Seniha Sultan

Seniha Sultan (Ottoman Turkish: سنیحه سلطان‎; 5 December 1851 – 15 September 1931) was an Ottoman princess, the daughter of Sultan Abdulmejid I and Nalandil Hanım. She was the half-sister of Sultans Murad V, Abdul Hamid II, Mehmed V, and Mehmed VI.

Seniha Sultan was born on 5 December 1851 in the Çırağan Palace. Her father was Sultan Abdulmejid I and her mother was Nalandil Hanım, the daughter of Prince Natıkhu Bey Çıpakue. Both of her parents died when she was a child.

In 1876, her brother Sultan Abdul Hamid II betrothed her to Asaf Mahmud Celaleddin Pasha, a man who was two years her junior and who had a promising future, and the son of Grand Admiral Damat Gürcü Halil Rifat Pasha. The marriage contract was concluded on 5 December 1876 at the Yıldız Palace. However, the wedding was delayed because of the death of her elder sister Behice Sultan. The wedding finally took place on 10 February 1877. In 1878, she gave birth to her first son Sultanzade Sabahaddin Bey, and a year later to her second son Sultanzade Ahmed Lütfullâh Bey.

Seniha hadn't been on good terms with Abdul Hamid for unknown reasons, and so in 1878, she and her husband, and her siblings including her brothers Prince Ahmed Kemaleddin, and Prince Selim Suleiman, and sister Princess Fatma, were all involved in the Ali Suavi incident with the objective of restoring Murad to the throne. In October 1898, she met with the German Empress Augusta Victoria in the harem of the Yıldız Palace, when the latter visited Istanbul for a second time with her husband Emperor Wilhelm II.

Seniha Sultan's husband was very critical of her brother Abdul Hamid's governance, never missing an occasion to speak out. Eventually he had had enough of being followed and spied on, so in 1899, he took both of his sons fled to Europe, where four years later he died in Belgium and was buried in Paris. Her sons were able to return to Istanbul only in 1908, after the declaration of the second constitution. For this reason she was not particularly welcome at the palace.

Seniha was described a woman who was political minded, and in many ways a woman ahead of her time.

She used to wear dresses of the most superb cloth, with her tiara on her head on formal occasions, and she also wore gowns with long trains in the European fashion spreading out behind her. In manner, she was entirely unconstrained. Often, as did her half-sister Mediha Sultan, she would burst into laughter, and she spoke rapidly and in a deep voice. When these two sisters were together chatting with their brother Abdul Hamid, they would both laugh and try to amuse him and get him to smile as though they were in competition with one another.

Seniha Sultan is known to have had performers of religious music at her palace.

At the exile of the imperial family in March 1924, Seniha was the second-oldest living Ottoman princess, age seventy-three. She had no money of her own, and her sons were too busy with their affairs to care of her, so she went to exile alone. Her half-brother, the deposed Sultan Mehmed VI, who went to live in San Remo gave her refuge in his home, the Villa Magnolia, where she lived until his death in 1926. She afterwards moved to Nice.

Seniha Sultan died at the Villa Carabacel on 15 September 1931 at age seventy-eight in Nice, France, and was buried at the Selimiye Mosque in Damascus.

• In the 2017 TV series Payitaht: Abdülhamid, Seniha Sultan is portrayed by Turkish actress Selen Öztürk.

• The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem. University of Texas Press. 2010. ISBN 978-0-292-78335-5.
• Mustafa Çağatay Uluçay (2011). Padişahların kadınları ve kızları. Ankara, Ötüken.
• Sakaoğlu, Necdet (2008). Bu mülkün kadın sultanları: Vâlide sultanlar, hâtunlar, hasekiler, kadınefendiler, sultanefendiler. Oğlak Yayıncılık. ISBN 978-9-753-29623-6.
• Bardakçı, Murat (2017). Neslishah: The Last Ottoman Princess. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-9-774-16837-6.