Talk:Handan Sultan: Difference between revisions

 

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::This is not about the title Haseki, that is a different discussion. Only if there is a source that excplicitly says there was a formal, legal, marriage ceremony, can she be factually stated to be a wife. If not, they were a concubine. We have to be very careful: since this is a sensitive issue, there has been a long modern tradition to refer to all the women of the sultan as “wives”. It is a sort of polite euphemism, since the status of concubine is sensitive. This must be avoided in Wikipedia. We must be factual. Further, the discussion on the talk page of Halime Sultan was about the title of Haseki, not about wife vs concubine.–[[User:Aciram|Aciram]] ([[User talk:Aciram|talk]]) 13:36, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

::This is not about the title Haseki, that is a different discussion. Only if there is a source that excplicitly says there was a formal, legal, marriage ceremony, can she be factually stated to be a wife. If not, they were a concubine. We have to be very careful: since this is a sensitive issue, there has been a long modern tradition to refer to all the women of the sultan as “wives”. It is a sort of polite euphemism, since the status of concubine is sensitive. This must be avoided in Wikipedia. We must be factual. Further, the discussion on the talk page of Halime Sultan was about the title of Haseki, not about wife vs concubine.–[[User:Aciram|Aciram]] ([[User talk:Aciram|talk]]) 13:36, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

::(edit conflict) The question is, if there’s a source stating that Handan was married or not. In the present state the cited source (Börekçi) says she was a concubine, and no source says she was married, so the situation seems pretty clear.–[[User:Phso2|Phso2]] ([[User talk:Phso2|talk]]) 13:38, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

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This book can not be used as a source because resources are not given in the book! “Ali Kemal Meram, Padişah Anaları, Öz Yayınları, 1977”–Kamuran Ötükenli (talk) 09:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why ? In the link of google books we can show only Helen. But in this book author wrote anası (Handan Sultan) takma adlı Yunanlı Helen.Takabeg (talk) 12:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

She was not a descendant of Mahidevrans Family, nore she was a Muslima of birth.

Handan is well known as Helena a Greek slave girl who came in the Harem.

In the Ottoman Defter (list) all is well document, in the Topkapi Arsiv.

If you want please ask them or any living Member of the Ottoman Dynasty.

Mahidevran is no Ancestress of any living Members of the Ottoman Dynasty.

Since this series Muhtesem yüzyil, Mahidevran Fans claimed such false statemants.

Sorry, this is not vandalizm, but Handan Sultan had no connection to Circassian or Mahidevran.

I saw many Articles here about woman of the ottoman Dynasty, since Muhtesem yüzyil series always made false statemants by this so called Mahidevran Fans.

In the Ottoman Harem at this Time there was no circassian, or any own cousin of a Ottoman Prince.

There is nor source who claimed before this series that Handan was a Circassian and a relative to Mahidevran.

She was a Greek and her name was Helena when she enter in the Harem.

This storys of some Valide sultanas are a joke…only written by one person…

Handan Sultan was a native greek girl named Helena and she came into the harem as all the other girls as slave.

Best regards

There is no Source given, that she was a Circassian and reltated to any other Womans in the Harem like Halime and Mahfiruz.
Handan was always given as a native Greek named Helen, when came in the Harem she became the name Handan.
Also at this Time 1603 there was no circassian nobles in the Harem. This was not the system in the Harem to have Noble Girls from any caucasian/circassian muslim dynasty’s. Also the same as by the Jenijarries.

Circassian Nobles came in the Harem in the Time when Abdülaziz was reigned since 1861. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nalanidil (talk • contribs) 01:07, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good Nalanidil, Now you are doing it the proper way and discussing. The sources given do not support her being a Circassian but Greek and so I changed the text to reflect this fact. Source 1–Source 2.–Attar-Aram syria (talk) 01:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@MariaAmaliaduchessadiParma: You persist to ignore several problematic points in your contributions:

1) You continue to add popular history in the articles, instead of scholarly litterature written by academic historians, in spite of wikipedia guidelines. Bahadıroğlu is a journalist who wrote books of popular history, he is not an academic, so his books can’t be used against professional historians. He and his fellow Turkish pop historians don’t have miraculously access to providential primary sources unknown to Turkish academic scholars, they rely on folklore and unreliable previous authors from the 19th and early 20th, mixing facts and fiction. We must discard popular or touristic history when these are contradicted by more reliable sources.

2) You don’t take into account that scholars in Ottoman history like Börekçi (who wrote an entire article specifically dedicated to Handan) do not mention any hypothetical former name. The names of these women are simply unknown or at best hypothetized, despite the imagination of non-academic authors.

