Bardakçı, Murat

Murat Bardakçı is a journalist and historian whose books draw on Ottoman family archives, private papers, and personal testimony. Neslishah: The Last Ottoman Princess follows Neslishah Sultan from imperial Istanbul through exile in Europe and Egypt and back to Turkey. The biography also traces the end of two dynasties through the life of a woman connected to both the last Ottoman sultan and the last caliph. Its documentary basis and interviews make it more than a court portrait: family memory meets political rupture, displacement, and changing ideas of belonging. Bardakçı’s archival method becomes clear in the way intimate recollection and political history continually reshape one another. Readers interested in dynastic history can begin here, while those drawn to exile and personal testimony will find an equally strong route through the book.