‘I remember the virtues of my homeland’: Princess Nazli Begum, visiting London in the early 1900s

When I compare Europe and Asia, I am diminished in my own eyes. Sadly, Asia has become the way Europe was a thousand or twelve hundred years ago. For people of this age, it would be wishful thinking for Asia to become equal to Europe, let alone surpass it. Yes, if Asians would provide for female education, then in a hundred or two hundred years, they would catch up. I am so wistful when I see the decline and bad condition of the people of Islam after a deluge of progress and the Noah’s food-like spread of Muslims. Unfortunately, we ourselves don’t know who our great Muslim writers were and what they wrote on which subject. One feels endless shame and envy in seeing the libraries of Paris and London. We might protest that we have no money. The reply would be that we appropriated it for ourselves.

English society in London

June 10, 1908: It is a pity that one cannot do anything here in the morning. Nothing opens before eleven o’clock. The shops, etc. are all shut. Therefore, one has to go out after eleven o’clock. After strolling about, it was lunchtime, and we ate somewhere. At teatime, we had...

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