Note 111 — LETTER I.

Of the two women mentioned here, one is called Bosphorana by Busbecq and the other Roxolana. Bosphorana means a native of the kingdom of the Bosphorus—not the Thracian Bosphorus near Constantinople, but the Cimmerian Bosphorus, now called the straits of Caffa—which included the Crimea and the Caucasus. Roxolana means Russian; she was always spoken of by contemporaneous Venetian ambassadors as ‘la Rossa,’ and Creasy in a note (p. 182), says that ‘La Rossa’ was euphonised into Roxolana; the mistake is obvious, for Roxolana is the classical equivalent for a Russian woman (see Smith’s Classical Dictionary, s.v. Roxolani), and it is to Busbecq that she owes the name by which she has become famous. Her real name was Khourrem, i.e., ‘the joyous one.’ See Von Hammer, book xxxi. vol. v. p. 538. A curious story is told of how Roxolana prevailed on Solyman to make her his wife. Having borne a son to the Sultan, she became entitled, according to the Mahometan law to her freedom; this she claimed, and then refused to allow Solyman the rights of a husband unless he married her. She cleverly pointed out to the Sultan, that though she had lived with him as a slave without the bond of marriage, as a free woman she could not feel justified in doing so any longer. Solyman, as Busbecq’s letters will show, was the very man to be influenced by such an argument, and being unwilling to give her up, he consented to her taking the position of a lawful wife.