Princess Badiya Bint Ali bin Al Hussein, the last princess of the royal family in Iraq, died Saturday evening in a hospital in the British capital, London, at the age of 100 years.
Princess Badiya was born in 1920 in Damascus, and spent her childhood in Mecca, before and the beginning of republican rule in Iraq in 1958.
Princess Badiya is the daughter of King Ali bin Al-Hussein, the last king of the Hashemite Kingdom, the granddaughter of Sharif Al-Hussein bin Ali, king of the Arabs and leader of the Great Arab Revolution, moving to Baghdad, after the establishment of the Hashemite Kingdom in Iraq in 1921 by King Faisal I, and she is the last princess of the royal family and the survivor of the Al-Rehab massacre, where the ruling was eliminated The monarchy a the niece of King Faisal I, the first king of Iraq, and the niece of King Abdullah I, king and founder of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
She is also the sister of Prince Abdel-Ilah who worked as a trustee of King Faisal II between 1939-1953 before they were killed by Nuri Al-Saeed after the 1958 coup.
Princess Badiya survived the coup because she was absent from Al-Rehab Palace when her brother was killed. She took refuge in the Saudi embassy in Baghdad and fled from Iraq to Cairo. She spent some time in Egypt and then moved to Switzerland and then to the United Kingdom.
Princess Badiya is one of the most prominent opponents of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and her son sought to re-establish the monarchy in Iraq, but his efforts did not receive widespread support.
In the aftermath, the Royal Jordanian Court issued a statement in which it mourned “Her Royal Highness Princess Badiya, the daughter of King Ali bin Al Hussein,” according to the text of the condolence.
