Hürrem Sultan, also known as Haseki Sultan, was the wife of Ottoman sultan Kanuni Süleyman. Little is known of her early life. She is thought to have been born around the beginning of the sixteenth/tenth century AH in Ruthenia (the western part of Ukraine near Poland), and may have entered the Ottoman Empire as an enslaved girl. She became extremely powerful due the affection of her husband and is known as a political player as well as a patron of architecture and culture.
