Beyhan Sultan (daughter of Mustafa III)

Beyhan Sultan (13 January 1766 – 7 November 1824) was an Ottoman princess, daughter of Sultan Mustafa III and his consort Ayşe Adil-şah. She was the favourite sister of Sultan Selim III.

Biography

At the age of eighteen Beyhan Sultan married Damat Çelik Mustafa Pasha on 22 April 1784. In 1798 Beyhan became widow by his death. However, she never married again. She received many mukata'as from his brother Selim and her uncle Abdul Hamid I. She was a wealthy princess, owned two palaces on the Bosphorus (Beşiktaş, Arnavut Köy), and a fountain built in her name in the Kuru Çeşmi neighbourhood of Istanbul. She was also given the Old Çırağan Palace, one of the sites of the Lale Devri (Tulip period) entertainments, and Beyhan Sultan restored it. Beyhan received malikanes in the district of Andrusa, Kalamata, Fanar, Karitena and Londar on 1802. In 1796 she appointed Numan ağa, the voyvoda of these districts, to act as her agent (kethüda) to collect the caizye and 'avariz dues from her çiftliks. In 1802 she appointed Al-Hac Hasan ağa as her kethüda when Hüseyn ağa, a former voyvoda, was too oppressive. She also appears to have received the malikane of the island of Andros and Syros in 1789. She also had copies made of the poems of the Mevlevi Sheikh Galib, probably major poet of the age.

References

• "Turkey: The Imperial House of Osman". web.archive.org. Retrieved 6 February 2014.
• Fanny Davis (1986). The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-24811-5.
• Fariba Zarinebaf (2005). A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece: The Southwestern Morea in the 18th Century, Volume 34, Part 1. ASCSA. ISBN 978-0-876-61534-8.
• Suraiya Faroqhi (November 29, 2005). Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-850-43760-4.