A Concubine in Early-Modern Egypt: The Example of Nafisa Khatun al-Muradiyya

Abstract

This article portrays the life of Al-Sit Nafisa Khatun al-Muradiyya, originally taken captive in Georgia and sold into slavery in Cairo, who rises from life as a concubine to become the wife of the Mamluk leader Murad Bey in the late eighteenth century. In the process, Nafisa became chief of the Mamluk Harem and acquired substantial wealth, but her fate would take a turn for the worse after Muhammad Ali Pasha consolidated his control of Egypt and began his efforts to annihilate the Mamluks, culminating in the famous Cairo Citadel massacre of 1811. As her life in various ways mirrored that of Egypt's Mamluks, this study uses the example of Nafisa to understand the extent to which large social, economic and political changes impacted the lives of individuals who lived through them.