21 - 27 December 2000
Issue No.513
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 21 - 27 December 2000 Issue No.513 |
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Al-Ahram:
A Diwan of contemporary life (369)
When Ahmed Seifeddin, a prince, did the unprincely thing -- attacked and seriously injured another prince, Ahmed Fouad, who would one day be king -- it was the start of a spell in a British mental hospital which would eventually end with the great escape. Who was to gain the most from Seifeddin's break-out? His mother, the khedive, the king or the British? Dr Yunan Labib Rizk* examines the motives of all four from accounts published in Al-Ahram
Flight of a prince
Goings on inside royal palaces have always held the public in a thrall, particularly in the East where mystery surrounded the lives of royalty and where a newspaper that published reports on the personal affairs of kings and princes risked being sentenced to death on the grounds of causing "disgrace to the royal person." Because monarchs tended to enjoy broad powers, people were always intrigued by what was behind their decisions. The more baffling the royal decree the wilder were the conjectures and rumours.
In order to sate the curiosity of their readers, newspapers assiduously covered news of the royal family. But because of the sensitivity of their situation they had to be considerably circumspect which, in turn, demanded from their readers a certain perspicacity to enable them to read between the lines.Extreme caution was advisable, for example, in the coverage of the notorious "battle of the princes," of 7 May 1898 when, in the Mohamed Ali Club, Prince Ahmed Seifeddin, son of Ibrahim Pasha, attacked and critically wounded Prince Ahmed Fouad, son of the Khedive Ismail and uncle of the Khedive Abbas II, the reigning monarch at the time. Ahmed Fouad was married to Princess Shewikar, Seifeddin's sister, who frequently complained to him about her husband's treatment of her. Although the court rejected the plea of Seifeddin's lawyers that their client was mentally deranged and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment, Abbas II had no intention of letting a scion of the royal family languish in jail. He was, thus, readily disposed to accept both the condemned prince's plea for mercy and the report submitted to him by the director of the hospital of mental illnesses testifying to the prince's mental incompetence and advising treatment in a specialised hospital in Britain. As a result Abbas ordered the release of his uncle's assailant and had him sent to England in accordance with the special arrangements Lord Cromer, then the British high commission to Egypt, had made for his transportation and hospitalisation.
Although it was not expected that Seifeddin would remain long in exile, political developments worked against him. The outbreak of World War I and the declaration of the British protectorate over Egypt brought a number of unanticipated changes, the most important of which was the end of nominal Turkish sovereignty over Cairo and the termination of the official procedures whereby the Egyptian ruler was confirmed by a firman issued from Istanbul. Thus, when Abbas II was deposed in 1914, the British nominated his uncle Hussein Kamel to take his place, conferring upon him the title of sultan. When Hussein Kamel died in 1917, he was succeeded by his brother Fouad, at first as sultan, but his title was changed to king following the promulgation of the Declaration of 28 February 1922. King Fouad, of course, never forgot the injuries Seifeddin inflicted on him in the Mohamed Ali Club nearly a quarter of a century earlier.
Shortly after he was declared king, Fouad issued an edict governing the Royal Family which would also play a role in his brother-in-law's fate. Its appended memorandum, for example, stated that the royal family was "a pillar of the state in view of the relationship with the occupant of the throne and the consequent rights of succession and, as the eldest and noblest family, the model of self-control and proper comportment."
The 22 articles of the decree of the Royal Family were based on the principle that "the occupant of the throne is the head of the royal family and, in this capacity, has the right of guardianship over its members." These members included the children of the king and their children, the brothers and sisters of the king, the children of the previous khedives and sultans, the descendants of Mohamed Ali as cited in an appended list, those upon whom the king has conferred the title prince or princess and the wives of the afore-mentioned or their widows until they remarried.
