatun was his most devoted ally.[4] The individual perhaps most able to help him attain the throne was also the person most able and likely to desert him if his prospects dimmed.[4] Appointed by the sultan and ultimately loyal to him, a tutor's primary concern was not always the success of his princely charge.[4] Gedik Ahmed Pasha, who had been a tutor to Cem, failed to supple the prince with the support he confidently accepted his challenge to the enthronement of his older brother Bayezid.[4]

Although Cem was deserted by his tutor Gedik Ahmed Pasha, he was well served by hiss mother Çiçek Hatun, who struggled on his behalf for years and served as his principal ally in his efforts to free himself from the European captivity he endured after his defeat by his brother.[4] Çiçek shared her son's exile, and died in May of 1498 of Plague and was buried in Cairo; the prince's corpse, however, was returned from Naples, where he died, and buried in the tomb of his elder brother, Mustafa.[4]

References

1. Ahmed Akgündüz, Said Öztürk (2011). Ottoman History: Misperceptions and Truths. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-9-090-26108-9.
2. Muhammad Syaari Abdul Rahman, Berfikir Gaya Al-Fateh
3. Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, pg.173
4. Leslie P. Peirce (1993). The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-195-08677-5.