Person · Ottoman princess & Begum · India
Princess Durru Shehvar
Also known as Durrushehvar, Durru Shahwar, Durrushevar, Durru-Sahvar Sultan
Daughter of Abdulmejid II, the last Caliph of the Ottoman Empire, born in Istanbul in 1914 and raised in exile in Nice after Atatürk abolished the Caliphate in 1924. In 1931 she married Prince Azam Jah, heir apparent to the Nizam of Hyderabad, in a Nice ceremony. Her move to Hyderabad bound the largest Indian princely state to the vanished Ottoman Caliphate through blood, and the Nizam's financial support for her exiled father and his family after that marriage was substantial. She lived between Hyderabad, London and Istanbul until her death in 2006.
- Date
- 1914–2006
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Ottoman · Asaf Jahi
- Tradition
- Ottoman house records; Asaf Jahi court history; Durru Shehvar Hospital archives.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
A Red Cross officer during the war and the patron of several Hyderabad hospitals and schools in the 1930s and 1940s. The Princess Durru Shehvar Children's & General Hospital in Hyderabad is named for her and still operates. The 1931 wedding was attended by King Fuad of Egypt and the deposed khedive and was reported across the Islamic world as the symbolic restoration of the Caliphate through dynastic ties.
About the place
Placed in Hyderabad, where she lived as Begum of Berar from 1931 onward
Connections (2)
- Marital alliance withMir Osman Ali Khan, VII Nizam of Hyderabad
Princess Durru Shehvar, daughter of the last Ottoman Caliph Abdulmejid II, married Prince Azam Jah — Mir Osman Ali Khan's eldest son and heir apparent — in Nice on 12 November 1931, with Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan's full orchestration. The marriage was the most consequential dynastic alliance of the twentieth century for a princely Indian state, binding the Hyderabad house to the vanished Ottoman Caliphate and bringing the exiled Ottoman family under the Nizam's financial support.
- Father ofAbdulmejid II
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.