How exiled Ottomans and an Indian billionaire plotted to recreate the caliphate Submitted by Rayhan Uddin on Mon, 12/15/2025 - 09:21 Imran Mulla's compelling new book of dynasties and destinies dashed - taking in Turkey, France, the UK, Palestine and India - uncovers a forgotten chapter of Islamic history Abdulmecid II and his daughter Durrushehvar take a walk along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, after the end of the Ottoman caliphate, early 1930s (Creative Commons) On The turbulent inter-war years of the 20th century are crowded with historical non-fiction about the Islamic world. And yet, in his debut The Indian Caliphate: Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince , MEE journalist Imran Mulla delightfully fleshes out an intriguing, unexplored episode from that period. The resounding defeat of the Ottomans, who fought alongside the Germans during World War I, led to the carving up of territories across the Middle East by European colonial powers, as well as the founding of the modern Turkish state. It also brought to an end the caliphate, the 1,300-year-old institution in which the leader (caliph) was considered ruler of the Islamic world, a title first instituted by the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, before it was claimed by a string of dynasties across Syria , Iraq , Egypt and beyond. It is against this backdrop that Mulla brings to life the little-known attempt by the last Ottoman caliph to continue his legacy in a seemingly unlikely destination: the state of Hyderabad, in India . We are introduced to Caliph Abdulmecid II , an Ottoman prince who is initially placed under house arrest in 1877 by his paranoid cousin, Sultan Abdulhamid II. Abdulmecid II was the final nominal ruler of the Islamic world, a member of the House of Osman, the Ottoman dynasty, which had governed swathes of Europe, Asia, and Africa for five centuries. This surveillance and authoritarianism inadvertently benefits the young prince, who has time to compose poetry, paint orientalist nudes, and become an accomplished pianist, violinist and cellist. Years later, the prince with a penchant for European-influenced creative expression becomes the nominal leader of the Muslim world - and the first to be elected by Turkey’s national assembly. But his tenure would last only 15 months. In March 1924, the nascent Turkish republic abolished the caliphate, despite, as Mulla pieces together, the best efforts of prominent Muslim figures in India. The House of Osman is packed off into exile onboard the Orient Express. But Abdulmecid has no plans to be the last holder of the caliph title, and instead plots an audacious scheme to revive the institution and have it evolve for the new era. “His idea was to use the prestige of the House of Osman to be recognised as caliph by a critical mass of Muslim leaders, scholars and thinkers from across the world,” writes Mulla. “Abdulmecid's vision was for a radical modern reconstitution of the Ottoman caliphate - without any Ottoman Empire - as an institution deriving its legitimacy from the support of the world’s Muslims.” The modern caliphate would no longer be linked to conquest and land, but would rather derive representative legitimacy from the millions of faithful. And so, it would turn to the support of a region which at the time had the world's largest population of Muslims: British India. Marriage of dynasties A key part of the plan, brokered by Indian politician and freedom fighter Shaukat Ali, was a marital union between Abdulmecid’s daughter, Princess Durrushehvar, and the son of the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad. The Nizam governed the largest princely state in British India, and was one of the most influential figures in the Muslim world. He also happened to be the wealthiest man on the planet. Through the union between the House of Osman and Hyderabad, Abdulmecid’s grandson would be primed to become the new caliph. Princess Durrushehvar, left, photographed by Cecil Beaton between 1939 and 1945; and, right, with her son Mukarram Jah in 1934 (Imperial War Museum, Creative Commons) The choice to look to Hyderabad, when Durrushehvar’s hand was sought by the heirs of Egypt’s King Fuad, Iraq’s King Faisal and Persia’s Shah Reza, shows the importance of India in the Islamic world at the time - a key theme of the book. Mulla transports us to many corners of the world, from a swanky hotel overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland, and a seafront villa on the French Riviera, to a tense multilateral conference in Jerusalem and the palace corridors of Hyderabad, before, finally, an abandoned Ottoman tomb in the wilderness of Maharashtra. For the reader, it is a gripping global journey, as we learn the fate of a plan that, had it succeeded, would have had global implications. Mulla elucidates the engrossing stories of an array of characters, including Durrushehvar and her cousin Princess Niloufer. There are cameos for Ali Kemal, a Turkish journalist who happens to be the great-grandfather of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson; for Marmaduke Pickthall, a renowned English Islamic scholar whose translation of the Quran is still read today; and for Abdulmecid’s driver in the 1930s, a uniformed Austrian named Adolf. Uncovering hidden history The Indian Caliphate is captivating historical storytelling, as well as a piece of investigative journalism. Mulla is at his inquisitive and interrogative best, uncovering a hidden history. A large part of Chapter 8, for example, is spent discussing the veracity of a newly discovered Arabic deed, purportedly signed by Abdulmecid, which was shown to Mulla by a Hyderabadi aristocrat. The deed's authenticity was hotly contested by experts in Turkey and India, after Mulla wrote an article about it in Middle East Eye last year. Elsewhere, he describes his time spent poring over documents in the British Library archives and, in the final pages, reveals a smoking gun: a 1944 dispatch that brings the story together satisfyingly. The book includes several intimate and illuminating interviews, including with figures descended from some of the powerful dynasties it highlights. There’s a moving discussion with Kenize Mourad, a descendant of Ottoman and Indian royalty, who was born during World War Two in Paris and brought up in a Catholic convent. We also hear from Ghalib II, the final ruler of a sultanate in Yemen ’s Hadhramaut, which was, for a time, run effectively as an Indian princely state. Such testimony reminds the reader of a much-forgotten fact: that several now oil-rich Arab states in the Persian Gulf, including Oman , Kuwait , Qatar , Bahrain and the UAE , were once run by the British Raj as princely states. “It is one of history’s great ironies that while Indians often administered these Gulf states in the early 20th century, they now form large sections of the populations of those same states as a labouring underclass,” Mulla reflects. Indian Army tanks rolling into Hyderabad during the invasion in September 1948 (Wikimedia Commons) The final caliph’s plan ultimately fails to materialise, with the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and the annexation of Hyderabad the following year proving the final nail in the coffin. “Abdulmecid's designs, formulated after the caliphate fell amid the forging of a new Turkish nation, failed amid the construction of a new Indian one,” Mulla summarises. On a personal level, I didn’t have much time for Abdulmecid's masterplan itself: forgotten rulers and descendants of fallen dynasties tend to have grand, sometimes delusional, ideas to re-establish their relevance in a changing world. Mulla’s use of honorific titles, which he explains at the beginning of the book, such as “princess” for people who have long since stopped being royals, is at odds with this reviewer's republican sensibilities. It's reminiscent of individuals who now float around TV studios calling themselves the “crown prince” of Iran or Greece or suchlike. But ultimately, The Indian Caliphate isn’t about the viability of such a plot. Rather, it spotlights the buried conversations, the overlooked alliances, and the revealing international and diplomatic context as the old world is replaced by the new. Towards the end, Mulla outlines one of the darkest chapters in modern India's history, as tens of thousands are killed in Hyderabad in 1948 after the newly declared country invades the princely state. It's an apt reminder of how the replacement of wealthy, extravagant dynasties with modern nation-states does not automatically result in progress. The history uncovered in the book, Mulla writes, “testifies to the fact that among a mass of surging nationalisms, there was indeed a coherent Islamic world in the early twentieth century”. “In fact, it was perhaps more connected than it had ever been.” The Indian Caliphate: Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince by Imran Mulla is published by Hurst and out now Books Discover Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0