Several days later, the king issued a second edict decreeing that those members of the Mohamed Ali family who did not qualify for the title prince would be considered nobles. On 4 July 1922, Al-Ahram published the names of 21 princes, 29 princesses and 29 male and female nobles, all of whom, naturally, enjoyed the privileges and pomp of their rank. Among these royal personages were Prince Ahmed Seifeddin, Princess Shewikar, now the king's ex-wife, and Princess Nougan, Seifeddin's mother. The palace could do nothing to prevent protocol from reviving in the public's mind the bloody incident in the Mohamed Ali Club.
Three years later, the memory of the "battle of the princes" would resurface with even greater force. On 18 August 1925, Al-Ahram reported that the Royal Council had decided "to dismiss His Excellency Mohamed Said Pasha, former prime minister, as guardian over the estate of His Highness Prince Ahmed Seifeddin and to appoint in his stead His Highness Mohamed Ali Ibrahim and His Excellency former Prime Minister Yehya Ibrahim Pasha as supervisor."
The following day the newspaper explained the reason for this sudden action. Apparently, the Royal Council had received an anonymous report that Said had embezzled LE42,000 from the prince's fund. When the council summoned the cashier and asked him how much money remained in the fund he said LE41,245. Yet, when they opened the coffers they only found LE900. The council brought in Mohamed Said who admitted to having taken the money and signed a written confession to that effect. He asked the council to allow him to pay the money by instalment. Although the council refused to consider this request, it did approve the grace period he asked for in order to pay it back. Yet, from subsequent Al-Ahram reports, we learn that Mohamed Said never did repay the debt.
According to the report submitted by one expert of the Alexandria Municipality's revenue department, Seifeddin's estate consisted of 20,202 feddans of agricultural land and several properties in Cairo and Alexandria. In Alexandria these properties consisted of two apartment blocks on Adib Street, half an apartment block in Al-Manshiya, a warehouse with an adjacent plot of land in Al-Qabari and 14 villas in Muharram Bek. In Cairo they included four villas, shops in Khan Al-Khalili, several properties in Qasr Al-Dubara (including one that was used as a pharmacy), not to mention 20,343 square metres of vacant property. The expert added that the prince's income from his various estates amounted to LE119,483. One presumes that most of the money made its way into the hands of his guardians and Al-Ahram furnishes its readers with a list of these beneficiaries: Ishaq Ahmed, guardian from 1900-1901, Hussein Fahmi for the subsequent eight years, Prince Youssef Kamal for one year, Ahmed Kheiri for the next three years, Hussein Muharram for a year and finally, the longest lasting of all and evidently the most fortunate, Mohamed Said Pasha, whose service lasted 10 years.
Mohamed Said was a prime example of the intimate relationship between politics and economic interests. His appointment as guardian over Seifeddin's estate was, no doubt, a reward for his loyalty to the crown. But it is also important to note that his Turkish aristocratic origins made him a particularly eligible candidate for the post. Indeed, it was in large part due to his connections with the palace that he became prime minister following the assassination of Boutros Ghali in 1910 and was premier once again in 1919, and that Saad Zaghlul appointed him as his minister of education at a time the nationalist leader sought to court a more cooperative relationship with King Fouad. If the financial scandal that now tainted Said's reputation would henceforth prevent him from occupying high office again, his relationship with the palace explains his audacity in not repaying the money to which he had helped himself from Seifeddin's assets.
It was not long before news of the theft from Seifeddin's estate reached his mother in Turkey. Princess Nougan by then had married a prominent Turkish political figure and it was in her palatial home on the banks of the Bosphorous that she weaved the plot that would form the next chapter in her son's life.
Several days after the Mohamed Said scandal was exposed the British Daily Chronicle reported that Princess Nougan wrote to London to request to have her son released from the mental hospital in Kent, threatening that if the British authorities refused to comply she would demand £4 million in compensation. Al-Ahram readers had to hold their breath for nearly two weeks before the next development. Then, on Friday, 4 September 1925, the newspaper reported that the prince escaped from the hospital. There is little doubt that Nougan was behind her son's escape, for the confined prince could hardly have made the arrangements on his own, even supposing he was in possession of his full mental capacities.
