Rahime Perestu Sultan

Who was Rahime Perestu Sultan?

Rahime Perestu Sultan was the wife of Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I, and adoptive mother and Valide sultan of Abdul Hamid II. She was of Circassian descent, and the biological daughter of Gogen Gök Bey of the Ubykh tribe of Circassia in the Ottoman Empire.

Rahime Perestu acquired the title of Valide Sultan to her adoptive son in 1876, because the biological mother Tîr-î-Müjgan Kadınefendi of Abdülhamid II had died twenty-three years before Sultan Abdülhamid II's accession to the Ottoman throne.

The name Perestu means peacock in Persian. She became the spiritual mother of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and was given the position of Valide sultan by him. Unlike many of her predecessors, she was not active in politics. In 1885, during the visit of King Oscar II and Queen Sophia of Sweden to the Ottoman Empire, she received the Swedish queen, who was allowed to visit the Imperial harem.

She was the last Valide Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Her burial place is located at the tomb of Mihrişah Valide Sultan in Eyüp, Istanbul, Turkey.