Shafaq Nur Hanim had been a servant in the household of Isma'il's mother Hoshiyar Qadin in the harem of the Muhammad Ali dynasty via the Circassian slave trade.

Shafaq Nur gave birth to his second child, and his first surviving son, Tewfik Pasha, on 30 April 1852 at the Qasr al-Maniyal Palace.

[1] Isma'il was deposed by the Sultan Abdul Hamid II acting on the advice of the European powers, on 26 June 1879, and his son became the Khedive and Shafaq Nur became the Walida Pasha.

Alexander Meyrick Broadley, the British lawyer who defender general 'Urabi, described the way she subjected the princesses of the royal family who supported the leader of the revolution to a tongue lashing for their disloyalty and promising to severely punish them.

[6] Shafaq Nur Hanim died at the Kasr al-'Ali Palace on 17 March 1884, and was buried in the Khedival Mausoleum, Al-Rifa'i Mosque, Cairo.