HEIRS TO ABDUL THE DAMNED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 43, 19 January 1938, Page 6

HEIRS TO ABDUL THE DAMNED.

SUCCESS OF PALESTINE CLAIM

JERUSALEM, Dec. 3.

A legal decision has been given in a test case concerning vast estates in Palestine, Iraq, and Cyprus, formerly belonging to Abdul Hamid, the former Sultan of Turkey—the notorious Abdul the Damned. Included in the estates are the entire rich Mosul oilfields. •

Tlie Sultan’s rule extended over Palestine until Turkey’s defeat in the war and the creation of the mandated territory. His heirs now seek to recover the Sultan’s state domains, running to 250,000 acres, and, in addition, properties in Cyprus and Iraq. The Palestine Government, against whom the suit is brought, holds that the Sultan’s rights were extinguished by law. The test began in the Jaffa Land Court last May, when the heirs claimed from the Palestine Government lands of an acreage of 1350 at Muliraka, a village near Gaza. The Court, consisting of a British presiding Judge, Mr P. E. F. Cressal, and an Arab, Aziz Bey Daoudi, found that the onus was on the Palestine Government to prove its title to the property. As the Judges did not agree whether the onus had been discharged, judgment was entered in favour, of the heirs.

These include 14 princesses. Unless the judgment is reversed on appeal, claims will be entered in respect of the other property, The present finding is a reversal of decisions hitherto given concerning the Sultan’s property. In April, 1930, a claim against Italy for property worth £2.500,000 in Italian North Africa failed. Eight months later a claim involving £16,000,000 against Britain met ivith a similar fate. “Abdul the Damned”—the Sultan Abdul Hamid—whose palaces and seraglios on the shores of the Bosphorus were famous for their lavish .appointments, was born in 1842, and died in 1918. He ruled over the Ottoman Empire from 1876 until his deposition in 1909.