Haseki sultan

Portrait of Ahmed I (by John Young, 1815)

Ahmed favoured Kösem above all his concubines, lavishing on her the finest
jewels[17] and a stipend of 1,000 aspers a day.[18] In the early years of their
marriage, she bore Ahmed four daughters: Ayşe Sultan, Fatma Sultan, Hanzade Sultan
and Gevherhan Sultan. As the mother of several princesses, she had the right to
arrange suitable dynastic marriages for them. Ayşe Sultan was accordingly married
to Nasuh Pasha in 1612 at the age of seven,[4] while in the same year, Gevherhan
Sultan was married to Öküz Kara Mehmed Pasha at the age of five.[19]

The Venetian ambassador Simon Contarini, bailo between 1609 and 1612, mentions
Kösem in his report in 1612 and portrays her as:
"[A woman] of beauty and shrewdness, and furthermore ... of many talents, she sings
excellently, whence she continues to be extremely well loved by the king ... Not
that she is respected by all, but she is listened to in some matters and is the
favorite of the king, who wants her beside him continually."[4]

George Sandys, an English traveller who visited Constantinople in the early 1610s,
recorded Kösem's name as "Casek Cadoun" (haseki kadın) and believed that she was "a
witch beyond beauty." He claimed that the sultan had a "passionate" love for Kösem,
emphasizing that this was the result of witchcraft. Sandys went on to characterise
her as a woman with "a delicate and at the same time shy nature."[