Mihri Hatun

Mihrî Hatun (1456/1460–c. 1506), born Mihrünnisa in Amasya, was one of the earliest Turkish women poets whose name survives. Her father was a qadi who wrote verse; she spent most of her life near Amasya and joined the literary circle of Şehzade Ahmed, son of Bayezid II.

She was reputed to have fallen in love several times, though her loves were said to have been chaste, and she never married. Her witty, polished qasidas and ghazals of love and gallantry won renown in her lifetime, and later readers called her the Sappho of the Ottomans.