3) You also add incomplete references, making them inverifiable: no page number etc It seems that you even copy-pasted some (they appear in Russian language context) without having actually read them. Phso2 (talk) 10:18, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dear, first of all, be more polite, because

1. I insert the possible that I can find, within the limits of the possible, and within the limits of the verifiable so that I spend hours looking for the best sources.

2. All the sources I bring are looked at, studied, and taken into consideration as possibly authoritative or not, and based on the authors of the book and its content I insert the best sources. Unfortunately, you can’t have the sources you want with characters like Handan whose origins are uncertain.

3. You said “The names of these women are simply unknown or at best hypothetized, despite the imagination of non-academic authors”. So all the authors I brought are not authoritative or maybe you don’t like the sources? Unfortunately they are the only sources available (I repeat, the ones I have included you bring because they are authoritative and because they are studied) so you have to adapt with what you have and make it go well, obviously as far as possible.

4. Everything I put on people like Handan is taken with a grain of salt: all the sources I find I examine and check, and I only insert the authoritative ones. Unfortunately if some pieces are missing I apologize, but I didn’t do it on purpose: they are oversights or the writings I find have the parts of text that interest me only in preview and the page is not reported in full.

5. Do you have sources that literally state that Handan was not called Helena at birth? From the sources I have reported, she appears to be named like this. It doesn’t seem to me, so this is based on your personal opinions, not relevant. I repeat, I have been studying this topic (Ottoman history) for a lifetime, so I know what I write.

6. Books like “Semiramis festival through a Sultan’s eyes”, “Atatürk’ün Yasaklanan Kitabı”, “Osmanlı Padişahlarının Yaşamlarından Kesitler, Hastalıkları ve Ölüm Sebepleri (1. Basım)”, “Osmanlı’da Şehzade Katli”, “Padişah anaları: resimli-belgesel tarih roman” named her as Helena/Helen, and so, are all of them unreliable? MariaAmaliaduchessadiParma (talk) 21:09, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t intend to hurt your feelings so apologies if you somehow feel offended.

The authors you brought write popular history; they are not scholars specialized in the field, they are not “authoritative” in the sense of Wikipedia:Reliable sources. We don’t have to “adapt with what we have and make it go well as far as possible”, we have to use reliable source, so when a dubious information is only sourced by an inferior source, we simply omit the dubious information.

You can’t ask for a negative proof about dubious claims, i.e. for a reliable source to specifically refute a claim made by an inferior source. If scholars write that we have no information about the background of some people, we have to trust the scholars, and not the popular historians that rely on unfounded historical traditions, even if it is always more palatable, picturesque and romantic to believe that we can have an exhaustive list with detailed origins and names.

About your claims for seriousness, for example you cited Sakaoğlu (in Russian langage googlebooks settings…) to support the claim that she was “possibly born as Helena between 1565 and 1568.”. But since Sakaoğlu only give her date of death and writes that “her family and ethnicity are unknown”, can you give a precise quotation or an explanation for this?

About the last publications you mentioned: are they written by scholars, academics specialized in the field of Ottoman history? You already know the answer if you verified in earnest: one catalog for an art exhibition, one conspiracy theory book about Ataturk, one book written by a pneumologist about the health problems of sultans, one book written by a journalist, one self-title “historical novel”. These do not qualify as reliable source, moreover if they contradict more reliable sources. All these authors probably rely on the same unfounded Turkish historiographical tradition, perhaps based on Ahmed Refik’s unreliable writings on the sultans’ mothers.–Phso2 (talk) 22:49, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP has several ways to reference stuff that works, from WP:BAREURL and upwards. But the guidance is that we should try to keep to one such style within an article, it’s considered quality writing, and generally helpful to readers and editors. And it helps if anyone wants to try for WP:GA at some point. Afaict, this article should try to follow the sfn-style, (not my personal preference, but that doesn’t matter).

Basically this means that the reference is placed (once) under Handan_Sultan#Sources in a certain format, and then cited in-text as needed with a bit of code like {{sfn|Börekçi|2020|p=56}}, that example is the current first cite in the article. It’s quite doable once you get the hang of it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:37, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to those children already stated i say Şah is also her daughter.
According to 82 numaralı mühimme defteri entry 116 she was the widow of Mirahur Mustafa Pasha with whom she had three sons who died young, she remarried Mahmud Bey who is the great-grand son of Mirhimah Sultan (daughter of Suleiman I) in following report

