Ayşe Hafsa Sultan, was a concubine of Selim I and the mother of Suleiman the Magnificent. She was the first Valide Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and, during the period between her son's enthronement in 1520 until her death in 1534, she was one of the most influential persons in the Ottoman Empire.

Selim I, known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. Despite lasting only eight years, his reign is notable for the enormous expansion of the Empire, particularly his conquest between 1516 and 1517 of the entire Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, which included all of the Levant, Hejaz, Tihamah and Egypt itself. On the eve of his death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire spanned about 3.4 million km2 (1.3 million sq mi), having grown by seventy percent during Selim's reign.