View across the Bosphrous in İstanbul, from left to right:
Sultanahmet Cami (Blue Mosque)
Ayasofiya (Hagia Sofia)
Topkapı Palace (home of Ottoman Sultans 1465-1853)

Looking for the Ottoman Sultan

The Ottoman Empire ended in 1923, replaced by the modern Turkish Republic. But when I first put this page together, the Man Who Would Be Sultan was still alive and living in New York city.

Ertuğrul Osman V, or Devletli Necabetli Ertuğrul Osman Efendi Hazretleri, was born in 1912. He was in line for the Ottoman throne and was in school in Vienna when the last Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI was deposed in November 1922. The House of Osman had ruled Turkey and its possessions since 1281.

He moved to Manhattan in 1939. There have been other titular post-imperial heads of the House of Osman, with theoretical rules lasting:

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However, Ertuğrul Osman was the last Turkey-born head of the House of Osman. And so, at least in theory, the last man able to hold the title of Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliph of Islam.

An article in the New York Times described his home as "on Lexington Avenue in the 70s, above a restaurant", in a 3rd-floor walkup in a building otherwise non-residential. Osman and his wife, Zeynep, a niece of the last king of Afghanistan, live in an apartment owned by Stephen Kirschenbaum. "After they married in 1991, Osman's apartment, with its 25-by-40-foot living room and huge terrace facing a leafy backyard, was the obvious place for them to live."

Well, that just cried out for investigation.

So, somewhere below is a picture of the home of the last Ottoman Sultan. I'm not sure exactly which picture shows his home, but a couple of places seem especially likely to me.

West side, generally looking north View this side from bottom to top for a view walking north on the east side of the street, looking across to the west side.		East side, generally looking south View this side from top to bottom for a view walking south on the west side of the street, looking across to the east side.
80th Street
	Lexington Avenue
79th Street
	Lexington Avenue
78th Street
	Lexington Avenue
77th Street
	Lexington Avenue
76th Street
	Lexington Avenue
75th Street
	Lexington Avenue
74th Street
	Lexington Avenue
73rd Street
	Lexington Avenue
72nd Street
	Lexington Avenue
71st Street
	Lexington Avenue
70th Street
West side, generally looking north View this side from bottom to top for a view walking north on the east side of the street, looking across to the west side.		East side, generally looking south View this side from top to bottom for a view walking south on the west side of the street, looking across to the east side.

Ertuğrul Osman died 23 September 2009, in İstanbul.

If you're interested in Turkey, click here for my pages with many pictures from my visits to Turkey.

New York Travel Destinations

Arrive by air Pictures of the approach over Staten Island and Brooklyn, view of the harbor and Manhattan, and videos of day and night approaches	Visit the "Ghostbusters" locations Their headquarters is in a current New York Fire Department station.	Thomas Crown's view Walking to work along the East River, 31st floor views of the harbor, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Staten Island
The Counterfeit Coffee Caper How I got a ride across town from the NYPD (there isn't much room in the back seat)	Humphrey Bogart's childhood home On the Upper West Side	Hunter S Thompson Places he lived 1957-1962
McGee's Pub The model for MacLaren's Bar in "How I Met Your Mother"	Franklin Delano Roosevelt His home on the East Side	Edgar Allan Poe His home in the Bronx, plus some Soviet electronics
H.P. Lovecraft & Nicholas Roerich Lovecraft's home in Brooklyn and Roerich's museum in Manhattan.	The American Black Chamber Manhattan locations of the U.S. cryptanalysis programs between WWI and WWII	The Last Ottoman Sultan The Manhattan home in exile of the man who would have been the Sultan

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