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It is claimed that her origin is disputed and it is stressed that In particular, her Ottoman name Nilüfer meaning water lily in Persian language suggests that she may have been a Persian concubine. Well Persian name does not mean that she was of Persian origin. Because in Ottoman harem it was a tradition to use Persian names for the converts and the slave girls. So the name Nilüfer suggests nothing about her origin. Nedim Ardoğa 14:13, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cited sources (such as Peirce 1993) state that she is a concubine and is of slave origins. As for the valide sultan title, I could not find sources explicitly stating that she was given this title, and it seems that the use of the title only began in the 16th century. Liu1126 (talk) 14:50, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually Peirce, page 34,"Nilufer is the only one of Orhan's wives to appear in the histories of the late fifteenth century.", "Nilufer would seem to be a later wife (or concubine)."
It would appear that Nilufer was referred to as wife. Whereas on page 35(Peirce), "It is hard to know how Orhan's Christian wives were construed, that is, whether they were considered slave concubines along Islamic lines."
Hmmm, the situation seems a bit more complicated than I expected. Pierce, p.35 says:
"Certainly Asporca and Nilufer ... did not resemble Christain princesses married into the Ottoman dynasty... Nilufer's name, Persian for 'water lily', argues for a greater likelihood that she was a concubine, ... Further evidence that Nilufer might have entered Orhan's household as a slave concubine ..." [ellipsis mine for brevity]
suggesting that she leans towards considering Nilufer a concubine. The earlier use of "wife" is either a colloquialism, or a reflection of her own uncertainty.
Then you have Goodwin, who mentions: "...and left his formerly Christian wife Nilüfer Hatun, daughter of the lord of Yarhisar, in charge of his capital", and Alderson, p.101: "... the sultans were generally faith- ful to one or two wives; ... Orhan his 62/Nilufer ...". Problem is, Alderson p.xv (in the Introduction) says: "Unless otherwise stated, the two words 'marriage' and 'wife' are used loosely to cover any kind of union from concubine to legal spouse", so we have no idea what Alderson's opinion was on this issue. The table at Lowry, p.153, says "wife or consort", so that doesn't help us here either.
Goodwin's claim is contradicted by Pierce ("According to Ibn Battuta's account ... his wife was in command ... . It is unlikely that Nilufer, the mother of a young child, would have been given such public responsibility."), but that's secondary to the fact that he used the word "wife" to describe Nilufer.
And then there are the Turkish sources, which I'm not going to interpret because I don't speak Turkish and I don't trust machine translations, but they could tip the balance either way. Where we stand now, we have a WP:CONFLICTING situation (Pierce: leaning towards concubine; Goodwin: wife, assuming he precisely means "legal spouse"; Alderson, Lowry: uncertain). Liu1126 (talk) 20:43, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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