Nurbanu Sultan

Nurbanu Sultan (; "Queen of light", 1525 – 7 December 1583) was Haseki Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as the principal consort of Sultan Selim II (reign 1566–1574), his legal wife, as well as Valide Sultan (Sultana mother) as the mother of Sultan Murad III (reign 1574–1583). She was one of the most prominent figures during the time of the Sultanate of Women. Conflicting theories describe her as of Venetian, Jewish or Greek origin. Her birth name may have been Cecilia Venier-Baffo, Rachel or Kalē Kartanou. Theories about her origin There are several theories about the ethnic roots of Nurbanu. Although no theory is definitively demonstrated, but that of Venetian origins is both the best known and the most accredited and which receives the greatest consensus among historians. Cecilia Venier-Baffo In 1900, Emilio Spagni claimed that she was a Venetian patrician, daughter of Nicolò Venier and Violante Baffo, abducted on Paros when it was captured by Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa in the Third Ottoman-Venetian War. The Sultana, herself, would often say she was of Venetian patrician descent, but never named her family. The opinion that Nurbanu Sultan was Cecilia Venier-Baffo has been followed by Franz Babinger in his article about Nurbanu Sultan for Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Kale Kartanou In 1992, historian Benjamin Arbel proposed a new theory, that Nurbanu was a Greek from Corfu named Kale Kartanou, daughter of Nikolas Kartanos, and that she was abducted from the island in 1538. According to this theory, Venetian senators arbitrarily chose to create a new identity for her as Cecilia Venier-Baffo, and she adopted it for political and material gains. This theory has been accepted by Italian historian Maria Pia Pidani, and Turkish historian Emrah Safa Gürkan, among others. According to the latter historian, the fact that she "forge[d] a trans-imperial link in order to ingratiate herself with the Venetians suggests that the Ottomans, too, considered the common background as a diplomatic asset".