Süleymân I And Hurrem Haseki-Sultân’s Wedding:

Süleymân I and Hurrem Haseki-Sultân’s wedding:

The controversial union had to be announced at some point, and the run-up to the Iran campaign in spring 1534, when the contract of marriage was sealed, was an inappropriate time for festivities, especially given the mourning for Suleyman’s mother Hafsa. Now [January 1536] that Suleyman was safely home, Roxelana may have pressed to have her stature as his legal wife made public. […] The royal wedding apparently caught some in the foreign community by surprise. “This week there has occurred in this city a most extraordinary event, one absolutely unprecedented in the history of the Sultans,” remarked the Istanbul representative of the Genoese Bank of Saint George. “The Grand Signior Suleiman has taken to himself as his Empress a slave woman from Russia.… There is great talk about the marriage and none can say what it means.” […] “At night the principal streets are gaily illuminated, and there is much music and feasting,” […] “The houses are festooned with garlands and there are everywhere swings in which people swing by the hour with great enjoyment.” […] “In the old Hippodrome a great tribune is set up, the place reserved for the Empress and her ladies screened with a gilt lattice,” wrote the Genoese banker. “Here Roxelana and the Court attended a great tournament in which both Christian and Muslim Knights were engaged, and tumblers and jugglers and a procession of wild beasts.” The giraffes had necks so long that to the unaccustomed spectator they appeared to “touch the sky.”

– Peirce, Leslie. Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire