Known For: One of the First Great Valide Sultans
Dates: 931-991 Hijri
1525-1583 CE

Country: Turkey

About

The product of an illegitimate union between two noble Venetian families, Nurbanu Sultan, née Cecelia Venier-Baffo, was the concubine and later wife of Selim II and the mother of Murad III.

Captured in 1537 at the age of twelve, Nurbanu entered the Ottoman harem and became Selim’s choice to bear his children. Accordingly, she provided him with three daughters and his heir, Murad. She had been the head of his princely harem, and when he became sultan, she became head of the imperial harem. Even after Selim began to take other concubines, she persisted as a favorite for her beauty and intelligence. As mother of the heir-apparent, she acted as an advisor to her husband.

After Selim’s death in 1574, Nurbanu concealed Selim’s body in an icebox to cloak his death until Murad could return from where he was posted as governor. Once he returned, Nurbanu, along with the grand vizier, served as Murad’s chief advisors.

As the first of a series of women during an era called the “Sultanate of Women,” Nurbanu corresponded with Catherine de Medici, then regent of France, and fostered a relationship between the two courts.

Nurbanu commissioned the architect Mimar Sinan to build the Atik Valide Mosque in Istanbul.

Her politics, and thus the politics of her son, were so pro-Venetian that it caused bad blood between the Empire and the Republic of Genoa. It is suspected that her death in 1583 was the work of a Genoese agent.