Aimee Debucq de Riveyy (Nakshedil Sultan)
No sultana is more intriguing than Nakshedil. Her life is shrouded in such mystery that, to this day, no one is sure whether Nakshedil and Aimee de Rivery, the fair, blue-eyed girl from Martinique, were indeed one and the same. I learned about her from an early age because she figured in my own family history-or so said my grandmother Zehra. Among Zehra's many stories was the one about my great-great-grandmother Naime. It went like this.
During the reign of Sultan Abdulaziz, some time in the middle of the last century, the French Empress Eugenie came to Istanbul. The empress wanted to visit the women in the sultan's harem; this was arranged, and the ladies met. They fascinated one another, but could not converse. ''Is there any among you who speaks French?'' the empress managed to convey. They all looked at each other, whispered, and shook their heads. ''Then,'' my grandmother continued, '' an old woman spoke up: 'Be- fore Nakshedil Sultana died, there was a young girl she liked. She named her Naime because it sounded,' she said, 'like her own name before she was brought. She taught this girl, herself the language of the French. And we think the girl still lives in the Old Palace"
Immediately Naime was delivered from the darkness of the Palace of the Unwanted Ones and brought to the empress. She was a shy little girl, but she indeed spoke fluent French, with a Martinique accent.
When the sultan saw how much Empress Eugenie liked this forgotten girl, he offered Naime to her as a present to take back with her to France. However, a young man in Eugenie's entourage fel in love with Naime and finally asked the empress for Naime's hand in marriage. At this, the sultan intervened, saying the girl was a Moslem and the only way a gavur (infidel) could marry her was by converting to Islam. Though he was from a devout Catholic family , the young man did not hesitate to change his faith. As a Moslem, he was given a ward in Macedonia, a town called Prilep, near Skopje. The couple moved there, had many children, and started first a vineyard, which was a failure, then a successful gunpowder business, the name of which became our family's, Barutcu (gunpowder makers).
We do know that Aimet' DeBucq de Rivery was born in 1763 to a noble family in Martinique. Her cousin Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie married Napoleon Bonaparte. A legend tells of the two young girls going to a Creole fortuneteller in Pointe Royale, who predicted that they would both grow up to be queens, one to rule the East, the other the West. In 1784, on her return to Martinique, after attending convent school in Nantes, Aimee was kidnapped by Barbarossa's corsairs. Twenty-one years old, Aimee was sold to the Bey of Algiers. Captivated by her beauty, the Bey saw an opportunity to win the sultan's favor. He presented the girl to Abdulhamid I.
(Embroidered on the Heart) and made her his favorite. She rose to the status of fourth kadin and found herself in the political crossfire of the harem: the first kadin, Nukhet Seza, and the second kadin, Mihrimah, were each trying to put their sons on the throne. Nakshedil observed, and she learned.
In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, Abdulhamid died. At the age of twenty-seven, Selim III became sultan. He asked Nakshedil to remain at the Seraglio harem with her son, Mahmud his nephew. For Selim, Nakshedil was a personification of the France he had always admired. She became his confidante. She taught him French; and for the first time, a permanent ambassador was sent from Istanbul to Paris. Selim started a French newspaper and let Nakshedil decorate the palace in rococo style.
These Francophile reforms cost him his life. Selim was assassinated in 1807 by religious fanatics who disapproved of his liberalism. The assassins also sought to kill Mahmud, but Nakshedil saved her son by concealing him inside a furnace. Thus Mahmud became the next Sultan, accomplishing significant reforms in the empire that are, for the most part, attributed to the influence of his mother.
Although Aimee accepted Islam as part of the harem etiquette, she always remained a Christian in her heart. Her last wish was for a priest to perform the last rites. Her son did not deny her this: as Aimee lay dying, a Catholic priest passed-for the first time-through the Gates of Felicitiy and into the harem.
