Ayşe Hafsa Sultan should not be
confused with Hafsa Hatun who lived about hundred years before her, is the
daughter of last ruler of Aydınoğlu Principality Aydınoğlu İsa Bey and wife of
Yıldırım Beyazıt. Hafsa town in
Ayşe Hafsa Sultan became Sultana
when Kanunî Sultan Süleyman came to the throne in 1520. She is the first
mother of a sultan who was called as sultana. She remained a sultana for
fourteen years. Although the final times of this period collided with the time
of Hürrem Sultan, wife of Kanuni who had a great influence in the palace, it is
known that Kanuni often asked her opinion and attached importance to her ideas.
The social complex (mosque, primary
school, bath house and madrasah) built in Manisa in 1522, which was known well
with its hospital, that specialized in the treatment of psychological diseases,
was built by Ayşe Hafsa Sultan. Besides she built a prayer room in Urla whose income she left to
the social complex in
Manisa. The Ottoman Caravanserai in Marmaris had its epigraph Caravanseraih dated
1545 but it was remembered with Ayşe Hafsa Sultan’s name. There are sources,
which claim that this caravanserai was built in the same time with Marmaris
Citadel within the
Yavuz Sultan Selim who was a poet in
the same time and used the pen name “Selimî’’wrote the following famous lines
for his wife Ayşe Hafsa Sultan:
“Şirler pençe-i kahrımda olurken lerzan
Beni bir gözleri ahuya zebun etti felek”
(Even lions were trembling under my
paw / Destiny made me to a slave of a beautiful girl with eyes like a
gazelle’s)
The “mesir paste” which was produced
mixing 41 sorts of spices by the famous physician of that period, Merkez
Efendi, in order to cure Ayşe Hafsa Sultan from a disease is produced since
about 500 years. Ayşe Hafsa Sultan who saw the remedial effect of the paste
ordered that this paste is produced each year in the same period and
distributed to people. Upon this, mesir paste was prepared each year on the day
of Nawruz mixing 41 sorts of spices and distributed to people from the minarets
of Sultan Mosque in Manisa to people, which was built by Ayşe Hafsa Sultan.
During the first years of
Kanunî Sultan Süleyman’s rule a Venetian ambassador Pietro Bragadin wrote
in his letters that Hafsa Sultan was a very beautiful woman at the age of 48
and she was respected and loved by her son, the sultan.
Ayşe Hafsa Sultan passed away on the
19th of March 1534 during the rule of her son Kanunî Sultan
Süleyman. She was inhumed to her tomb near to Sultan Selim Mosque in