Zübeyde Sultan


Zübeyde Sultan was an Ottoman princess, daughter of Sultan Ahmed III and half-sister of Sultans Mustafa III and Abdul Hamid I of the Ottoman Empire.

Life

Zübeyde Sultan was born on 28 or 29 March 1728, Her father was Sultan Ahmed III, and her mother was Emine Muslihe Kadın. She had a full sister named Ayşe Sultan, nine years older than her.
Her father having been dethroned in 1730, she grew up at the Old Palace but was able to live in comfort, as he had had the farmstead of Dilsiz Mehmed Ağa, situated near Edirne, and thus its incomes, allocated to her.

Her cousin Mahmud I had a yalı, or waterfront manse, built for her at the precincts of Eyüp in around August 1747.
On 6 January 1748, during Mahmud’s reign, Zübeyde was married firstly to Süleyman Pasha, Beylerbey of Anatolia and Vizier, who, though, died soon after, some six months into the marriage.
Thus, she was married secondly, within the year, on 6 January 1749, to Numan Pasha, kapıcılar kethüdası, or head of the Imperial Palace Guards, Sanjak-Bey of Thessaloniki and Kavala, and Vizier. Her husband would go on to serve in various other provincial posts.
Turkish historian Mustafa Çağatay Uluçay describes the princess as a “philanthropist, protector of the poor, who read day and night”.

Death

Like the majority of her siblings, Zübeyde Sultan did not live long, dying of natural causes at the age of twenty-eight, on 4 June 1756. She was entombed in the Imperial Ladies Mausoleum, located at Yeni Mosque, Istanbul.

Ancestry