12/06/2022
Sultan AbdulHamid’s Some Innovations
He established 32 schools to train teachers (Bursa Çelebi Mehmet school as its current name), opened a Girls Teacher School (Daarül Malumat).
• He had primary schools built in each village where there was a mosque (for example, the number of primary schools in only Sivas is 1637), he increased the literacy rate by 5 times, (in 1900, the number of primary schools was 29.130, there were 14 thousand primary schools in only Anatolia)
• The number of secondary schools (Rüşdiye) increased to 619, French lessons were given.
• 109 highschools were opened (İstanbul Men-Kabataş High School ...)
• He established the world's first dental school and university in Istanbul.
• Naval Engineer School, Military Medical School (the ancestor of GATA), Kuleli Military School, Military Schools, Military Veterinary School, Staff Officer School, Faculty of Political Sciences, Medical School (Marmara Unv. Faculty of Medicine), School of Law, Agriculture and Veterinary School, Engineering msc School, Supreme Court of Justice School, Business School, Maritime Business School, Fine Arts Faculty, Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences, Tribe School (to spread the idea of Ottomanity), School of Silkworming in Bursa, School of Mute and Blind, Viticulture and Cooking School, Forest and Mining School, Police School were founded by him.
• And also, he founded a Shepherd School in Ankara.
The throne was a period when nationalist uprisings peaked.With 1829 the Edirne Treaty the Greek declared independence, followed with 1878 the Berlin Treaty, and Serbs, Montenegro and Romanians declared their independence. The lands were being lost. But oddly enough, he sensed that the Muslim lands he called as ‘ours” were going to be lost.
England, which has an eye for the underground wealth of this region, was conducting serious studies on this region through its agents.
II. AbdulHamid Khan embraced the idea of ummah against this policy and tried to activate the caliphate. With the support of Germany and the Berlin-Baghdad Railway Project he could control the people of the region. This was the political side of his project.
One of the most important characteristics of AbdulHamid was the importance he gave to education. He believed that salvation would be through education. For this reason, he started a big educational project.
He opened the Tribe Schools. On September 21, 1892, with these schools, he took the children of tribal leaders and tribe’s kids in the places where Arabians were and began training in Istanbul. Then, four students were taken from each places like Aleppo, Syria, Mosul, Basra, Diyarbakir, Tripoli, Jerusalem and Benghazi.
The only condition wanted was that these students had to be 12-16 years old. The education period was extended from two years to five years.
Besides the religious sciences such as Qur'an, Hadith, Fiqh, Catechism; French, Turkish, Geography, interstate relations and politics, military courses were taught.
Later, with the intense desire of the people of the region, tribe schools spread the country wide. Graduates of this school entered the military and civil service schools.
However, in 1907, the deep forces made AbdulHamid close these schools for various reasons.
Imam Hatip High Schools, which today are the stakeholders of the Tribe Schools, were closed down and made ineffective for a time.
Whom do the enemies of AbdulHamid who knew that spirituality was the only power to hold this country together call as the enemy today?
Let’s look at other innovations:
• He opened our first modern pharmacy and brought electricity and gas for the first time.
• He brought the first car and had a 5,000 km road built.
• He had one of the world's first subways between Karaköy and Taksim built, and established equestrian and electric trams.
• Jerusalem-Jaffa, Ankara-Istanbul and Hejaz railways were built (also Haydarpaşa Train Station)
• He had thousands of photographs of Istanbul taken and started archeology museum studies.
• He is the first person to make our country enter in the tourism fair in Chicago.
• After the rabies vaccine was found, he opened the first Rabies Hospital in Turkey (Istanbul Darü’l-Kelb Treatment Center).
• He enabled the entry of detective novels into our country (only about 200 books out of 4000 published in 14 years were related to religion.)
• In his orders to schools (including Christian schools), he wanted Turkish to be taught well, lifted the ban on Turkish in Azerbaijani schools, established the Islamic Complex in Paris!
• During the war of Thessaly, he had the palace ladies sew clothes for the soldiers, visited hospitals and asked the patients' needs, and had his men serve them even in the garden of the palace!
• He took the island of Le**os back from the French with the money from the personal property of his wife Lady Fatma Pesend he insisted to give!
• He insisted on wearing local fabrics, established Hereke cloth factory and fez factory.
• He established Ziraat Bank and opened Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture.
• Yıldız Çini factory and Beykoz and Kağıthane paper factories were opened.
• Mass circumcision ceremonies were made and sent gold to each child, so in the summer, collective circumcision became fashionable.
• He sent gift books to students at graduation ceremonies.
• He distributed coal to the poor people by paying out of his own pocket.
• Considering the letter of Armenian Onnik, he had a leg made with his own money.
• Each year, a part of his savings was allocated to rescue those imprisoned for debt.
• He brought the modern printing press to Turkey, gave free books, 6 thousand books were translated. He founded Beyazıt Library and donated 30 thousand books (10 thousand of them are manuscripts),
• He awarded foreign scientists and writers.
• He bought 30,000 flower pots every year and planted flowers.
• He made rose breeding in the place we call Hekimbası garbage dump (rose breeding started in Isparta under his leadership)
• The clock towers were built in many parts of Turkey! (Izmir, Turkey Dolmabahce ..)
• He sent ambassadors and clergy to India, Javan, Afghanistan, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Aceh, Zengibar, Central Asia and Japan.
• He started diplomacy with Latin American countries.
• He had the thermal springs of Yalova built. He transported the waters of Terkos to Istanbul. He had a fountain built in a village of Bursa (He had 40 fountains built only in Istanbul)
• He watched plays and opera in the theater he had built in his palace.
• He established a music school in the palace, had his children play the piano and even created a girls' band in the palace.
• He gave his own carpentry works as a gift.
• Despite that 26 people died, 58 people were wounded in the assassination attempt by bombing, he forgave the Armenian assassin and sent him to Europe as a spy.
• With the military aid sent to East Turkestan, he organized them against the Chinese and established Hamidiye University in Beijing, the heart of China.
• He made five time prayers without interrupting, he did not sign any documents without ablution (He didn't even step on the flor. He always kept his dry ablution brick at the bottom of his bed)
• He bought new ships, guns (most guns in the Battle of Çanakkale) and rifles!
• He brought the phone to our country 5 years after Europe!
• He helped churches, synagogues (He even helped to build churches in the Vatican)
• He abolished plays containing insults to our Prophet, our religion or the Ottomans (France-England-Rome-USA) (He even talked with the German Emperor for a play)
• He rejected the US to open a consulate in Erzurum, the US warship attempting to break into the port of Izmir was shelled.
• He had two bridges designed for the Bosphorus (one of them was in the location of the Fatih S.M. bridge today)
• He had poorhouse built and also had a synagogue, church and mosque built inside.
• He opened a children's hospital (Şişli Etfal [children] Hospital).
• He appointed Namık Kemal to the governors of Rhodes and Chios, who called him as damned, paid his money out of his pocket and had his grave made for him.
• He established Postal and Telegraph Organization (Sirkeci Great Post Office Building ..)
• AbdulHamid and AbdulMecid (the world's first torpedo-throwing submarines) were made in Taşkızak shipyard (They were also made with the money of his own pocket!)
