Oddlet: Kösem Sultan · 1 min read
Aug 11, 2026
The Woman Behind the Lattice
A Greek priest's daughter, taken by raiders at fourteen, spent the next forty-six years running the Ottoman Empire from behind a latticed screen above the Imperial Council.
Anastasia was the daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest on the island of Tinos. Ottoman raiders took her at fourteen. She arrived in the Topkapı harem with a new name, no family, and no language, and within a few years she was the favorite of Sultan Ahmed I, who could deny her almost nothing.
That was the easy part.
For the next forty-six years Kösem ran the empire from behind a latticed wooden screen above the Imperial Council. She appointed grand viziers and had them strangled. She paid the Janissaries from her own purse when the treasury ran dry. She built a tiled mosque in Üsküdar and a caravanserai for three thousand merchants that is still in commercial use. She married off one daughter eight times and another seven, which is the sort of thing you do when statecraft is the only language you have left. In 1648 her son Sultan İbrahim grew unmanageable, and she said, on the record, let him be executed. He was.
In 1651, at sixty-two, she hid in a cupboard with jewels in her pockets. The hem of her dress poked out from under the door. A servant pointed.
Forbidden the silk bowstring reserved for royalty, the eunuchs tore down a curtain and strangled her with the cord.
The bazaars closed for three days.
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- Wikipedia — Kösem Sultan — Comprehensive biography with cited dates for the three regencies, the Çinili Mosque foundation, Naima's account of her manumissions, and a detailed account of the 2 September 1651 strangulation.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Kosem Sultan — Standard reference entry giving birth c. 1589, death 2 September 1651, Greek origin, marriage to Ahmed I, and the Turhan-orchestrated strangulation.
- EBSCO Research Starters — Kösem Sultan — Library-database scholarly summary confirming birth name Anastasia, slave entry to Ahmed I's harem, regencies for Murad IV and Mehmed IV, the 2 September 1651 strangulation, charitable provision to dowry-less freed slave girls, and the Üsküdar mosque foundation.
- Daily Sabah — 'The woman who oversaw 3 generations of the Ottoman Empire' — Turkish national-newspaper feature on Kösem's life, foundations and death, with mentions of the curtain-cord strangulation and her endowed Çinili Mosque and Büyük Valide Han.
- Topkapi Palace — Kösem Sultan: The Regent of the Empire — Museum-affiliated article confirming Greek origin, haseki status under Ahmed I, attendance at the divan behind a curtain, the 1651 palace coup, her philanthropy, and burial at the Sultan Ahmed Mosque türbe.
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