Burial Yahya Efendi cemetery Father Şahin Çaabalurhva Religion Sunni Islam Spouse Murad V (m. 1887) | House House of Çaabalurhva Mother Adilhan Loo Died 1945, Istanbul, Turkey Parents Adilhan Loo | |
Similar Murad V, Şevkefza Kadın, Fehime Sultan, Şehzade Mehmed Selaheddin, Abdulmejid I | ||
Filizten Kalfa (c. 1865 – c. 1945; born Princess Naime Çabalar-Çaabalurhva) was a princess at the Ottoman court.
Contents
Early years
Filizten Hanım was born in 1861 or 1862 in Pitsunda, Abkhazia, to an Abkhazian princely family, Çaabalurhva. Born as Naime Çaabalurhva, she was the daughter of Prince Şahin Bey Çaabalurhva and Princess Adilhan Hanım Loo, an Abkhazian. She was also the cousin of Empress Peyveste Hanım, ninth wife of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, whose mother Hesna was a relative of her father.
Naime came to Istanbul at a very young age. She was given the name Filizten (meaning "Tendril bodied"), and was presented at the age of fourteen or fifteen in the entourage of Sultan Murad V shortly after his accession to the throne, which occurred on 30 May 1876. She was a gift to the palace from her mistress at the time, a lady formerly a Treasure, and in palace service herself in Murad's entourage, but who had left the palace and married one Tayyar Pasha.
Filizten was appointed a "Duty Kalfa" (apprentice), and was given the rank of "Acemi" (novice). After Murad's deposition, she was promoted to the rank of "Senior Kalfa". She was interested in playing piano and oud. She was medium-tall, and had blonde hair. Filizten spent twenty eight years confined in the Çırağan Palace along with Sultan Murad V, and the other members Murad's entourage.
After Murad's death in 1904, she moved to Bursa, where she was living in the palace of Princess Fatma Sultan. After the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by the Parliament of the Republic of Turkey in 1924, Fatma Sultan went into exile in Nice, France. Filizten returned to Istanbul and settled in Erenköy.
Memoirs
In her seventies, Filizten also wrote memoirs, which constituted the majority of the biography of Murad compiled by the journalist and avocational historian Ziya Șakir under the title Çırağan Sarayında 28 sene beşinci Murad'ın hayatı (Turkish for "Twenty-Eight Years in the Çırağan Palace:The Life of Murad V"). She was in excellent health, in complete command of her faculties, and aware of what Ziya Șakir called her responsibility to history in retelling the events she witnessed in Çırağan Palace. The memoir is an oral history by one who witnessed the events of many years earlier. In fact Filizten stated in her memoirs that she did not keep a diary.
Death
Filizten died in around 1945 at Erenköy, Istanbul.
Depictions in literature and popular culture
Ziya Șakir's idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, the authenticity of the memoir itself has never been in doubt. Immediately after publication it formed a primary source for the articles on Murad V published by the eminent historian İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, who directly identified the memoir's author as Filizten Hanım, Gözde of Murad V. Today it continues to form a primary source for the life of this Sultan in particular, and for life in the lat Ottoman palace harem in general.
In the 2012 Movie The Sultan's Women Filizten is portrayed by a Turkish Actress Deniz Aylan.