Resan Hanım

Resan Hanım was born on 28 March 1860 in Artvin in the Caucasus.^[1][2] She was Georgian, daughter of Ömer Bey and Fatma Hanım, and had two sisters, Şayeste Hanım and Rabia Gülten Hanım. Her real name was Ayşe Hanim.^[3] She and sisters were sent to Istanbul as (enslaved) ladies-in-waiting for Seniha Sultan, Murad V's half-sister. Resan was chosen by Seniha as a consort for Murad and she was presented to Murad by the Senior Kalfa as a gift on the occasion of his accession to the throne. After his deposition, she followed him into confinement in the Çırağan Palace.^[3]

She married Murad on 2 November 1877^[4] in the Çırağan Palace when Murad was thirty-seven years old and Resan was seventeen years old, a year after Murad and his family's imprisonment in the palace. On 19 June 1879, a year after the marriage, she gave birth to Fatma Sultan,^[1] followed by Aliye Sultan, born on 24 August 1880. Aliye died on 17 September 1903.^[5][6]

She was widowed at Murad's death in 1904, after which her ordeal in the Çırağan Palace came to an end. After Murad's death she stayed for a few years at Çırağan Palace to keep company with Şayan Kadın, Murad's third consort, who refused to leave the Palace. During the Second Constitutional Era she asked to be allowed to move to Yildiz Palace, but was denied. Instead, on 16 December 1908, she was allowed to move in with her daughter Fatma.^[7]

She died on 31 March 1910 at the age of fifty because of tuberculosis,^[8] and was buried in the mausoleum of Damat Mehmed Ali Pasha in Eyüp Cemetery, Istanbul.^[9][10]

• Resan is a character in Ayşe Osmanoğlu's historical novel The Gilded Cage on the Bosphorus (2020).^[14]

• Ottoman Imperial Harem
• List of consorts of the Ottoman sultans