The Société Immobilière Ottomane de Constantinople is a real estate company operating in the capital of the Ottoman Empire in the Belle Époque. This Founder's Bearer Share, bilingual in French and Ottoman (Arabic script), was issued on 30 June 1914 — exactly one month after Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination (28 June) and barely five weeks before Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia (28 July), which would trigger World War I. The panoramic vignette depicting the Bosphorus is of great beauty: this strait linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara is the geographical and symbolic soul of Constantinople. The French/Ottoman bilingualism reflects the role of French as the language of business and diplomacy in the late Ottoman Empire. Printed by the Chaix printing house of Paris, a firm renowned for the quality of its financial securities and artistic posters, the share displays careful graphic execution. The Ottoman Empire would join the Central Powers in October 1914 and disappear in 1922. This document is thus one of the last shares issued by an Ottoman company before the war that would end the Empire.