My paper seeks to examine the daily experiences and strategies of Muslim Ottoman women in the families of soldiers who served in the Ottoman military, fought in wars or became martyred for their empire during the Hamidian period by analyzing their petitions sent to the state departments and to the Sultan to request financial aid. It particularly takes the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 as a context to explore “the negotiation process” between the state officials and the women in the families of soldiers who participated or became martyred in the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 while uncovering these women’s daily experiences and the ways that they exercised their agencies by analyzing their petitions and the state’s responses to them. Petitions of women in soldiers’ families are significant sources to see how wars affected the daily lives of these women who became economically destitute after losing the only breadwinner of the household due to wars. These poor women had to raise their children as a single parent, they became refugees and lost their properties, and they had to sell their assets to make a living for their families. Embracing a powerful identity of being “a mother/wife/daughter of a soldier,” these women bargained for their requests with the state and used “discursive strategies” to manipulate the system for their own sakes. By strategically claiming in their petitions that “a just and merciful” Sultan could not let such soldiers’ families live in poverty and destitution, not only they aimed to manipulate the system for their own sakes but also they became a source of legitimacy of a just Sultan and its regime. Thus, while this paper aims to reveal these destitute women’s endeavors and strategies to voice their requests, it also mirrors the socio-economic and political transformations of the Ottoman state in the late nineteenth century. It additionally intends to explore how these transformations along with internal and external problems that the empire weathered affected the everyday lives of Ottoman subjects, particularly women, on the ground, regarding the relationships between the concepts of class, gender, war and legitimation during the Hamidian period. There is still little knowledge about the daily experiences of Muslim Ottoman women during the Hamidian period and this research aimed to contribute to this literature and to bring new insights to Ottoman gender historiography.