Zarinebaf|201her hiding places through a closet. One of her assailants, Kuçuk Mehmed Agha,
found her and dragged her out by her long braids and started beating her. As she
struggled to get away, Lala Süleyman Agha strangled her with a piece of cord that
he tore off the curtains. Blood gushed from her nose and mouth, splashing all
over him as she struggled for life.
After her murder, her assailants looted her chambers. Her body was taken to
the Old Palace, washed, and buried near the tomb of her husband, Sultan Ahmed
I. Her slaves were also taken to the Old Palace and eventually married off to suit-
able Muslims with money taken from her estate. The central treasury confiscated
her entire wealth: her vast estates and tax farms in Anatolia and Rumelia, her
jewelry, precious stones, cash, and twenty boxes of gold coins that she had hidden
in the Valide Han near the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Her wealth was so vast and
diffused in so many different enterprises that, according to Naima, it took fifty
years for the state treasury to confiscate it all.
Naima’s detailed and vivid report offers a critical evaluation of the role of
valide sultan in politics. Naima does, however, praise Kösem Sultan for her chari-
table efforts. He elaborates on her generosity and charitable acts by stating that
numerous men and women benefited from her charitable endowments. He also
describes how she visited prisoners during the month of Ramadan and paid off the
fines and debts of other prisoners to gain their freedom. She regularly freed her
female slaves after three years of service and married them off with a large trous-
seau. She also helped orphan girls and gave them gifts to help them get married.
While lauding her charity, Naima also criticizes the valide sultan for her
greed and political interference. He condemns her for the destitute state of the
peasants on her estates (tax farms), who did not dare complain about her op-
pressive tax collectors. Naima negatively regards the valide sultan’s power as a
departure from Ottoman political norms and the cause of the sultanate’s declin-
ing power. He also indirectly implicates her role in the Janissary rebellion of
August 1651. With respect to the factors leading up to the political crisis that re-
sulted in the murder of the valide sultan, he states, “It was divine wisdom that the
respected valide, philanthropic and regal as she was, was martyred for the sake
of those unjust oppressions.” Clearly, Naima felt some regret over the tragic
regicide, but he also blamed it on the corrupt Janissary aghas and officials who
enjoyed her patronage. In other words, he might have implicitly supported the
decision of Sultan Mehmed IV to order the murder of the valide sultan and the
punishment of her political faction.
Evliya Çelebi, the famous traveler, writer, and admirer of Kösem Sultan, de-
scribed the regicide in a slightly different light:
The mother of the world, wife of Sultan Ahmed (I); mother of Osman (II),
Orhan, Bayezid, Murad (IV), and Ibrahim; the grand Kösem Valide—was