‘’…Mahmud bascia, figliuolo chef u del gia Cicala, e cognate ora del Gran Signore , e henche giovane, uomo qui di molta estimazione e di maggiore speranza: si perchee di spirit per se stesso, come anche per lo favour della sultana sua moglie, che tra le sorelle del Gran Signore e forse la piu amata, e, se ben mi ricordo, credo che sia sorella a lui di padre e di madre, che in queste parti rade volte avviene ai principi del sangue reale.’’
La porta d’Oriente – lettere di Pietro della Valle : Istanbul 1614 (pp. 132-133).
Per report the wife of Mahmud is called the full sister of Ahmed and Hatice (daughter of Halime) is wrongly named as wife of Mustafa and Mahmud. I propose following changes

• Şah Sultan (c. 1588-1618/1619) also called Şahıhuban Sultan^[1] was married firstly to Mirahur Mustafa Pasha until his death in 1610 with him she had three sons who died young, she remarried to Mahmud Bey. Şah likely died between 1618 and 1619 as Mahmud remarried only in 1620.

• As for identifying the name of wife of Davud we still dont know it yet so i propose the following
• Şah Sultan->>Fülane Sultan (ca.1592?-after 1623) as the placeholder name for the wife of Kara Davud Pasha

Melty love (talk) 09:33, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Melty love: Thank you for starting that discussion. I wanted to.

Yes, your proposals are absolutely right and correct:

– Sakaoğlu list the wife of Kara Davud Pasha as Handan’s daughter, but he doesn’t recognize her under a name. -> (“Handan’ın adı bilinmeyen bir kızı, 1604’te vezir Kara Davud Paşayla (ö. 1623) evlenmişti“). So, I was thinking that since Mehmed III’s page list that daughter as “Şah”, consequently it was her name, but it could be wrong.

– Şah is most likely Handan’s third daughter. No source list her as of Halime’s. Actually, only Hatice is recognized as Halime’s daughter, her other daughters are unknown.

– Can this mean that both Şah and Fulane were Handan’s daughters, basing ourselves on these informations?

– Meanwhile I’m searching about Prince Osman (b. 1597), alleged son of Handan.

I think your proposals are absolutely fine. MariaAmaliaduchessadiParma (talk) 17:55, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly no sources mention Şah as daughter of Halime so i dont know from where it came from? It has bothered me for some time thankfully i found time to share my research, also the daughters of Murad III need urgent changes though unfortunately i have little time to do so💁🏼 i will start discussion soon at his talk page. Regarding Şah and Osman its only appropriate to start changes. Melty love (talk) 18:08, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kara Davud has been described in sources as brother-in law to Mustafa so i dont think its likely that Fulane was Handan’s daughter, Melty love (talk) 18:13, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It was usual sources-twister Sira Aspera who added the name of Halime’s daughter as Sah in the various articles, without providing any source or explanation, as always.–77.131.3.35 (talk) 18:22, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The consorts of Ottoman sultans in this time period were normally concubines, not wives, even though this is often politely euphemised. The status of wife is often assumed, sometimes because of politeness, sometimes because of ignorance, since this has since become a sensitive issue, but it is important to state if she was legally married to the sultan, or if she was his concubine. Was she a wife or a concubine? Because unless she is clearly confirmed to have married him, she was in fact his concubine, not his wife. If so, this must be stated and clarified. If would not be factual the assume she was a wife, if she was not. This may be a sensitive issue, but Wikipedia must be factual. Aciram (talk) 01:24, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually no: in that period, concubines managed to marry the Sultan, such as Hürrem Sultan, Nurbanu Sultan, and probably also Safiye Sultan. Not having held the title of Haseki does not mean not having married the sultan, while having kept the title does not necessarily mean having married the sultan (es. Dilaşub Sultan, Muazzez Sultan, Turhan Sultan, Kösem Sultan, Ayşe Sultan). Furthermore, this matter has already been discussed in the latest discussion on Halime Sultan‘s talk page. MariaAmaliaduchessadiParma (talk) 12:38, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is not about the title Haseki, that is a different discussion. Only if there is a source that excplicitly says there was a formal, legal, marriage ceremony, can she be factually stated to be a wife. If not, they were a concubine. We have to be very careful: since this is a sensitive issue, there has been a long modern tradition to refer to all the women of the sultan as “wives”. It is a sort of polite euphemism, since the status of concubine is sensitive. This must be avoided in Wikipedia. We must be factual. Further, the discussion on the talk page of Halime Sultan was about the title of Haseki, not about wife vs concubine.–Aciram (talk) 13:36, 25 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The question is, if there’s a source stating that Handan was married or not. In the present state the cited source (Börekçi) says she was a concubine, and no source says she was married, so the situation seems pretty clear.–Phso2 (talk) 13:38, 25 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]