Opinion in Egypt, however, was divided over who else might have been involved in the plot. Al-Ahram, for example, believed the escape was a masquerade with a diverse cast, including the British authorities. The theory was not without foundation. By the summer of 1925, relations had cooled considerably between the British high commissioner, Lord Lloyd, and King Fouad, who, having dismissed Saad Zaghlul earlier that year, handed the reins of government to Hassan Nashat, head of the Royal Council. Lloyd George feared that Nashat's heavy-handedness was on the verge of plunging the country into popular unrest, a development he wanted to avoid at all costs. He, therefore, used various tactics to pressure Fouad into bringing his right-hand man to heel, even issuing an ultimatum to that effect. The king ultimately buckled under the pressure and sent Nashat to the diplomatic corps.
Many believe that the staged escape of Seifeddin was one of the tactics the British used as a pressure tool. While there is no evidence in British Foreign Office documents to corroborate this -- indeed nothing mentions the incident at all -- one would hardly expect the conspirators to leave a tell-tale trace behind.
Al-Ahram had other reasons to believe that the prince's escape was "a well scripted play acted out in no less expert a manner than any fictional dramatic production." The idea of securing the prince's release was not new, but rather had its origins at least two years earlier when "people who had never seen or known the prince and were never in a position to ascertain whether he was of sound mind and body, nevertheless, began to avail themselves of the press to declare that he was competent." In response to these developments, Seifeddin was re-examined, "and once again doctors reaffirmed their original prognosis and he remained in hospital." Al-Ahram continues, "This year, however, the drama resurfaced in a new form when a suit was brought against the British foreign secretary for holding the prince in detention -- although he is actually sane -- because he is a Turkish subject. That was the first act. The second was the prince's escape."
Lending weight to Al-Ahram's theory was the apprehension, fed by reports from British sources sent by Al-Ahram's London correspondent to his newspaper's headquarters in Cairo, that the plot to have the prince freed was not motivated solely by motherly affection; rather it was part of "a great political conspiracy" against King Fouad. According to the reporter, the mastermind behind the conspiracy was the deposed Abbas II, "for whom the prince and his relatives are no more than pawns in the hands of the former khedive's aides who hope to use them in order to sully the reputation of the current regime in Egypt."
Whether or not King Fouad had his own means of substantiating these rumours, he was clearly disconcerted. He wrote to the new guardian over Seifeddin's estate, Prince Mohamed Ali, who was spending the summer in France, instructing him to return to Egypt immediately. "The flight of the prince from the hospital and his escape to Turkey alter no aspect of his legal circumstances," Fouad said. "His assets shall remain under the administration of the guardian of his estate under the supervision of Yehya Ibrahim Pasha."
There were also conflicting views on the arrangements made for the prince's escape. One body of opinion held that the plans were staged very carefully and took several months, and that the prince fled to Turkey with his British guard and two servants, one French and one Turkish. Others suggested that the Egyptian crown had been aware that British authorities were about to release the prince and protested through various diplomatic channels that this action would trigger political problems in Egypt. To add extra weight to their argument, Egyptian government sources hinted that a portion of Seifeddin's assets had been used to incite the Sudanese against British rule. The suspicions that British authorities were somehow behind the prince's escape were confirmed by a Daily Mail report that the British Foreign Office would not ask the Home Office to pursue the prince, "because his flight was not a legal offence."
Over the following days speculation subsided as reports filtered through on the absconding prince's whereabouts. Perhaps the most well-known story, serialised in Al-Ahram, was that 10 days after his disappearance in Kent, the prince surfaced in a hotel on the outskirts of Paris. Although he had booked under a false name, the hotel owner discovered his identity, forcing him to flee again. According to the owner, the man he believed was Seifeddin would "rise at 10.00, take a long walk in the woods, read, play the piano, eat voraciously and drink with his meal a 30-year-old bottle of wine from the cellar." In this man's opinion, the prince "did not seem at all mentally disturbed, but appeared in full possession of his faculties." The hotel staff added spice to the story. The prince, they said, had a female friend called Germaine who visited him wearing a veil. Whether or not the story was true, the hotel owner certainly had a good sense of business acumen, as once he let out word of the prince's presence, dozens of Parisian journalists flocked to the hotel, giving its name wide-ranging fame.
