Princess Salme: The Life Between Two Worlds of Africa’s Circassian-Born Arab Princess (Part 2)

 Princess Salme surprised her Western readers by not mentioning the man for whom she had changed her life, nor the love she felt for him, in her memoirs.

Instead, she chose to focus on more instructive themes: her days in Zanzibar, life in the palace, the concept of education at the time, Islamic traditions, comparisons between Europe and the East, and the position of women in Islam. While she fearlessly shattered Western prejudices about the Arab and Islamic worlds, her work remained distant from romance and tragedy—perhaps because she was in financial hardship, or perhaps because she preferred not to recall certain memories.

A Princess’s Memoirs: Vivid Portraits of an Era

Salme’s (Emily Ruete’s) memoirs begin with descriptions of the Beit al-Mtoni palace, where she lived until the age of seven, portraying both the physical structure and the lives of its inhabitants.
She details the palace rituals, table manners, meals, the children’s horseback riding lessons, clothing, and her father’s treasures. Salme particularly notes that the palace kitchen included not only Arab dishes but also meals from Turkish and Persian cuisine.

She recalls that there was even a Turkish bath (commonly referred to as a Persian bath, though she clarifies it was in fact Turkish) in the palace—something unmatched elsewhere in Zanzibar at the time.
In addition to Arabic and Swahili, the palace’s spoken languages included Persian, Turkish, Circassian, Nubian (Sudanese Arabic), and Amharic (the language of Abyssinia).

(According to one study, all of Seyyid Said’s children were born to concubines. Among the mothers identified were Circassian, Georgian, Abyssinian, and Syrian women.)

 

The Daughter of a Circassian Concubine

Princess Salme speaks at length of her admiration and love for her father, whom she lost when she was only twelve:

“As one of Seyyid Saïd's youngest children, I never knew him without his venerable white beard. Taller in stature than the average, his face expressed remarkable kindness and amiability though at the same time his appearance could not but command immediate respect. Despite his pleasure in war and conquest, he was a model for us all, whether as parent or ruler. His highest ideal was justice, and in a case of delinquency he would make no distinction between one of his own sons and an ordinary slave.”

 

She recounts that her mother, Jilfidan, who was Circassian, lived peacefully with her siblings on her father’s estate until war broke out in their homeland. Although her family took refuge in an underground cellar, Jilfidan’s parents were killed by marauders, and she and her siblings were carried off on horseback. Entering Seyyid Said’s household at a very young age, Jilfidan never heard from her siblings again.

Princess Salme does not describe how her mother came to Zanzibar.
Researcher and writer Mehdi Nüzhet Çetinbaş, founder of the Turkey Caucasus Foundation, suggests: “At that time, relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Omani Kingdom were cordial, so the Circassian concubine may have been gifted from the Ottoman court to Oman. While she was called Gülfidan in the Ottoman palace, in Zanzibar the name may have been pronounced Jilfidan, since the Turkish phonetic system lacks the letter ‘j’.”

Salme remembers her mother as tall, with long jet-black hair reaching down to her knees. She notes that her mother learned to read in the palace, read extensively, crafted beautiful needlework, was devout, and cared for the sick in the palace with affection. In her memoirs, however, Salme gives no hints of Circassian traditions—likely because Jilfidan, having been taken to the palace as a child, grew up without exposure to them.

Education in the Palace vs. Education in Europe

According to Salme, all children in the palace began formal learning at around six or seven years old. Girls were taught only to read (in Arabic), while boys were required to learn both reading and writing. Salme, however, secretly taught herself to write.

She notes that the palace had no special classrooms; tutors who came to the palace sometimes gave lessons on the veranda, sometimes in other rooms. Salme sharply criticized European schooling, where children spent hours in cold, crowded buildings breathing the same stale air:

“Give me my airy veranda—what good is the highest education if, in striving for it, the body is ruined?”

