In the late nineteenth century, the Egyptian-Ottoman princess Nazlı Fazıl (1856–1913) emerged as a significant trans-imperial political actor. This talk focuses on how the princess developed an extensive network of European, Ottoman and Egyptian diplomats and their wives to advance her personal and political agenda across the Ottoman and British Empires, strategically using the foreign press to craft a public image that served her interests at home and abroad. To elite British audiences, she presented herself as a staunch Anglophile and supporter of British colonial policies in Egypt. Simultaneously, she leveraged foreign connections to enhance her position within Ottoman society, particularly in her complex relationship with Sultan Abdülhamid II. Although Princess Nazlı was a highly unusual figure, her experience asks us to reconsider how elite women in the late Ottoman Empire used the press to craft their own image and advance their political agendas.
About the speaker:
Elif Yumru is a doctoral student in History at the University of Cambridge and a Postgraduate Researcher at the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies at Newnham College. Her current research investigates the shifting political and social roles of Ottoman women during and in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. Her article on Princess Nazlı, ‘An Oriental Gentlewoman’: Princess Nazlı Fazıl’s Interview in The Gentlewoman in 1899’, appeared in Middle Eastern Studies in 2023.
Princess Nazlı Fazıl
Beyond the myth of Independent Journalism
