@kehribar-sultan: âI would not agree with you. I believe Fatma Sultan existed, just there are some occasions that has to be determined and investigated more. During her father's reign (cca. 1517-1518) she send a letter to him that she is for a year married to man who does not see and respect her and indirectly asked him to remove here from Teke and bring her back to his side.â
Hi! This was actually Sofu Fatma Sultan's letter to her father, Sultan Bayezid II (she had gotten misidentified in this letter featured in âHarem'den Mektuplarâ)â the homosexual Mustafa PaĆa in question was her second known husbandâ we know that Fatma Sultan binti Sultan Bayezid II was firstly married to GĂŒzelce Hasan PaĆa (for instance, check out Zehra Kandal's 2021 study titled, âII. Bayezidâin Ailesi ve GĂŒlruh Hatunâ). Anyways, I got to know about Mustafa PaĆa actually having been the second husband of Fatma Sultan binti Sultan Bayezid II, with the aid of the amazing @darkblureer-sara!
The study by Mustafa ĂaÄatay Uluçay titled, âII. Bayezitâin Kızı Fatma Sultanâın Kocası Ăapkın mıydıâ demonstrated how Fatma Sultan was the most unfortunate of Sultan Bayezid IIâs daughters. Uluçay had described Mustafa PaĆa, the son of the Grand Vizier Davud PaĆa as a debauched and immoral manâloud, lewd, and infamous for his inappropriate relations with young boys and men.
When her husband was appointed governor of Antalya, Fatma Sultan too moved there with him. However, over the course of time, his conduct exacerbated to the point that she could no longer tolerate the public scandal.
She ultimately wrote this aforementioned letter to her father, Sultan Bayezid II, revealing the shameful conduct she had been forced to endure for years, an excerpt of which delineates how desperate she was to leave her disgraceful husband and come back to her father:
âMy sultan, dear father, let me wear cloth of coarse wool instead of the cloth of rudeness, let me eat barley bread, just let me live in your shadow!â
Furthermore, Eda Ăner's study, âMaktĂ»l Kara Ahmed PaĆa'nın Siyasi ve Idari Kariyeriâ also illustrated with contemporary Ottoman court records that the Fatma Sultan married to him wasn't a daughter of Sultan Selim I, but the daughter of a certain Mustafa Bey (hence, this Fatma Sultan was a grand-daughter of Sultan Bayezid II via one of his daughters who had her with a certain Mustafa Bey):
âIndeed, it is known that Kara Ahmed AÄa married Fatma Sultan. However, the widely held belief in the literature that Fatma Sultan was the daughter of Selim I and the sister of Sultan Suleiman is incorrect. For in two Sharia court records written after Kara Ahmed AÄa's execution, which show that he freed four of his slaves during his lifetime, his wife is referred to as 'Fatma Sultan bt. Mustafa Bey'. Based on this, it can be understood that Fatma Sultan's father was not a member of the dynasty, but she belonged to the dynasty through her mother.â âPg 16 (translated from Turkish)
An Istanbul Ćeriye sicilleri (Legal registers) document, dating after the execution of Kara Ahmed PaĆa (which happened on September 29, 1555, two days after his deposition from Grand Vizieriate as per Court Chronicler Koca NiĆanci Celalzade Mustafa Ăelebi) mentioned that "Fatma Sultan bint Mustafa Bey" filed a petition to manumit several of the deceased PaĆaâs servants, identifying herself explicitly as his wife.
Besides, HĂŒseyin AÄa bin Abdurrahman (the brother of the late Grand Vizier Ahmed PaĆa) and Fatma Sultan bint Mustafa Bey (the wife of the late Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha) â are identified in one of the two court documents as the legal heirs and authorized administrators of the estate and properties of the deceased Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha. â Numarali Sicil (H. 964-965 / M. 1557-1558)
Essentially, there's no credible historical basis for the existence of any Fatma Sultan binti Sultan Selim I.
Even prior to coming across this study (which was again recommended to me by @darkblureer-sara), I had my doubts because contemporary European accounts never mentioned Kara Ahmed PaĆa as Brother-in-law, even when they clearly mentioned LĂŒtfi PaĆa and earlier Ferhad PaĆa and Ăoban Mustafa PaĆa (see: Venetian ambassador, Pietro Bragadin's June 1526 report) as Brothers-in-lae as well! Additionally, even Safavid accounts don't mention Kara Ahmed PaĆa or Makbul-Maktul İbrahim PaĆa as Brothers-in-law either (which @mehrab-k kindly brought to my attention!)
