Turkish Army medical staff Asir, Yemen 1918

[celeborn1]

Hi William

I was speaking of the map behind my grandfather - not the one of Europe to his right - its impossible to make out the title, but the map outlines on the RHS of the image, if zoomed, look like the dardanelles, and one of the islands by the side of his head. I adjusted contrast and brightness on my image here and it stands out better. I had made the assumption that he was in Paris when WWI broke out, but a photo of him with a group in French military uniform might indicate that it was before that when he trained.

Your grandfather didn't teach you any Ottoman Turkish did he? I've got some information on the Ottoman civil calendar, and a list of Ottoman characters, but the only thing that seems to fit is the date 1334, for 1918, year of my mother's birth. I think the ANU in Canberra has some Experts in Ottoman Turkish, I'll start there, anyway.

Regards
Viviane

[glaswegian]

viviane,

would it be possible fer ye tae e-mail me a photo o the birth certificate in high resulation?,

a wull pm ye ma e-mail!!

regards

william

[Bill Woerlee]

Viviane

Howdy and thanks for sharing your family history. I have found the topic fascinating to date.

The map is most definitely of the Turkish Empire in Europe prior to 1913. You can see a truncated Servia and Bulgaria with the Turkish Empire reaching the Adriatic Sea. Montenegro is the dark shading to the west of the map. This is a map of the political geography prior to the Treaty of London on 17 May 1913. If this is the latest map the your GF owned that was right up to date when the pic was taken, then you would readily conclude that it was taken in 1912. However, that is a whole raft of assumptions and so it is impossible to use the map to date the particular pic save to say that it was taken when your GF was in his twenties - but that is because of his appearance rather than the map.

Cheers

Bill

[infantry]

Dear Viviane,
The second column at the birth certificate is giving the name of the father (pederinin ismi ve şöhreti) as Tabib Binbaşı (doctor major) Mehmed Saib Efendi
Regards

[celeborn1]

TurkishGfrQuHotelDieuDoctorsSWEdit.jpg

GFatherTurkishQuHotelDieuDoctorsEdit02.jpg

Hello all
Apologies for the silence for the last week, family distractions going on.

Bill, thank you for your input - if the map behind my GF is of the Ottoman Empire before 1913, about, say, 1912, and my GF is already a doctor - say he began his medical studies at the earliest 17 years, probably later, 6 years for the training, he was at least 23 or 24 in 1912, if not older. So born about 1888 or earlier...

'Infantry', your information is very exciting - I've been poring over the letters on the certificate all week with Ottoman Turkish letters, alphabet, dictionary (into Turkish) and Turkish-English dictionaries - an impossible task for me, I know, but it won't prevent me from having a go. At least I can now identify a few letters... but the handwriting makes it more difficult than if it was printed. So now I'll be looking to find my grandfather's name on the certificate - can you give me any more information as to what is on the document? Am trying to work out how my mother put his name as Kemal on her marriage certificate - unless her mother called him by that name for some reason. I have a feeling I read recently that Kemal means 'perfect' - is that correct?

Tosun, thanks for the address in Turkey - I will try to follow that up once I have information of what is on the birth certificate. I read that the Ottoman forces in Yemen were cut off from Turkey by the Allies & the Arab forces with Lawrence of Arabia - I'm wondering if my grandparents were with those forces, and what it must have been like for them - with a small baby as well. So I'm slowly beginning to gather informatrion on that theatre of war. The strangest thing is that during WWII my father was in Palestine, before being sent to Egypt & the western desert war - he met my mother in Cairo...

Dominic, thank you for the link to the book on medicine & disease in the Ottoman Army, I have ordered a copy, and looking forward to its arrival. Have been trying to find books on the Ottoman Turkish language (in English..) but they are difficult to find.

