Person · last Ottoman Caliph · Türkiye
Abdulmejid II
Also known as Abdülmecid II, Abdul Mejid II, Abdul-Majid II, Sultan Abdülmecid
The last Caliph of the Ottoman Empire, 1922 to 1924 — the title retained after the sultanate was abolished and until Atatürk abolished the Caliphate itself and sent the Ottoman house into exile. A painter and polymath who settled in Nice and received the Nizam of Hyderabad's financial support through his daughter Durru Shehvar's 1931 marriage to Prince Azam Jah. His exile ended the thirteen-century line of titular Islamic sovereignty and left the Nizam of Hyderabad — through the marriage alliance — the subcontinent's indirect inheritor of its symbolic prestige.
- Date
- 1868–1944
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Ottoman
- Tradition
- Ottoman dynastic records; Caroline Finkel on the end of the Ottomans; Hyderabad-Istanbul correspondence archives.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
The Nizam's financial support for Abdulmejid II after the Caliphate's abolition was substantial enough that Turkish historians sometimes describe the Hyderabad connection as having effectively funded the exiled Ottoman house. Abdulmejid died in Paris in 1944 and was buried in Medina.
Connections (2)
- Father ofPrincess Durru Shehvar
Abdulmejid II was the last Caliph of the Ottoman Empire, 1922 to 1924, and the father of Princess Durru Shehvar, who was born in Istanbul in 1914 and raised in exile in Nice after Atatürk abolished the Caliphate in 1924. His daughter's 1931 marriage to the Hyderabad heir apparent gave the deposed Caliph a Nizam-funded livelihood in exile, and bound the subcontinent's largest princely state to the Ottoman house through blood.
- FundedMir Osman Ali Khan, VII Nizam of Hyderabad
After Durru Shehvar's 1931 marriage to Prince Azam Jah, Mir Osman Ali Khan funded the exiled Ottoman house of Abdulmejid II substantially — Turkish historians sometimes describe the Hyderabad connection as having effectively kept the deposed Caliph's family through the 1930s and 1940s. The Nizam also funded educational and philanthropic programmes in Türkiye, and Turkish architects influenced late-period Hyderabadi estates. The alliance was symbolic as much as material: the subcontinent's largest Muslim princely state supporting the vanished Caliphate.