Zübeyde Hanım

Zübeyde Hanım (1857 – January 14 1923) was the mother of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. She was born as the only daughter of the Hacısofular family with two brothers. Zübeyde was born in Salonika, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

Name conventions

"Hanım" is a respectful way of saying "Mrs." and is almost always added after her name. "Hacı", in Turkish, refers to those Muslims who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. "Sofular" is the plural of Sofu, which means a religious devotee. Thus, it is to be assumed that some important person or people in Zübeyde Hanım's background had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and that her family had deep religious roots.

Early life

Zübeyde Hanım's education was basic and only consisted of learning to read and write. But this was considered a high educational level when compared with that of the majority of women throughout the empire. The idea that, "Girls don't need to read," was widespread, and therefore families were reluctant to have their daughters be educated.

Because she could read and write, she was nicknamed Zübeyde Molla (someone knowledgeable and teaches other people, in particular, a teacher of theology) by some people.

Zübeyde Hanım was a religious woman and was so tied to her faith as a result of her upbringing that she wanted her son Mustafa to go to Mahalle Mektebi, a Islamic school that teaches the Qur'an, to be educated.

Zübeyde Hanım's first marriage was to Ali Rıza Efendi. With her dark blonde hair, deep blue eyes and fair skin, she won the admiration of Ali Rıza, a border guard who insisted he would only marry a blue-eyed blonde woman.

His older sister arranged this marriage - as was the tradition at that time. Zübeyde Hanım was in her early teens and 20 years younger than her husband. Their first child was Fatma, then Ömer and Ahmet were born, but they all died in early childhood.

Mustafa, later to become Atatürk, was born in 1881, followed by his sister Makbule in 1885. They had a sister Naciye, born in 1889, whom they lost because of tuberculosis in childhood.

Zübeyde and Kemal

Kemal's father, Ali Rıza, died when Mustafa Kemal was six years old, making her parental influence dominant. She was 27, Zübeyde Hanım and her two children lived for a period with her brother, Hüseyin, who was the manager of a farm outside Salonika.

Her second marriage to Ragıp Bey, who had four children from his ex-wife, angered Mustafa. He thought his mother did not respect the memory of his dead father, habitually called her a deragotory form of calling people who married twice and he offended his mother and Ragıp Bey in his behavior towards them.

She could not see Mustafa Kemal during the Turkish War of Independence in 1919. Later Mehmed VI asked for Mustafa Kemal to be killed. Atatürk did not talk to her until her marriage and she did not approve Kemal's marriage to a youngster.

Later life

After the Balkan Wars, when the Ottomans lost Salonika to Greece, she moved to a house in Beşiktaş-Akaretler, İstanbul with her daughter Makbule. She moved to Ankara in 1922, but the climate was not suitable for an old woman like her, so she was sent to İzmir. She died there in 1923, and a memorial was built for her in 1940, where she rests now.

References

* The initial version of this article is copied (with permission to copy and redistribute with proper attribution) from http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=4000: The permission is given by Yusuf Kanlı, the editor in chief of Turkish Daily News.