Mihrimah Sultan

Mihrimah traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire with her father as he surveyed the lands and conquered new ones. It is written in Persian literature that she traveled into battle with her father on an Arabian stallion called Batal at the Battle of Gizah in northern Egypt outside Alexandria.

In Constantinople on 26 November 1539, at the age of seventeen, Mihr-î-Mâh was married off to Damat  Rüstem Pasha (1505 -10 July 1561), the Grand Vizier under Suleiman. Though the union was unhappy, Mihrimah flourished as a patroness of the arts and continued her travels with her father until her husband's death.

The fact that Mihrimah encouraged her father to launch the campaign against Malta,  promising to build 400 galleys at her own expense; that like her mother she wrote letters to Sigismund II the King of Poland; and that on her father's death she lent 50,000 gold sovereigns to her brother Sultan Selim to meet his immediate needs, illustrate the political power which she wielded.