King Fouad Princess Shewikar
What is known for a fact and was reported by Al-Ahram's correspondent in Istanbul, was that Seifeddin arrived in the Turkish port by ship on the evening of 21 September. No one on the ship had known he was on board. The correspondent described him as "slender and dark, wearing a gray overcoat and a top-hat. As he disembarked, preceded by Faridun Pasha, the husband of Princess Tougan, his mother, he seemed tired and was leaning on his tall English guard. After the group boarded a boat to take them ashore, Seifeddin lit a cigarette and began to take in the view of the Bosphorous."
Two days later, Faridun Pasha told the press the true story of the prince's flight. The saga began on 31 August when Seifeddin managed to elude his guards and sail to France where his mother and her husband were waiting for him. The three took a plane to Paris where they would frequently change hotels, as well as the cars they used, in order to elude possible pursuers. They were especially apprehensive of those who might have been working on behalf of King Fouad. The prince also shaved off his beard and remained out of sight as much as possible, "until they were able to obtain passports, at which point they drove to Marseilles and sailed to Istanbul, travelling second class in order not to draw attention."
As the royal trio was travelling around France incognito, the British and Egyptian press examined the role the British government had in the entire affair. In the opinion of the Westminster Gazette there was "an urgent need to mount an official investigation into the circumstances surrounding the apprehension of the prince, particularly considering that the facts, which have not been allowed to be released, bespeak a strong element of treachery." The secretary of the National Society for the Reform of Mental Treatment said the authorities had no legal basis for pursuing the prince, who had entered Britain freely 14 years earlier. He continues, "It would be illegal to capture the prince without a certificate attesting to this necessity from the Mental Health Board. Moreover, if indeed he has left the country, he is considered free once he leaves British territorial waters."
The matter was settled in the House of Commons, when a member posed two pertinent questions, the first to the minister of health regarding the prince's condition. The minister responded that three specialists had examined Seifeddin in 1924 and found him to be mentally unbalanced. The MP then turned to the secretary of the Home Office and asked him whether it was true that he had sent secret police to France in pursuit of the prince. The secretary denied the allegation, attributing it to some people's flights of fancy.
Still, doubts remained about the minister of health's report. According to a story in the Daily Mail, friends of Seifeddin feared that his lengthy confinement in hospital "rendered him somewhat imbecile, although this was a long way from insanity." Faridun explains that his condition was the result of maltreatment in the hospital, where he was denied all visitors and only permitted to go outside once a week. However, the best description of Seifeddin's condition was furnished by a Turkish reporter who had interviewed him. He wrote, "He is barely capable of bringing a glass of beer to his mouth without spilling some, so violently does his hand shake. He walks feebly and his memory has become greatly debilitated. All that interests him now is eating and drinking well and looking at women and hearing them speak. If he sees a woman on the street, he stops speaking in order to stare."
Two questions remained pending. The first was whether to hand Seifeddin over to the Egyptian government and the second concerned his assets in Egypt. Turkish authorities took care of the first question by stating that since the prince was born of two Turkish parents he had a right to remain in Turkey and to become a Turkish citizen in accordance with the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. Of course, Seifeddin, or at least those who made his decisions for him, chose this option without hesitation, not only because it spared him from the hands of King Fouad but also because it opened an avenue to reclaim his wealth.
It was understood that if Seifeddin could get a clean bill of mental health from the Turkish medical authorities, he could then secure a ruling from the Turkish courts granting him the right to take control of his assets. From there he could take his case to the mixed tribunals in Egypt. This is precisely what occurred, triggering a long series of legal suits, one of which would bring down the first government formed by Mustafa El-Nahas, leader of the Wafd Party.
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
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