Sultana Nur-Banu, née Cecilia Venier-Baffo, (1525–1583) was a Venetian-born woman of noble birth, the niece of Sebastiano Venier, the Doge of Venice. She was the mother of Sultan Murad III of the Ottoman Empire and the de facto co-regent as the Valide Sultan in 1574-1583.
Cecilia was the daughter of Violante Baffo and Nicolò Venier.[1] She was captured when the Turks concquered the Aegean (Egean) island of Paros in 1537 and taken to the royal harem of Prince Selim in Istanbul, where she was renamed Sultana Nur-Banu, "Princess of Light". She became the most favored wife of Sultan Selim II, who was put on the throne in 1566, and the mother of Sultan Murad III.
When Selim II died in 1574, she concealed his death and hid his corpse in an icebox until her son Murad arrived from Manisa, where he was governor, twelve days later and became the sultan.
Nur-Banu managed the government together with the Grand Vizir Sokollu Mehmet Pasha and became the first Valide sultan who acted as co-regent with the sultan in the Sultanate of Women. She corresponded with queen Catherine de' Medici of France, and during her nine years of regency (1574-1583), she maintained such a pro-venetian politics that she became hated by the Republic of Genoa; some have even suggested that she was poisoned by a Genoese agent. Wathever the case, she did die a suspicious death in 1583.