Arabic Inscribed Turkish WW1 Officer Photo-- Wearing German Style Ribbon Bar

[Rick Research]

This man was a First Lieutenant (Mulazim i-Evvel), I would have said of artillery since his buttons appear to bear crossed cannons, but his collar is not black the way my British Intelligence book on the Turkish army says it should have been.

Just snaggled this off eBay.

[Rick Research]

Check out his ribbon bar! German 15mm style:

1) Turkish War Medal, with full mini star device!

2) Prussian Iron Cross, with MINI CROSS DEVICE (Hey! Is THIS where those Saxons got the idea? If the TURKS wore these while the war was still going on!... )

3) Austro-Hungarian Military Merit Cross 3rd Class with War Decoration (! and only an "Oberleutnant!"?)

4) ? Saxon Albert Order-Knight 2nd with Xs?

[Rick Research]

And here's the inscription, in case Dave Danner can decipher the scribbled Turkish. Probably something like "cordial regards, Achmed." This is the ONLY Turkish officer's portrait photo I've ever seen come up. The back has Arabic and Latin Stamboul photographer's "Postkarte Turkei" lines

[ccj]

I like it.

I tell ya, I jwould love to find a cap and tunic like that. I cannot find any Turkish WWI era uniforms items. French are hard to find to.
Everybody should have a french uniform in the closet. Maybe a Romanian or Bulgarian to.

[Rick Research]

Searching 11,000 Albert Orders Knights 2nd with Xs, I found exactly FOUR Turks: Oberleutnant dR Ibrahim Mounier Bey on 4/7/1916 (double entry), no unit, and three Leutnants dR all with Saxon Inf Rgt 177 for some reason and all on the same day, 29.4.17: Niati, Said, Tewfik.

[Dave Danner]

The signature is the thrid line of text. Arabic signatures I find virtually unintelligible, although it doesn't appear to start with an N or a T, so Said is more likely. As for the first two lines of text, I can identify maybe half the individual letters, but not enough to tell if it's names or words. One of the words looks like fistik, which means pistachio.

Dave

[Rick Research]

So it's a grocery list?!

[Eric Gaumann]

Nice lid.

I'd hate to have to wear that everyday, in the summer, whilst on parade or guard duty.

[Frank Heukemes]

Looks like a "tube cut" afro.

On a more serious note:

How can a breast star award have a ribbon on a ribbon bar with star device? That confuses me (although I have seen that star with the attached ribbon in the International Forum).

Cheers, Frank

[Rick Research]

Ayuh, quite weird and interesting, huh? Hannibal and Jeff have the big expensive Turkish awards book, which shows the full mini-star on ribbon bar ribbon:

I'm surprised that THAT was never adopted as "even more flashy" by German recipients.

Also-- I thought it was QUITE interesting to see the mini EK2 cross, being worn during the war-- which we associate with being a basically SAXON fashion statement, 1918 on.

The furry hat was indeed supposedly for normal everyday wear. I saw on TV a bunch of tottering old survivors in their WW1 uniforms and medals wearing these in Turkey for the 75th Anniversary of the Allied Gallipoli landings in 1990!

[Rick Research]

Brought up-- I did not realize that the old scans were GONE--

I have replaced these above for new member tunca2 and I am going right this minute to make BETTER scans with my NEW scanner!

It seems this officer is a family member-- what a small planet we live on.

First Lieutenant Ibrahim Münir, whose photo was taken in Istamboul, then went to Germany, then to an eBay dealer in Salt Lake City-- and there to MY house...


is now going to go home

[Rick Research]

This photo left Turkey almost 90 years ago. It has travelled halfway across our planet, to the home of someone whose family has not moved 100 miles in 360 years!

And now it goes back to where it came from-- to where it BELONGS.

[Rick Research]

But I will still enjoy the memory of this image!

[gregM]

I really like the mini Turkish star.

[Bob Lembke]

Turkish Photo

Rick;

It's great that you got this photo back to the family. Super!

From your comments I know you know this, but to clarify it for others, Turkish, until the reforms of Ataturk, used the Arabic alphabet, but is a very different (and much more difficult) language. Especially in those days, an educated Turk would weave a lot of Arabic and Persian, some as poetry, into his writing, so decyphering written material of the WW I period is very difficult. There is a very interesting translation of a diary of a young Turkish officer who fought on the ANZAC front, called something like "Lone Pine Journal", and the guy who bought the manuscript, a Turk in Istanbul, spent months finding someone who could read it and transliterate it into modern Turkish. It has since been translated into English.

Was in Istanbul the first time about 6-7 years ago, and I can't read a word of Arabic, but speak a bit, but the religious cab drivers had green religious banners the width of the dashboard, and I could read the slogans, since religious Turkish is actually Arabic, but it was written in the Latin script, Ataturk's reform. Stuff like Allah Akbar (God is great!) World's mose honest cab drivers.

My exceedingly clever wife, who reads 11 languages well, and dozens of others quite badly, says Turkish is a language created by people with "too much time on their hands". Levels of complexity one could not imagine.

The Military Museum (Askari Muze) in Istanbul is fantastic. It was founded in 1453 (the collection, not the present building), and has never been looted, so it has an amazing collection. They favor the "bloody shirt". If someone important is asassinated, his tunic is cleaned, patched, put on display; but next to it is the guy's white shirt he wore under the tunic, bullet holes, enormous blood-stains, etc. Lest one forgets. They have a present day Turkish Army band that performs in the museum; it is a 15th Century military band, performing in costume, armor, etc., great, weird, wonderful.

The German awards may be due to service in the Turkish army corps (the XV Army Corps, if memory serves) who fought on the Eastern Front against the Russians.

My father fought at Galipolli, in the volunteer pioneer company that fought there, and he loved the Turks, and was able to smuggle 33 P08s to them in the 1920s, when the Greeks were invading. Their technical skills were not that high, of course, but they were amazingly brave; he rated them better than any soldiers, except the best German storm formations, such as the Sturm=Bataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr), which he fought with detailed as a Flammenwerfer=Pionier.

Will be in Istanbul again in September, amazing place, recommend it to all.

Bob Lembke