Remişnaz Hanımefendi

Remişnaz Hanımefendi ( 1863 - 1934, birth name Fehime Topçu, other names Remsşinaz, Remzşinas) was the wife of Sultan Murad V of the Ottoman Empire.

Early life and marriage

Remişnaz was born in 1863 in North Caucasus to a Circassian noble family. Born as Fehitne Topçu, she was daughter of a Bzhedug notable, Hasan Bey Topçu. During the 1864-67 ethnic cleansing of Circassians, her family emigrated from Caucasus to Istanbul, where Fehime was delivered at the court of the Ottoman Sultan. First, she was given to serve the head of the court and was renamed Remişnaz. However, soon the Sultan Murad V took notice of Remişnaz and they married in the Çırağan Palace, the Sultan's residence at the time.

Later years

After Murad's death in 1904 she moved to Bursa (along with Nevdür, Cevherriz and Filizten Hanımefendi), where she was living in the palace of her stepdaughter Princess Fatma. Remişnaz returned back to Istanbul. After the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by the Parliament of the Republic of Turkey in 1924 (the monarchy had already been abolished two years earlier), the imperial family went into exile in Nice, France. As but an adjunct member of the Imperial family, Remişnaz was not exiled, and so remained in Turkey. She adopted the her birth surname "Topçu" after the 1934 Surname Law, which required all Turkish citizens to adopt a surname. She died in 1934 at Istanbul, twenty years after her return from Bursa.

See also

• Ottoman Empire
• Ottoman dynasty
• Ottoman family tree
• Ottoman Emperors family tree (simplified)