ANKARA: Neslisah Osmanoglu, an Ottoman princess who married an Egyptian prince and was twice forced into exile when both royal households were abolished, has died. She was 91.Neslisah Sultan, or Princess Neslisah, died in Istanbul on Monday, according to her nephew, Abdulhamid Kayihan Osmanoglu. He didn't give the cause of death, but new reports said it was a heart attack. A funeral ceremony was being held Tuesday for the princess, who was the oldest member of the Ottoman dynasty.

Neslisah Sultan was born in Istanbul on Feb 4, 1921, two years before the Turkish Republic replaced the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Turkey, parts of the Middle East and eastern Europe for 600 years. Her grandfather, the last Ottoman Sultan Vahdettin, and all other members of the dynasty were sent into exile in 1924, and the princess spent her childhood and adolescence in Nice, France, before moving to Egypt.

“When we were in exile we lived longing for the country,” she told historian Murat Bardakci, whose biography of the princess was published last year. “My mother had friends who would go to Istanbul. I would ask them to bring me back a bit of soil from Istanbul, but none did.”—AP