Background
She was a slave girl. Nothing is known of her family background, apart from the fact that an Ottoman inscription (vakfiye) describes her as Hātun binti Abdullah (Daughter of Abdullah). At that time, people who converted to Islam were given the name Abdullah meaning Servant of God, which is evidence of her non-Muslim origin.
Her name, hüma, means "bird of paradise", after the Persian legend.
There are two theories on her origin: She was an Italian named Stella. She was Serbian, some sources saying that she was a princess from the Principality of Zeta and a relative of Đurađ II Balšić.
S. Runciman and Ilber Ortayli support that she was of Slavic descent.