Imran Mulla – Author & Journalist at Middle East Eye
I am totally blown away by this incredibly generous and amazingly in-depth review left by Imran Mulla on Goodreads. Reviews like these are like precious gold dust to self-published indie authors like me, especially when written by such a well-read and respected writer as Imran. Reading this honestly made all those long hours spent at my writing desk so worthwhile.
This review (pasted below) was posted on 29th May, and was the best launch day present I could ever have received, so I just had to share it with you all… Thank you Imran…
In late 1922 the Ottoman Empire came to its decisive end when the Grand National Assembly in Ankara, representing the Turkish nationalists who had successfully fought the Allied powers in Anatolia, abolished the Sultanate. In one swift blow the rule of the House of Osman was ended.
Today few people, including Ottoman history enthusiasts, know much about what befell the imperial family after they lost their power. It is well known that they were expelled from Turkey in March 1924, but for over a year the erstwhile rulers of a once mighty Empire remained in their palaces in Istanbul – even as a new state was being formed from Ankara.
A Farewell to Imperial Istanbul focuses on this extraordinary period. Written to commemorate the centenary of the expulsion of the imperial family from Istanbul, its author is Princess Ayşe Osmanoğlu, a descendant of Sultan Murad V and Sultan Mehmed V Reşad. The book, then, is a family history – but it covers events of immense global historical significance. This was the birth of a nation that would become a superpower; it was also the end of the 1,300-year-old Islamic Caliphate.
The book is not a conventional history – refreshingly, it reads like a novel. Some of it is imaginative, but Princess Ayşe fastidiously avoids embellishing her characters beyond what we know about them from the historical record. She is evidently sympathetic to the Ottoman dynasty, which she acknowledges in the preface – but the book’s account of events is reliably accurate nonetheless.
The narrative begins with Caliph Vahideddin’s surreptitious departure from Istanbul in November 1922 after he was stripped of the title Sultan. It stretches through to the expulsion of the imperial family a year and a half later. Princess Ayşe paints a marvellous portrait of the world of late imperial Istanbul: what it looked and felt like, how elite men and women dressed and spoke, what they ate and how they felt. The book is drawn largely from the memoirs of family members – particularly those of Princess Ayşe’s grandfather, Prince Ali Vasib, a prominent character in the narrative. The book, ultimately, is a paean to a lost and largely forgotten world. The writing is elegant and often lyrical; towards the end it is imbued with a suitable air of tragedy.
The most fascinating character is Abdülmecid II, the last Ottoman Caliph but also the only Caliph to be elected (controversially, as the book shows) by the Grand National Assembly in a radical departure from Ottoman tradition. Abdülmecid, for a short while, was also the first and final Caliph of the Republic of Turkey. He represented, perhaps, an alternative direction the young and modernising nation might have taken. We are introduced to Abdülmecid “immersed in the delicate dance of his paintbrush”. Later, during his accession ceremony, he is described as wearing a “frock coat, crisp white collared shirt and white bow tie”, like a quintessential European aristocrat – but with a red fez on his head in a gesture to Ottoman tradition.
The Caliph, who was an accomplished artist, classical music enthusiast and pious Muslim all at once, was too popular in Istanbul – and much too devoted to the ideal of the Caliphate – for Ankara’s liking. By early 1924 the government had decided to do away with the institution once and for all. On 3 March, the Grand National Assembly voted to abolish the Caliphate, sending shockwaves through the Islamic world and spelling exile for the Ottoman dynasty.
Princess Ayşe describes how it all unfolded in great detail, right down to Abdülmecid’s final descent down the Dolmabahçe Palace’s grand staircase, “each step slow and dignified, with the Baccarat crystal balusters glimmering in the moonlight streaming through the vaulted glass ceiling.” The Caliph would never see his beloved Istanbul again; he was ultimately put on the Orient Express, which headed “into the obscurity of the night.”
Devastatingly beautiful and endlessly evocative, in A Farewell to Imperial Istanbul Princess Ayşe has produced a veritable masterpiece.
