On February 5, 1883, Pertevniyal Sultan died at the age of seventy in the Ortaköy Palace, Istanbul, and was buried at the Pertevniyal Valide Sultan Mosque in Aksaray, Istanbul.
Pertevniyal Sultan (Ottoman Turkish: پرتو نهال سلطان, from the Persian compound پرتو + نهال partov-nihâl, literally “Descended from Radiance”; c. 1812 – 5 February 1883), was a consort of the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II, and Valide sultan (mother of Sultan) of Sultan Abdulaziz (r. 1861-1876).
The origin of Pertevniyal Sultan is disputed. She was most likely of Circassian origin, but it was also written that she was Romanian or Kurdish, or most probably Albanian due to her birthname Besime, which in Albanian means “faith, trust”. She was rumoured to be close of Hoshiyar Qadin, the consort to Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, and mother of his son Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt and Sudan from 1863 to 1879. She became a consort of Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II when he casually noticed her doing her job in one of the Costantinople’s hammams, and was given the title of “Second Ikbal”. She gave birth to her son Abdulaziz on 8 February 1830. Maybe she had a second son in 1833, Şehzade Nizameddin, but according to other sources he was instead the son of the consort Tiryal Hanım. As the mother of one of Mahmud’s only two survived sons, she was promoted to the rank of “Fifth Kadin”.