Şehzade Mehmed Abdülkerim ( ota, شهزادہ محمد عبدالکریم; 27 June 1906 – 3 August 1935) was an Ottoman prince, the son of

Şehzade Mehmed Selim Şehzade Mehmed Selim ( ota, شہزادہ محمد سلیم; 11 January 1870 – 5 May 1937) was an Ottoman prince, the eldest son of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and his wife Bedrifelek Kadın. Early life Şehzade Mehmed Selim was born on 11 Janua ...

and Nilüfer Hanım. He was the grandson of Abdul Hamid II and

Bedrifelek Kadın ota, بدرے فلك قادین , spouse = , issue = , house = Kerzedzh (by birth) Ottoman (by marriage) , father = Prince Mehmed Bey Karzeg , mother = Princess Faruhan Hanım İnal-lpa , birth_date = 4 J ...

Early life

Şehzade Mehmed Abdülkerim was born on 27 June 1906 in the Yıldız Palace. His father was

, son of Abdul Hamid II and

, and his mother was Nilüfer Hanım, an Abkhazian. He was educated at the Galatasaray College,

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

. At the exile of the imperial family in March 1924, Abdülkerim and his family first settled in Damascus, then under French rule, and then in Jounieh,

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

Personal life

Abdülkerim's only wife was Nimet Hanım. She was born in

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

in 1911. She was of Lebanese Maronite descent. They married in 1930 in Beirut, and she converted to Islam after her marriage. Failing to receive his father's approval for the marriage, the couple settled in Damascus, Syria. The two together had two sons, Şehzade Dündar Ali Osman Osmanoğlu (born Damascus, 30 December 1930 – 18 January 2021) and ''Şehzade'' Harun Osmanoğlu (born Damascus, 22 January 1932). In later years, she settled in Istanbul with her son Harun, where she died on 4 August 1981.

Later life and death

In 1932 he left Damascus to become active in the independence movements of Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang, also called East Turkestan at the time. In 1933, he was invited to Japan by their government, presumably with an eye towards leveraging his status as the Ottoman pretender to aid the Japanese Empire in outreach to Central Asian Muslims in conflict with the Soviet Union.Asia.boun
/ref> Abdülkerim first went to Tokyo, but after he could not find the support he expected, he moved to East Turkestan to organize the people against Chinese rule. Upon the defeat of his weak forces, Abdülkerim first fled to India, and later sought asylum from the USA. He was found dead in a hotel room on 3 August 1935. He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Maspeth, Queens County, New York.

Ancestry

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sehzade Abdul Kerim Efendi Islam in Japan Foreign relations of Japan 1906 births 1935 deaths Galatasaray High School alumni