Over the summer, Betül Başaran, professor of history and religious studies attended The First World War in the Middle East: Aftermath and Legacies conference in Ypres, Belgium over the summer where she presented a paper titled "Transnational Networks and Elite Women's Philanthropic Work after WW1: The Turkish Princesses of Hyderabad”
During and after World War I, revolutions and post-war treaties carved new nation states out of age-old empires. The new regimes sealed the fate of former imperial families such as theHabsburgs, Romanovs, and the Ottomans. By comparison, the exiled Ottoman dynasty has received little scholarly attention. In her presentation, Başaran focused on two young princesses who grew up in exile in Nice, France and entered into significant matrimonial alliances with other Muslim dynasties during the
interwar period. The case of Princess Durrushehvar (daughter of the last Ottoman caliph) and hercousin Princess Niloufer, who were matched with the sons of Hyderabad’s last hereditary Muslim ruler, provided a case study through which she examines the new transnational Muslim networks that emerged after World War I and the important leadership roles that elite and royal women played in defining and representing the “new Muslim woman” or the “modern female citizen".
