Evening Star Newspaper, April 13, 1930, Page 95

\ THE ' SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C,”APRIE 13 1930 11 Harem Fugitives Want Sultan’s Wealth How Widows and Children of Abdul Hamid II Are Fighting Kemalist Regime and Near East Governments for Rich Posses- sions Once Controlled From Golden Seraglio Along the Bosporus. BY R. S. FENDRICK. PARIS. €6 WILL relate the most wonderful of all my stories,” continued Sche- herazade. “In a castle called Yildiz Kiosk, in the great City of Constantinople, which spans Europe and Asia, there once lived a Sultan-Caliph of the Faithful called Abdu! Hamid “Now this Sultan-Caliph was richer than even the famous Harun-al-Rashid of Bagdad, for the city of Bagdad was only a tiny corner of the former's dominions. Abdul Hamid had 1,000 wives, more jewels than any ruler of Christendom, mines of gold, silver and oil, and dominions that stretched from sea to sea. “Alas! misfortunte fell upon him, and the great Sultan was stripped even more naked than Job. He lost his throne, his fortune, and then died in despair. The great Osman family, utterly ruined, was blown over the earth like dead leaves. Was it not tragic, O Prince of the Faithful? “But Allah is merciful and can work mira= cles. After many years had passed, and Ab- dul's wives and children had given up all hope of recovering their father's fortune— “Ah,” exclaimed Scheherazade, “the dawn is breaking, Majesty, and I must wait until to- night to tell you the rest of this wonderful story,”—An epilogue to “The Arabian Nights.” A REMARKABLE fight had just been started by the 9 widows, 13 children and hundred- odd other relatives of the late Sultan Abdul Hamid II of Turkey to recover possession of part of the immense fortune that the “Red Sultan™ once possessed. The value of this for- tune is really incalcuable, for it embraced the Mosul oil fields and many mines, but it has been vaguely estimated at $1,000,000,000. 1f skillfully exploited, the estate might easily be worth this stupendous figure. t is a colorful story, packed full of drama and intense human interest. For example, the nine surviving official widows of the Sultan— bers of the imperial family, they are forbidden by the Kemalist government from ever return- ing to their native country, which makes them terribly homesick. When these nine widows meet and recall the magnificent gardens of Yildiz Kiosk, with the sweet perfume of jasmin and oleander, the moonlight fetes on the Bos- porus, the gentle play of the fountains, the soft music of the mandolin players and the other illurements that made the harem life far more attractive than Western women imagine, they become unutterably sad. §¢] TNHAPPY!” one of these widows exclaimed to me during an interview. “Why, I was the happiest creature alivel And why not? I was taken to the harem as a little girl of 9 or 10 to be taught all the graces and accom- plishments that would make me a fitting mate for the great Padishah. My childhocd was very sad, for I belonged to a poor, half-starved Circassian tribe and I seldom had enough to eat or enough clothes to wear. Compared to that life, the imperial haremlik or feminine part of the castle was a paradise. It was a beautiful place, with a magnificent view of the Bosporus. I had to study music, sewing and other arts for long hours, but I was well treated. We had fine food, fine clothes, many baths and more servants than we could use. “Of course, we were birds in a gilded cage A harem scene painted by the Italian artist Tapiro, depicting the painstaking adorm- ment and beautification of one of the The gorgeous tomb of Sultan Abdul Hamid 11, whose kin now seek to recover a part of the fabulous fortune he once possessed. his thousand odalisques never counted—who were' the fairest flowers of one of the most luxurious Oriental harems that ever existed, and possessed priceless jewels and had hordes of slaves and eunuchs to carry out their slight- es.t whims, are now living in Paris in utter misery. They are poverty-stricken, As mem- and we plotted against each other to be the Padishah's favorite wife. Sometimes we longed passionately to see the outside world, but we were generally content. “We were taught to believe that the Padishah was the greatest of all earthly Kings and that we would be blessed forever by serving him. Abdul Hamid's last ride in state prior to his deposition by the young Turks, who also confiscated his property. That made the harem life a joy for most of us.” The recovery of even a small part of the gigantic estate of Abdul Hamid, better as “Abdul the Damned,” means a lot o his nine widows, not to mention all the other rela- is another question. The history of this prop- erty is very involved, and even international courts may be baffled in trying to untangle the rights to it. In old imperial Turkey the Osmanli Sultan- Caliphs, who were absolute monarchs, had a huge personal fortune that they passed down from one to another. It consisted largely of spoils of war, such as treasure, territory and confiscated estates of traitors. Incidentally, the idea of rulers grabbing everything worth while in their country is not exclusively Oriental, for the fabulously rich Belgian Kongo was the personal property of Leopold II, while King Alfonso has a big block of free stock in prac- tically every industrial enterprise in Spain. Abdul Hamid'’s estate consisted of: The Mosul oil Selds. A collection of jewels at the seraglio estimated at between $50,000,000 and $100,000,000. A large portion of the Province of Macedonia, containing many mines. Almost half of the Province of Saloniki, with tens of thousands of acres of fine tobacco soil. Zinc mines on the Isle.ad of Tassos. Immense holdings in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Cyprus and hundreds of other prop- erties in Anatolia. IN 1909 the Young Turks, or Progressive party, overthrew Abdul Hamid and elecied a new Parliament, which confiscated all his property in favor of the nation, and in return gave him a large amount of money every year for him- self and his innumerable family. master’s favorite wives. The legality of this confiscation has never been seriously questioned, but in 1819 Grand Vizier Perid Pasha, who was a brother-in-law of Vaheddedine, the reigning Sultan, dispersed Parliament—Constantinople was then occupied by an English army—and issued a decree re- voking the confiscation. Under old Turkish laws such 'a decree was ineffective without Pare liament’s approval, but the imperial family ar- gued that the decree was legal and based all: - their claims on it. The new Nationalist gove: ernment, organized by Kemal Pasha and other leaders in Anatolia, refused to recognize any of Ferid Pasha's decrees issued in Constanti- nople. When they got control of the old capi- tal they kicked all the Osmanli princes and princesses out of the country. Mustapha Kemal would not dream of handing over any property in Turkey to the Sultan’s heirs. . When the allies finally made a peace with Turkey, at Lausanne, in 1924, they agreed to respect the private property of Turkish nation- als in territory taken over, notably by Greece in Saloniki and Macedonia, by England in Mesopotamia and by France in Syria. The 9 widows, 13 children and hundred-odd other relatives of Abdul Hamid, now more or less grouped -under the leadership of ex-Caliph Abdul Medjid, the last Osmanli ruler, claim that the original confiscation was actually re- pealed in 1919 and that the Lausanne treaty guarantees their rights to the innumerable properties. Although FPrance, England and Greece have turned a cold ear to their demands, an English syndicate known as the Aegean Trust, Lid., has been sufficiently impressed to open a legal campaign for the heirs and pro- vide them with $5,000 a month as Junch money, in return for 35 per cent of all property recov- ered. The Aegean Trust has engaged promi- nent French and English lawyers to take up the matter with the three governments con- cerned, and, if unable to get a satisfactory settlement in this way, will file suit in inter- national courts. Tnl heirs undoubtedly have a certain basis for their demands, and Alexandre Mille- rand, former President of Prance, who repre- sents one group, believes that their claims will be upheld. A report that the Greek govern- ment has agreed to pay the heirs $50,000,000 is untrue, but there are friendly negotiations now going on between the two parties. b Quite aside from the gigantic sums In dis- Continued On Seventeenth Page