Background
Ikbal Hanimefendi was born on 22 October 1876 on the Crimean Peninsula, Russian Empire. lieutenant was at his mother, the Valida Pasha"s house that the young Abbas II of Egypt first saw her.
Ikbal Hanimefendi was born on 22 October 1876 on the Crimean Peninsula, Russian Empire. lieutenant was at his mother, the Valida Pasha"s house that the young Abbas II of Egypt first saw her.
She was of Circassian ethnicity. Her personal name is unknown. She became a personal slave to the Valida Pasha Emina Ilhamy, wife of Khedive Tewfik, after being sent to the Khedive"s father in Egypt as a gift.
As beauty offered social capital in the Middle East of the time, the young handmaid"s low status did not interfere with her advancement.
While the marriage appears originally to have been a love-match, Khedive Abbas II later divorced her in 1900, after which he entered into a passionate romance with a beautiful Hungarian aristocrat from Philadelphia, Marianna Török, whom he had first met while at the Theresianum in Vienna as a student. They eventually married on 1 March 1910.
The former Khediva Consort, Ikbal, however, never remarried and died on 10 February 1941 in Jerusalem, during the British Mandate in Palestine. Together with Abbas Ikbal had six children: Princess Emina Hanimefendi (Montaza Palace, Alexandria, 12 February 1895 - 1954), unmarried and without issue Princess Atiyaullah Hanimefendi (Cairo, 9 June 1896 - 1971), unmarried and without issue Princess Fathiya Hanimefendi (27 November 1897 - 30 November 1923), unmarried and without issue His Royal Highness Prince Prince (Damat) Muhammad Abdul Muneim Bey Efendi, Heir Apparent and Regent of Egypt and Sudan, (20 February 1899 - 1 December 1979), married and had issue Princess Lutfiya Shavkat Hanimefendi (Cairo, 29 September 1900 - ?), married and had issue Prince Muhammad Abdul Kadir (4 February 1902 - Montreux, 21 April 1919).