Apr 26, 2021
𝐇𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐊𝐈 𝐒𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐒: second haseki sultan of Murad IV
Privy purse registers record the presence of a single haseki, Ayşe, until the very end of Murad's seventeen-year reign, when a second haseki appears. It is possible that Murad had only a single concubine until the advent of the second, or that he had a number of concubines but singled out only one as haseki. If Ayşe was his only concubine, it is possible that it was fear of lack of male issue that prompted the sultan to take another, for his sons all died in infancy. — Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire