Ottoman Princesses In India (1)
Part One: The sad case of Princess Selma
To the palace born
Every little girl at one point dreams of being a princess, living in a palace. Even one grown woman I know wishes she’d been born into royalty. But what happens when your kingdom crumbles?
I first learned about Princess Selma, a granddaughter of the Ottoman Sultan Murad V, from a novel her daughter wrote about her life.
De la part de la princesse morte, by Kenizé Mourad, was published in France in 1987. It became a bestseller, translated into English* and 33 other languages. The book was the result of many years of painstaking research by Kenizé, who was just a toddler when her mother died in Paris, only 26 years old.
The end of privilege
Selma was born in Istanbul in 1914 as “Her Imperial Highness, Princess Selma Rauf Hanim Sultana.” In the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the abolition of the Caliphate, the entire imperial family, about 150 people, were sent into exile in 1924. Some of Selma’s relatives went to Paris, others to the French Riviera, and 10-year-old Selma…
