Esma Sultan

At fifteen, Esma Sultana is Sultan Abdülhamid I’s youngest daughter. She
is engaged to be married soon to Küçük Hüseyin Paşa, the Chief Admiral of the
Ottoman Navy. The blond, blue-eyed girl is so fetching and delicate, she
looks like a character from a fairy tale. She puts her knitting down on the
velvet sofa. She stands up and shyly walks to the corner of the room where
her wedding gown hangs, the umpteenth time she has done so this day. She
strokes it lovingly, as if it’s an object of worship. Made of pink silk, the
gown is in two pieces, a top and a skirt. Uniting the two parts is an
elaborate embroidery of a flowering plant, with its roots on the hem of the
skirt and its thin, long branches flowering around the bodice. It is a feast
for the eyes with its spangles and crystal beads and silver thread. Open on
the front, it has a square furbelowed collar and a neck-shawl of the same
fabric. Its puffy sleeves are gathered at the elbow and vented to the wrists
with golden buttons. She smiles with anticipated happiness and turns away to
the window that looks out at the palace gardens. It is the spring of 1792 and
the magical day has finally arrived. The magnificent wedding begins with a
cannonade from Topkapı Palace. All the citizens are invited to the ceremony.
Acrobats and tumblers are performing in the public squares. Games and
spectacles and amusements have been organized in all corners of Istanbul.
Fireworks from Tophane streak across the night-sky. Multicoloured lanterns
illuminate the palaces, the mansions and the houses of both the European and
Asian shores of the Bosphorus. And amid all this merriment and excitement,
beautiful Esma Sultana is married to her beloved. Esma was the most powerful
sister of Sultan Mahmud II. She had a palace in Divanyolu, manor houses in
Çamlıca, Maçka and Eyüp, a mansion in Ortaköy. She was a poet and an
accomplished musical composer.