Also, Sultan Selim I appears to have married only one daughter, ĆahzĂąde Sultan (first of the two daughters born of AyĆe Hafsa) to the erstwhile BostancibaĆi, then Admiral Iskender PaĆa off in 1509. She's consistently referred in some Archival orders and correspondence between Sultan Bayezid II and Sultan Selim I simply as âHanım Sultanâ (which means: âMadam Princessââ very standard manner of referring to an Ottoman Princess, and in fact, MihrĂŒmah Sultan would be referred to by others and even sign herself off as âHanım Sultanâ too!)
We of course know that Gevherhan wasn't Sultan Selim I's daughter either. Sofu Fatma Sultan's son, Mehmed hadn't married any daughter of Yavuz Sultan Selim in 1509 as had been believed in popular historiography. The July 2025 academic dissertation titled, âİlme ve EÄlenceye dĂŒĆkĂŒn bir ĆehzĂąde'nin Hayati: II. Bayezid'in oÄlu AlemĆahâ by Hamit Ćafakcı meticulously proved via archival documents/registers that the aforementioned marriage was contracted with Hanzade Sultan binti ĆehzĂąde AlemĆah.
Also, while I've been researching more about it, evidently Selim held off marrying the rest of his two other daughters who survived to adulthood owing to still somewhat volatility of politics and well, the âbetrayalâ by his Damad Iskender PaĆa, ĆehzĂąde's husband who was executed by him in 1515 consequently.
[These two other daughters besides ĆahzĂąde Sultan who made it to adulthood were Beyhan Sultan (the second of AyĆe Hafsa's daughters besides ĆahzĂąde Sultan) and Ćahihuban Sultan (born of an unknown concubine).]
This was the case until 1517 when Selim I remarried his daughter, ĆahzĂąde Sultan to Ăoban Mustafa PaĆa (note that ĆehzĂąde's first husband Iskender PaĆa had been executed in 1515) and most probably, Beyhan Sultan (she had been unmarried as of the September-October 1513 register which I'd discussed and elaborated about here last month) must've been firstly married off at this time too, but I'm yet to find out to whom (I've found yet another overlooked report that mentioned that Selim had decided all of a sudden to marry off his daughters circa 1517â I'll state these reports properly some other time as I can't locate them presently).
Beyhan Sultan would be married offâfor the second time (most probably) by her brother in February, 1522 to Ferhad PaĆa (and well, he would execute him on November 1, 1524 in Edirne owing to treason and him drawing a weapon in the Divan in front of SĂŒleyman!)
Ćahihuban Sultan appears to have been born much later (c. 1505?), and it seems her marriage to LĂŒtfi PaĆa was her first marriage effected by her half-brother, SĂŒleyman by March 10, 1523 (22 Rabi-ul-ahir, 929)â possibly she was married simultaneous to SĂŒleyman's full-sister, Beyhan Sultan.
Conclusion: Anyways, from my extensive research thus far on Yavuz Sultan Selim's family from both Ottoman and European primary sources, I've concluded that only 3 of Yavuz Sultan Selim's daughters had survived to adulthood: ĆahzĂąde Sultan, Beyhan Sultan and Ćahihuban Sultan.
The first two were born of VĂąlide Sultan AyĆe Hafsa Hatunâ yes, actually AyĆe Hafsa never received the title of âSultanâ as is popularly believed, about which I've talked hereâ and the latter was born of an unknown concubine who was alive as of November 1556. Selim also had at least one other daughter, Kamer or KamerĆah. who died in childhood in 1503.
It was nice to be affirmed in this conclusion by Professor Feridun Emecen's research which also concurred that only these 3 aforestated (adult) daughters of Yavuz Sultan Selim actually figure into contemporary Ottoman documents. Thus, from all of this, Sultan Selim I didn't have any daughters named Hatice and Fatmaâ their existence has been essentially contrived over the centuries by compounding and accumulation of historiographical errors. For more information about İbrahim's wife and the so-called Hatice Sultan myth, read this post.