Career
The earlier editions and translations give her name as "Hafiten". Turkish authors interpreted it as "Hafise" or "Hafsa". Alderson put her in his list both as "Hafiten" and as "Hafise.
In the latest edition of Lady Mary"s letters, based on the manuscript, her name now appears as Hafise not as Hafiten.
Very little is known of Hafise"s early life. She was captured during one of the raids by Tatars and sold into slavery.
Ebu Bekir Efendi, a minister of state affairs presented her, at the age of ten, as a gift in the harem of Sultan Mustafa. lieutenant was probably Mustafa"a mother who gave Hafise to Mustafa as a concubine.
She was a woman who was proud of having been elected to accompany the sultan on all his three campaigns.
She had given birth to four sons and a daughter of the sultan. She was also visited by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in early March 1718. Lady Mary called her the favourite of Sultan Mustafa.
She looked upon this liberty as the greatest disgrace and affront that could happen to her.
She threw herself at the Sultan Ahmed III"s feet and begged him to poniard her rather than use her brother"s widow with that contempt. She represented to him, in agonies of sorrow, that she was privileged from this misfortune by having brought five princes to the Ottoman family.
But all the boys being dead and only one girl surviving, this excuse was not received, and she was compelled to make her choice. But she never permitted him to pay her one visit.
She died in 1723.