The astonishing fate as a Fairy Tale that ended sad of Princess Selma Rauf Hanim Sultana (1916-1942), Grand daughter of Murad V, was told to world by her daughter, Kenizé Mourad, in her famous novel,”De la part de la princesse morte, published in France in 1987.
“De la part de la princesse morte”, became a bestseller, translated into English and 33 other languages. The book was the result of many years of painstaking research by Kenizé.
Top Kapi Palace-Istanbul-Turkey
Ottoman Sultan Murad V (1840–1904) was the 33rd Sultan of the Ottoman Empire who reigned from 30 May to 31 August 1876.
Selma was the grand-daughter of the Ottoman emperor, Sultan Mourad V, who as the 33rd Ottoman emperor. He succeeded to the throne after the deposition of his uncle on 30 May 1876. He reigned for 93 days before being deposed on the grounds that he was mentally ill.
Murad v lived on till
1904, marrying several women and having many children, of whom Selma's mother
Princess Hadice Sultana was the only issue of his third wife, Sahcan Kadin
Efendi.
Hatice Sultan: Mother of Princess Selma Rauf
Hanim Sultana
Hatice Sultan was born on 5 April 1870, in her father's villa in Kurbağalıdere. Her father was Sultan Murad V, and her mother was Şayan Kadın, the daughter of Batır Zan.
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| Sultan Murad v |
She was the second child, and eldest daughter of her father and the only child of her mother. She was the granddaughter of Abdulmejid I.
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| Hetice Sultana Daughter of Ottoman Sultan Murad v |
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| Princess Selma Rauf Sultana |
At the exile of the imperial family in March 1924, Hatice
Sultan and her children settled in Beirut, Lebanon, where she died on 12 March
1938, at the age of sixty-seven. She was buried at the Sultan Selim Mosque in
Damascus, Syria.
it became
increasingly difficult for them to make two ends meet, so Selma’s mother
thought it best to get her married off, and who was better than a Muslim prince
from India?
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 ended up in Beirut (known in those days as the Paris of the East) with her mother, Princess Hatice, and brothers (their parents had divorced in 1918). Despite the family’s limited means, she blossomed into a fashionable young woman.
Princess Selma Rauf Hanim Sultana Married to Syed Sajid Husain Ali, Raja of Kotwara (1910- 1991)
In her distressed circumstances, Princess Hatice was under a lot of pressure to get her daughter married, the sooner the better. But it had become very hard to find suitable marriage partners for impoverished Turkish royalty.
In 1932, though, a splendid double match was made for two
of Selma’s distant cousins living in France, the princesses Durrushevar (often
written Durru Shevar) and Niloufer.
The Nizam of Hyderabad, at the
time considered the richest man in the world, had won their hand in marriage
for his two sons. After a simple wedding in the South of France, the two brides
went off to live in faraway India.
About five years later, a blue-blooded husband for Selma Rauf Hanim
was found in that same country India, most probably with some help from the
Hyderabad connection. Selma travelled in 1937, to India to marry Syed Sajid
Husain Ali, Raja of Kotwara (1990 1991)
Selma’s husband,
Sajid Husain, was a dashing prince who had studied in Edinburgh. He had become
the ruler of Kotwara, near Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, at a young age.
Sad ending of marriage
The marriage was not a happy one. However, after growing up first in the splendor of imperial Istanbul and then in cosmopolitan Beirut, acknowledged those days as the Paris of the East, with its lavish lifestyle and hedonistic nightlife.
Selma had great trouble adjusting to her new environment.Despite
the ancient bloodline and respectable wealth of her husband’s family,
picturesque Kotwara must have seemed like a desolate backwater to her.
Princess was
pregnant. World War was approaching and Kotwara didn't quite seem the best of
places to have a baby, the princess was going off to faraway Paris to have her
baby. So, in the summer of 1939, Princess Selma left and that was her last days
in Kotwara.
She was accompanied only by a
faithful retainer of her birth family, a eunuch, who had come to India with
her. With the Second World War fast approaching, she would soon run out of
money.
Her daughter Kenizé was born in November of that year.
Selma did not inform her husband, leading her in-laws to believe the child was
stillborn.
She decided not to
come back to India. And that it was over between the princess and the raja. The
raja Syed Sajid Husain was devastated.
Princess Selma died and buried away from home land: in German-occupied Paris
In 1941, a world war was raging. Cut off from all
resources, princess Selma by now lived in dire poverty. That winter, she became
very ill and finally succumbed to septicemia.
Her distraught eunuch
brought the orphaned Kenizé, not quite two years old, to the home of a Swiss
diplomat. He and his family would lovingly raise the child until they were
posted abroad and, having never formally adopted her, had no option but to
place her in an orphanage.
Princess Selma’s grave sits in a neglected corner of the
Muslim cemetery in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, surrounded by those of twenty
other members of the exiled Ottoman imperial family.
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| Muzaffar Ali with wife Meera Ali |
What happened to Selma’s newly born baby
Kenizé Mourad?
Meanwhile in Kotwara, Selma’s baby was believed to have died at birth. The Raja Syed Sajid Husain, was said to be devastated by the princess’s decision not to return. Two years after the news of Selma’s death, he remarried.
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| Kenizé Mourad |
Then, one day, he was informed that he had a young
daughter, Kenizé, living in a French orphanage. His attempts to bring her to
India were thwarted by the nuns who ran the orphanage. They had raised her in
the Catholic faith and were not about to give her up to a Muslim family.
Kenizé stayed in
France and became a journalist. Growing ever more curious about her origins,
she started to research her mother’s tragic life story, resulting in a first
biographical novel, De la part de la princesse morte (1987).
The research led her
to also explore her Indian roots. With great difficulty, she managed to
reconnect with her father, and eventually had her name added to the Kotwara
family tree as “Rajkumari Kenize de Kotwara,” Princess Kenize of Kotwara.
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| Grave of Princess Selma Rauf Sultana in Paris |
The End
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