Hürrem Sultan or Karima, born Alexandra Anastasia…

Hürrem Sultan or Karima, born Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska, is the wife of Süleyman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire.

Known to Europeans informally as simply Roxelana, sixteenth-century sources are silent as to the maiden name, but much later traditions—for example, Ukrainian folk traditions first recorded in the nineteenth century—give it as "Anastasia" (diminutive: "Nastia"), and Polish traditions give it as "Aleksandra Lisowska".

She is known mainly as Hürrem Sultan or Hürrem "balsaq" Sultan; in European languages as Roxolena, transliterated as "Roksolana" Roxolana, Roxelane, Rossa, Ruziac; in Turkish as Hürrem (from Persian: Khurram, "the cheerful one"); and in Arabic as Karima ("the noble one").

"Roxelana""Roksolana" might be not a proper name but a nickname, referring to her Ukrainian heritage (cf. the common contemporary name Ruslana); "Roxolany" or "Roxelany" was one of the names of East Slavs, inhabitants of the present Ukraine, up to the fifteenth century.

Thus her name would literally mean "the Ruthenian one".

According to late-sixteenth-century and early-seventeenth-century sources, such as the Polish poet Samuel Twardowski, who researched the subject in Turkey, Hürrem was seemingly born to a father who was a Ukrainian ("Ruthenian" in the terminology of the day) Orthodox priest.

She was born in the town of Rohatyn, sixty-eight kilometers southeast of Lviv, a major city of Red Ruthenia (Chervona Rus'), at this time part of the Kingdom of Poland, today in western Ukraine.

Captured in the 1520s by Crimean Tatars during one of their frequent raids into this region, she had been taken as a slave, probably first to the Crimean city of Kaffa, a major center of the slave trade, then to Istanbul, where she had been selected for Süleyman's harem.

She had quickly come to the attention of her master, and attracted the jealousy of her rivals.

Süleyman's favorite, the concubine Mahidevran (also called "Gülbahar", Gül meaning Rose and Bahar meaning Spring), got into a fight with Hürrem one day and beat her badly.

Süleyman, upset by this, had banished Mahidevran to the provincial capital of Manisa, together with her son, the heir apparent, Prince Mustafa.

This exile is shown officially as the traditional training of the heir apparent, sancak beyligi.

Hürrem had thereafter become Süleyman's unrivaled favorite or haseki.

Many years later, Mustafa has now become a focus of disaffection in Anatolia.

The Sultan, heavily influenced by Roxelana, believes her false allegation that Mustafa is plotting to usurp the throne, and therefore has his eldest son beheaded in 1553.

Gulbahar (as the mother of the heir apparent) loses her state in the palace after the death of her son, and moves to Bursa.