Fatma Aliye Topuz was born on October 9, 1862 in Istanbul in what was then the Ottoman Empire but is now known as Turkey. Her father was a government civil servant & bureaucrat, who served as province governors in Egypt & Greece, which meant the family often traveled abroad. She was educated at home, studying in Arabic and French, until the age of 17 when she married a captain major, who she shared four daughters with. Ten years after her marriage, in 1889, marked her debut into the literary world when she published a translation of Volonté by Georges Ohnet from French to Turkish under her pen name, Bir Hanīm or ‘A Lady’, in English. She went on to co-author a novel with fellow Turkish novelist Ahmet Mithat Efendi before writing her own novels, which were eventually published under her real name. In addition to novels, she also wrote articles about women’s rights, which were published in Hanīmlara Mahsus Gazete (Ladies’ Own Gazette). Her articles spoke about the importance of women’s rights but also defended her conservative views, something she would expand on later her 1896 book Nisvan-ı İslam (Women of Islam). Outside of writing, Fatma worked as a humanitarian, becoming the first woman to work for the Ottoman Red Crescent and founding her own charitable organization, which worked to support families of soldiers in the Greco-Turkish War. She passed away on July 13, 1936.