A couple of photos of my GF, I think in France at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Paris where I believe he trained. I have no explanation of why three figures in the first are blacked out, except that it is a process that was done during the developing of the print off the negative, I think using a process called dodging. The other, seemingly a class or group in an operating theatre is, I think, civilian - at least some of them, the back row, right, is a lady who seems to be part of the group.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Cheers, Viviane

GFatherTurkishQuHotelDieuDoctorsEdit02.jpg

[glaswegian]

hello Vivane

i hae received your e-mail, just give me a few days!

Best Wishes

W.T

[glaswegian]

Hallo Viviane

Here is the Translation,i have done as much as i can

Best Wishes

[celeborn1]

Hello all

Many thanks, William for your efforts on the birth certificate - with your and Infantry's contributions, I have a good beginning to deciphering the document. I have found a good site explaining the transition from printed to written lettering in Ottoman Turkish - www.islamharfleri.com - and am slowly working through the lessons, with the help of a Turkish dictionary (the site is in Turkish..).

Dominic, the book you recommended, Death & Disease on the Battlefield, has arrived - thank you for that link - its really interesting and gives a vivid perspective of the sickness and epidemics that accompanied the armies. Erickson's works on WWI (Ordered to Die) and the Balkan conflict have been ordered, I'm looking forward to their arrival.

The next step is to contact the Turkish military archives once I can confirm all the detail on the certificate.

Regards, Viviane

[Tosun Saral]

Viviane, I hope you learn old Ottoman Turkish letters if you work really hard. Old Ottoman Turkish letters originated from Arab letter system was used by Turks after their acception of islam. This means that more then 1500 years Turks wrote and read Ottoman Turkish letters. To learn these letters were very hard. The little pupils at elementry schools learned under pressure, torture and beating. The Hodja the teacher had a long stich with a sharp pin at the point hit the pupils every time when they read wrongly or when they couldnt read. It took many years to learn such letters. There was also another disadvantage. The arabic letters didnt fit to Turkish spellings.

Even in the empire the intellectuals tried to reform the letters. They found new symbols that fit to Turkish. Enver Pasha the commander in chief of the Ottoman Armies found a new letters sytems which they used in corrospondance of the army.

For that many reasons Mustafa Kemal Ataturk changed in 1929 old Ottoman Turkish letters into new Turkish letters.
Now the pupils at elementry schools learn to write and read New Turkish Letters within 2 weeks without torture, not under pressure or beating. They even learn the letters easly from TV before the school.

The omly problem is there are millions of ancient books documents written in old Turkish letters. They are waiting in the archives to be translated. But there are only few at university who can read them. The islamic clergymen can only read Kuran the holy book of islam.

[infantry]

Dear Vivianne,
Gumbirsingpun's transliteration is more or less correct . He did a very good work.
But I want to point out another interesting thing that I recently came across. The memoirs of two Bulgarian military doctors were published in a single volume (in French) just recently. Even though these Bulgarian doctors visited Yemen during 1877-78 period, their account is worth reading.

H. STAMBOLSKI & J. LJUBENOV, LE YÉMEN EN 1877-78 TEL QUE L’ONT VU DEUX MÉDECINS BULGARES Traduction, introduction et notes de Bernard Lory

You can get the book via publisher's web site.
http://www.theisispress.org/
Regards

[glaswegian]

hallo infantry,my freend

tis verra kind o you tae say so,thanks

william tuna

[celeborn1]

Hello everyone

William, Infantry is right, your translation was pretty much spot on - I've heard back from the lecturer at the ANU who teaches Ottoman Turkish - he sent me a transcription as well as a translation, and am now able to match some of the words to the Ottoman script.

Tosun, it must have been hard for the Turkish schoolchildren early last century - I am an adult and finding it a challenge (an interesting one, though) so for small children it must have been awful, especially with the threat of the teacher's stick...

