Hafsa

Hasan and Emine lived in a small village near Çay in the hills of inner western Anatolia, where Turkic-speaking Muslim households worked other people’s land and paid what they owed to local holders of power. Their family prayed in the Sunni way, and Emine also tied small leather amulets on children and went to the nearest türbe to ask a saint’s help when sickness or a hard birth came.

They had buried two children already. Selma had died the year she was born, and Yusuf had lived three winters before sickness took him. Three children survived: Mehmed, Hatice, and Ali. Mehmed, born in 1387, carried water and watched the smaller ones when his father left at planting and harvest to take wages. Hatice, born in 1389, learned her mother’s work early—milking a thin goat, tending chickens, skimming and souring milk, and stretching grain with whey. Ali, born in 1391, stayed underfoot, small and loud.

On May 29, 1394, Emine went into labor at home. Aysel from the next house came to help. When the baby was delivered, Hasan leaned close and recited the call to prayer into her ear, then said her name: Hafsa.

She was small and cold to the touch. Emine kept her wrapped and pressed her to the breast, then fed her a few drops of warm goat’s milk when she could not latch. Before dawn on May 30, Hafsa died.

They washed her, wrapped her in cloth, and Hasan and Mehmed carried the body to the village burial ground, where a short funeral prayer was said and she was placed in the earth.