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Europe’s View of the East and Islam

In much of her memoirs, Princess Salme describes Islamic practices and how Islam was observed in the palaces of Zanzibar.
Although she converted to Christianity and chose to live in Europe, she passionately criticized Europeans’ perspective on Islam and the East:

“European culture offends the Mahometan’s religious views in countless ways. They often ridicule the Turkish half-education, yet the Turks have done more than is good for them to become civilised, if only superficially. The Turks have weakened themselves by those endeavours, in spite of which they have still remained uncivilised, because European civilisation contradicts and opposes all their fundamental axioms. You cannot produce civilisation by force, and you should allow other nations the right to follow their own ideas and traditions — which must have developed as the result of mature experience and practical wisdom — in seeking enlightenment after their own fashion.”

Alongside her pride in being an Arab woman, Salme firmly rejected the Western portrayal of Eastern women as oppressed or downtrodden. She highlighted strong women in her own family, proudly recalling her great-aunt, whom she described as a symbol of cunning, courage, and efficiency. This aunt, admired even by enemies, disguised herself in men’s clothes to inspect guard posts at night and sometimes escaped capture only thanks to her horse’s swiftness.

She also emphasized that Eastern women, as wives, were no less valued than Western women—indeed, often more so:

“My father’s principal wife, Azze bint Sef, from the royal family of Oman, held absolute authority in her household. Though small and unimposing in appearance, she exercised unrivaled power over her husband, who readily adopted all her ideas.”

Salme explained that in her early years in Germany, her eagerness to learn the language was driven by her determination not to allow society to belittle her as “an Arab woman.” Even after abandoning Islam, she consistently remembered and embraced her Arab identity throughout her years in Germany.

Her memoirs reveal how much she longed for her tranquil African life, how she constantly compared East and West, and how critically she viewed the West.

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Salme’s Views on Slavery

Salme recalled that when the Anglo-Zanzibari Treaty of 1873 required British subjects in Zanzibar to emancipate their slaves, she was still a child. Her father, Seyyid Said, however, believed this requirement applied only to the British; they had no right to impose their laws on Zanzibar, and slavery would continue in the East as elsewhere.

While Salme condemned slavery—“ Tyranny must be condemned, whether inflicted upon the poor Negro, or the civilised white toiling in a Siberian mine.” she argued that its immediate abolition was neither possible nor wise.

“You must not shape your views of slavery in the East by examples from North America and Brazil, for the slaves of a Muslim are infinitely better off.”

She added that unlike the Christian West, which resold its slaves even after long years of service, Arabs often freed theirs.

In her memoirs, she recalls that slaves lived with their families inside the palace, were trained in certain skills, received gifts during holidays, and were treated with justice.

Yet she also noted the racial hierarchies of the time. Sometimes aristocratic women were close friends with slaves, though these were often Circassian or Abyssinian rather than Black Africans. The deeper divisions within the palace were also apparent:

“The beautiful and costly Circassians, fully conscious of their superior qualities and value, refused to sit at the same table with the brown Abyssinian women.”

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The Princess Salme Museum

Princess Salme’s life was marked by struggles to return to her homeland and restore her lost dignity. She entered the pages of history as an observant, inquisitive, and analytical figure who lived through turmoil. She was a young widow, a mother, and a woman who—despite changing her name and religion—never escaped the contradictions of her identity.

A Circassian-born Arab princess whose heart remained in Africa, Salme wanted her extraordinary life to be remembered by future generations. Today, her memory lives on both in the Princess Salme Museum in Zanzibar’s historic Stone Town and in the “Princess Salme Room,” established in 1994 within the Zanzibar Palace Museum, where her memoirs are displayed alongside her belongings and photographs.

📖 Sources:

• Memoirs of an Arabian Princess (Digital Library, UPenn)
• JSTOR — Emily Ruete Studies
• CH-Gender Research Institute

This article was originally published in Independent Türkçe, on June 5,2024.