The translation I received from Canberra shows the town to be Abha in Asir. Also that the date of the document itself was 20 Subat 1331 (4 March 1916), some months later than the dates of the birth. I ran the Hicri and Mali dates on a calender converter called Computus, and they correspond to 3 May 1915. It would only read 1918 if the Mali date was 1334, which it is not, that is the Hicri date, which corresponds to 1915. So that leaves the question of why the document only came into existence several months after the birth, and what was happening in the war at that stage. The dates raise a number of questions - were they correct, and my mother born 3 years earlier than I thought, or, if she was in fact born in 1918, were they deliberately backdated and why, or the document was prepared in haste and the dates mixed up. I don't think mistakes are the most likely reason, so I'm busy reading all I can about the TurKish Army in general in WWI - Erickson describes Yemen-Arabia as a relatively quiet backwater of the war, and thats about all he says about it. But there were 4 divisions there, quite a lot of men, so they must have been doing something - I think there was a garrison at Lahej, and the Turks kept the British stuck in Aden, from what I have read so far.

I'm about halfway through Ordered to Die (really interesting), and Defeat in Detail awaiting my reading. Also a history of the Ottoman Empire called Osman's Dream by Caroline Finkel - don't know anything about it, so hope its good. The general impression I'm getting so far is that Enver Pasha made some really bad strategic decisions and either hadn't done his homework on the state of things or was self-deluded. Perhaps I am being too harsh?? I'm not a military expert..

Have emailed the International Red Cross with a request for information as the family were taken prisoner by the British at some stage, but the reply could take some months.

So my current plan of attack is to find out as much as possible about the Arabia-Yemen theatre of war, from the British as well as Turkish side. And work out when the family may have been taken to Cairo by the British. In the meantime, continue with the Ottoman Turkish which is getting me a bit hooked....

Infantry, I'll send for the book you recommended, sounds interesting, thank you.

regards

Viviane

[infantry]

Dear Viviane,
Reach me offline. I can provide the digital versions of several important works on Yemen and Asir Fronts
Regards

[turcoscot]

Dear Viviane,
I have read the discussion and find it very interesting indeed; I have spent some time trying to track down the records of my own grandfather, and it has been very interesting. Regarding your question, I have a colleague here on the faculty who is from Egypt, and whose wife I believe is of Turkish descent; she might know of your grandfather' family, or know someone who did. If you can send me some information on the Egyptian angle I can ask him if it rings any bells.

Reha Uzsoy

[celeborn1]

Dear Reha,
The information that I had from my mother on the Egyptian side of things was that she and her parents (she was too young to remember this) were taken prisoner of war by the British - I am assuming at the end of the war, but possibly before, I don't know - and that the family was taken to Cairo. Her father (she told me) worked in a British military hospital and I think when they became free, he built up a practice in Cairo, where they made good friends. He wished to return to Turkey to support Kemal Ataturk and the Young Turk movement. My grandmother apparently was not happy about this idea, as they were settled and had made friends, but anyway, they went to Istanbul, where I believe his parents were.

They lived in Uskudar, I think - he died when my mother was about 4 years old. She then returned with her mother to Cairo, and I believe contact with the Turkish relatives was lost. My mother has some very early childhood memories of her father, which would be consistent with her being about 4 years old. After returning to Cairo, my grandmother taught school, and eventually became director of the Ecole Chakour, Rue Nashati, Choubra - a school (and boarding school) for girls, where the curriculum was in the French mould, I believe. My mother was brought up at this school, and her mother resumed her maiden (Romanian) name of Helene Dulguro, and my mother was known as Noemi Dulguro. However, her marriage certificate of course bears her surname as her father's name. My mother taught at the school when she became an adult, and met my father (English) in Cairo during the WWII. (He was in the RAF). They married in Cairo in 1942.

Hopefully the school may sound familiar with your colleague, and his wife may have heard of the family name. I much appreciate your help.

To Infantry:
I've sent you a PM with my email - it is in my Outbox at present, but says it has been sent, so hope you receive it. let me know if its gone astray.

Regards to all

Viviane