At his mother’s request, Halil was brought from Circassia as a child and grew up in the imperial harem with Mustafa III’s son Selim.
[1] During the reign of Abdulhamid I, from 1774 to 1789, Halil was transferred to the Treasury Ward of the palace and so was separated from Selim for about fifteen years.
Around this time, Selim apparently also gave him the Circassian woman Zîbâ Hanım (former concubine (müstefreşe) of Hoca Abdullah Ağa) as odalisque (odalık).
Halil was said to have had a hard temperament, to have been outspoken, but to have had a deep knowledge of tafsir, hadith, and other religious sciences.
When he learned of this, Patriarch Gregory V visited Halil, who asked for proof that only a few Greeks were involved and not the entire nation.
[11][12] Meanwhile, Hâlet had a black lamb with its mouth sewn shut buried in the stable of Halil’s Istanbul mansion.
Hâlet then had the dead lamb, supposedly found by chance, sent to the palace, leading to the accusation that Zibâ was practicing witchcraft.
[13][14] On receiving the news of his wife’s death, Halil became ill, was paralyzed, and died soon after, in Karahisar on August 2 (or 12), 1821.