Nükhetsezâ Hanım

Nükhetseza Hanım was born in 1830 in Abkhazia. Born as Hatice Baras, she was the daughter of Baras Hatuğ Bey, an Abkhazian noble, and his wife Ferhunde Hanım, a Georgian. When she was eight, her family emigrated from Caucasus to Istanbul, where she was delivered at the court of the Ottoman Sultan. Valide sultan Bezmiâlem Sultan took Hatice in her care. She was renamed Nükhetseza and was given a thoroughly Turkish and Muslim education in the harem department of Topkapı Palace. Receiving her education in the palace, she was interested in playing piano and oud.

Nükhetseza grew into an into a young lady in the Topkapı Palace, and when she entered her fourteenth year she was noticed by Sultan Abdülmecid I. Abdülmecid proposed her and Nükhetseza consented to the will of their parents in the marriage proposal of the Sultan. In 1845 Nükhetseza married Abdülmecid, and she was given the title of Baş İkbâl. She is the great-grandmother of Prince Bayezid Osman Efendi, who is the present and 44th Head of the Imperial House of Osman.

Tuberculosis took its victims in the palace as elsewhere in the nineteenth century and Nükhetseza was one of them. She died at the Beşiktaş Palace on 15 May 1850 and was buried in the Mausoleum of the imperial ladies at the Yeni Mosque, Istanbul.

Nükhetsezâ and Abdülmecid had at least three children:

• Aliye Sultan (20 October 1842 – 10 July 1845, buried in Yeni Mosque, Istanbul);
• Şehzade Ahmed (5 June 1846 – 6 June 1846, buried in Yeni Mosque, Istanbul);
• Şehzade Mehmed Burhaneddin (Old Beylerbeyi Palace, Istanbul, 23 May 1849 - Dolmabahçe Palace, Istanbul, 4 November 1876, buried in Yavuz Selim Mosque), married and had issue.