Indian Caliphate

The remarkable story of the last Ottoman Caliph, exiled by Atatürk, who tried to recreate the Caliphate in the Indian princely state of Hyderabad.

Abdulmecid II was a talented painter, music enthusiast and Francophile. He was also the last Ottoman Caliph, expelled from Istanbul in March 1924 when Turkey abolished the 1,300-year-old Caliphate.

From his villa on the French Riviera, Abdulmecid launched a plan to resurrect the institution and transform world history. Indian politician Shaukat Ali brokered a marital alliance between the Ottomans and the Nizam of Hyderabad, the world’s richest prince, who governed a state the size of Italy in the Indian subcontinent.

This saw the union of Islam’s two greatest houses, and of the Islamic west and east. It cemented Hyderabad’s status as a global Muslim capital, and left Abdulmecid’s grandson, the Ottoman prince and the designated Nizam-in-waiting, perfectly placed to claim the Caliphate. But Partition in 1947 and the annexation of Hyderabad the following year spelled the end of this prospect.

Exploring the lives, cultures and sensibilities of an amazing cast of players, The Indian Caliphate details this extraordinary history, which for decades has been consigned to near oblivion. This story of the downfall of two Muslim dynasties reveals a forgotten fact: that India was, in many ways, the very epicentre of the Islamic world in the early twentieth century.