OLDEST MAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 475, 3 October 1928, Page 9

OLDEST MAN

Zaro Agha Ido Years of Age

TWELFTH WIFE (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) CONSTANTINOPLE, Tuesday. The world’s oldest man. Zaro Agha. wlio is officially stated to be 155 years of age, has just selected his 12th wife. Ten previous wives died of old age. and the 11th has just been divorced at the age of 90. Wife No. 12 compared to her husband is a mere slip of a girl years younger than Zaro. When King Amanullah of Afghanistan was in Constantinople he was so impressed with the modern Methuselah that he made him a gift of £2t>C. Zaro used this money to divorce his 11th wife.

Zaro Agha was born in Kurdistan, anti in ISOS, during the reign of Selim 111. became a sergeant in the guards. Since then he recalls the reigns of Mahmud II , Medjid IV., Asiz 1., Murad V., Abdul Hamid 11., Rasad A’., and some Caliphs who reigned only a few years. Zaro’s first wife succumbed after 32 years of conjugal life, the second after 2S, and the third after 42 years. Zaro's eldest son, a porter well known in Constantinople, died a few years ago at the age of 110. At one time Zaro set out to go round the world, but on his arrival in Italy his digestion became disturbed owing to the “ignorance displayed about cooking” in that country. So he returned to Constantinople, where th- Government granted him a small house and the position of porter to the Prefecture —a sinecure which ensures him a sum equivalent to about £4 a week and permits him to spend his days in a tiny cafe, where he is known to have been a regular customer for over 100 years.

“My life lias been happy, and, if it pleases Allah, I want to live on,” he said recently.