Fehime Sultan

Fehime Sultan (, "''intelligent''"; 2 July 1875 – 15 September 1929) was an Ottoman princess, the daughter of Sultan Murad V and his fourth consort Meyliservet Kadın.

Early life

Fehime Sultan was born on 2 July 1875 in the Dolmabahçe Palace. Her father was Murad V, son of Abdulmejid I and Şevkefza Kadın, and her mother was Meyliservet Kadın. She was the fifth child, and second daughter born to her father and the only child of her mother. Her birth was kept secret until his father became Sultan, the Ottoman Princes being forbidden to have children at the time.

After Murad's accession the throne on 30 May 1876, after the deposition of his uncle Sultan Abdulaziz, her family settled in the Dolmabahçe Palace. After reigning for three months, he was deposed on 30 August 1876, due to mental instability and was imprisoned in the Çırağan Palace. Fehime and her mother followed him into confinement.

Life in confinement

At the time of her family's confinement, Fehime Sultan was one years old and she grew up without knowing any other life. Receiving her education in the palace, like her father, Fehime was interested in the arts and music, and learned piano and composed songs. According to Filizten Hanım, who did not loved her, Fehime had too simple, haughty and proud personality and she thought herself terribly important. She was not particularly pretty but she fancied herself so and wanted everyone else to think so too. Above all she loved to be praised. She showed little inclination to read books despite the fact that she could read and write both Turkish and French. Instead she spent most of her time gazing into the mirror. Filizten constantly and negatively compared her to Fehime's older sister Hatice, whom Filizten loved and judged instead beautiful, intelligent, cheerful and full of quality. Fehime lost her mother at around sixteen, due to a brief illness that got worse due to an accident. At the time of death, Meyliservet recommended Fehime to her father's care.

First marriage

As years passed and her elder sister Hatice Sultan matured into a fully grown woman, she quite openly longed for a husband. At length, her complaints came to her father's attention, thanks to her mother and the older Kalfas. Murad had her complaints sent to Abdul Hamid II. The latter consider it his duty to find husbands for Fehime and her sister, but on one condition, that once they leave the palace, they may not return.

With that, the Princesses were asked what they wished to do. Both preferred to leave Çırağan Palace and get married. Abdul Hamid had the two Princesses brought up to Yıldız Palace. He ordered one of the villas at Ortaköy to be completely renovated and another new villa to be built. He had them completely furnished, then ordered photographs taken of them and sent the photographs to Murad. Fehime, who had never left the palace, was frightened when she saw the carriage and horses sent for them.

In October 1898, Fehime and her sister Hatice Sultan met with the German Empress Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, when the latter visited Istanbul with her husband the German emperor Wilhelm II. At that time the two were living at Yıldız Palace. Abdul Hamid realized that if he introduced his own daughters to the Empress but didn't include them they would feel quite hurt, so he had them participate in the ceremony as well.

In 1901, Abdul Hamid arranged her marriage together with her sister Hatice Sultan, and Sultan Abdulaziz's daughter Emine Sultan, to another man of the same station and character as Hatice's husband, who was granted a rank as "Ali Galib Pasha". The marriage took place on 3 September 1901 in the Yıldız Palace. He became a Damat. The couple were given one of the palaces of Ortaköy as their residence. She remained childless and the marriage was unhappy, despite the fact that her husband, who was in love, tried in every way to make his wife happy and spent a lot of money to satisfy her every wish. Amongst circles her nickname was Kelebek Sultan (Butterfly Princess), because of her outlandish art and expensive clothing styles.

Second marriage

In 1909, after the scandal and divorce of her sister Hatice, Fehime was finally able to get permission to divorce. In the same year, in an Istanbul garden, she met and fell in love with Mahmud Behçet Bey, who was five years younger than her. In 1910, they married. He became a Damat. They were happily married for 14 years, but had no children.

Starting late in 1920, the then Ankara government organized two intelligence organizations based in Istanbul, the Müdafaa-i Milliye Grubu (Mim Mim group, National Defense Group), which brought together the remnants of the Karakol or Teşkilatı group which had been effectively suppressed by the second British occupation of the Ottoman capital, and the Felah group which was an entirely new and separate oranganization, established to keep and eye on the former Unionists as to smuggle arms, people, and to gather information. Fehime and her cousin, Naime Sultan, daughter of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, were active members of the organization. Fehime was particularly a valuable source of information to the underground. She had no love for her uncle, Sultan Mehmed VI, who had kept the children of Sultan Murad under close surveillance. She was a passionate constitutionalist and a patriot. In 1911, she had composed a piano sonata, entitled "Pour La Constitution".

At the exile of the imperial family in March 1924, Fehime and her husband first settled in Vienna, Austria, and later Nice. In Nice, Mahmud Behçet Bey borrowed money from Fehime on the pretext of opening a shop. He started selling Turkish style ice cream in front of a grocery store in Rue de Congrés, but in the end he fled, leaving her in poverty. Although several other members of her family lived in Nice, notably Abdülmecid II, they refused to help her, partly because there was discord between the descendants of Sultan Abdulaziz as Abdülmecid II and those of Sultan Abdülmecid I as Fehime, due to the suspect death of Abdulaziz, whom his descendants believed was in reality a murder organized by the "Mejids" branch of the family, and partly because they disapproved of Fehime's political views, which they believed were the cause of the downfall of the Sultanate and their exile. Fehime survived only thanks to a few faithful eunuchs, who with their meager possessions helped him at least to eat and have a home.

Death

Fehime died of tuberculosis on 15 September 1929, at the age of fifty-four and was buried in the cemetery of the Sulaymaniyya Takiyya, Damascus, Syria.

Honours

* Order of the Medjidie, Jeweled
* Order of Charity, 1st Class

Legacy

Dresses attributed to her are preserved in the Topkapı Palace.

In popular culture and literature

* In the 2017 TV series '' Payitaht: Abdülhamid'', Fehime Sultan is portrayed by Turkish actress Elif Özkul.
* Fehime Sultan is a character in AyÅŸe OsmanoÄŸlu's historical novel The Gilded Cage on the Bosphorus (2020).

Ancestry

References

Sources

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Fehime Sultan
1875 births
1929 deaths
19th-century Ottoman princesses
20th-century Ottoman princesses
Burials in the cemetery of the Sulaymaniyya Takiyya
20th-century spies