Hacı Arif Bey

After Sultan Abdülmecid I became aware of his beautiful voice, he was admitted to the Muzika-yi Humayun, which was the Imperial Military Music School in the Ottoman Empire.

Due to his closeness to the Sultan, he was responsible for teaching music to the women in the harem.

His next wife from the harem also met with a death from tuberculosis, also a cause for several songs by Arif Bey.

He was elected the head singer in the palace, and married a third time with Circassian Nigârnik Hanım, and stayed with her until his death.

Toward the end of his life, Haci Arif Bey had a fall out with the emperor Abdul Hamid II at the time, and was jailed for about 50 days.