Ottoman Turk Equipment

[shippingsteel]

Are there any collectors or militaria enthusiasts out there who have seen Turkish equipment that was marked in the native Osmanli script.

I know that the majority of the wartime supplied equipment that came from Germany was never marked, but the earlier pre-war gear was.

I have come across the Mauser rifles, the bayonets and ammunition, artillery guns and pistols. Was anything else marked in this way.?(see HERE)

Cheers, S>S

[bob lembke]

Are there any collectors or militaria enthusiasts out there who have seen Turkish equipment that was marked in the native Osmanli script.

I know that the majority of the wartime supplied equipment that came from Germany was never marked, but the earlier pre-war gear was.

I have come across the Mauser rifles, the bayonets and ammunition, artillery guns and pistols. Was anything else marked in this way.?(see HERE)

Cheers, S>S

"S>S";

Sorry to sound pedantic, by "native Osmanli script" do you mean the Arabic alphabet that in the Ottoman period was used as the alphabet for Turkish?

Incidentally, Turkish, over the years, was written with about 10 different alphabets. The Arabic alphabet actually was a poor choice for Turkish, as Turkish was a much "larger" and more complex language than Arabic. I have heard (but I am not sure) that, for example, Turkish has eight vowels, while Arabic only has three. Ottoman Turkish had a great deal of Arabic and Persian in it, especially as used by the upper classes; Kemal Attaturk's reforms got a lot of those languages out of Turkish.

Bob Lembke

[shippingsteel]

Thats right Bob, yes the written word of the period for the Turks was known as Osmanli, and it was Arabic with a few 'extras' thrown in for good measure.

Whether the Turks liked it or not, their rulers chose to use a script which many (or most) could not understand, even in those 'olden' times let alone NOW.!

Then Kemal Attaturk finished the job on that language by banning all reference to it, amidst the reforms that created the modern Turkey as we now know it.

I'm certainly no expert, but from what I've gathered the Osmanli was a mixture of Persian and Arabic, with enough subtle differences to cause a few problems.

And now after many hours of struggle, I feel fairly safe in saying that I can now read, decipher and transliterate the Osmanli script from the Great War period.

Which is a good thing, because I have found there is quite a yawning gap in the knowledge base of this writing, especially amongst collectors of such artifacts.

You can see from the limited response that I have had in these couple of threads, that knowledge of the armaments of the Turks in the GW is a little 'below par'.

And yet I have been extremely surprised at what I have uncovered in my research, regarding the standard of equipment that they were able to put into the field.

For example, shown below is a Turkish hand grenade that was locally manufactured, probably under German supervision, and reasonably modern in its design.

This style of grenade was produced in time to be used at Gallipoli, and is marked entirely in the Osmanli script. The more of this I find, the more I seem to learn.!

Cheers, S>S

[centurion]

"S>S";

Incidentally, Turkish, over the years, was written with about 10 different alphabets. The Arabic alphabet actually was a poor choice for Turkish, as Turkish was a much "larger" and more complex language than Arabic. I have heard (but I am not sure) that, for example, Turkish has eight vowels, while Arabic only has three.

I suspect you maybe conflating written Arabic (which is consistent throughout the Arab world) with spoken (which is not). I have overheard a business meeting between Arabs from the Magreb and Saudis in a coffee bar in a large hotel in Al Khobar. The salutations ('I trust you are well by the grace of God' sort of thing) were done in Arabic but the business was done in English only reverting to Arabic for the goodbyes.

AFAIK the problem with written Arabic lies with things like Ps and Bs which are not differentiated. In the Gulf Farsi variants of Arabic letters are sometimes used to overcome this but the Islamic purists hate this as it is altering the language of the Prophet. In this possibly lies the reason why Turkey chose Arabic as the same people do not consider any Koran not written in Arabic script as valid.

[Joe Sweeney]

S>S,

Here is a thread to marked Turkish equipment.

http://militarianz.freeforums.org/ww1-turkish-ammo-pouch-bought-on-ebay-t2094.html

There are also other threads on Turkish tunics etc.

Joe Sweeney

[shippingsteel]

Thanks very much for this link Joe - exactly the kind of thing that I was looking for.

Actually I think I may have come across this pouch thread once before, and for the life of me could never seem to find it again.! So thanks for your help.

That NZ militaria site continues to surprise me with the amount of good gear that turns up on it, so I may have to join up. (Shame its so far away ... )

Cheers, S>S

[bob lembke]

Going to snap on my pedant hat again. Want to bore down on some definitions. I began to interject myself as "Osmanli" has several meanings; I think it also is a description of an Ottoman Turk, not just his language.

Thats right Bob, yes the written word of the period for the Turks was known as Osmanli, and it was Arabic with a few 'extras' thrown in for good measure.

Pedant speaking: The Turkish language of the Ottoman period was called "Osmanli", I think after either "the" or "one" Turkish tribe. When the Turks arrived in Anatolia, not much before their conquest of Turkey, there were only 4000 "Turks", with 400 "Turkish cavalry". So their conquest of 60 nations in a couple of centuries is rather remarkable.

But Osmanli (or Ottoman-period Turkish) was not Arabic, it is a very different language, with very different roots, a much "larger" language, with a very different grammar. But in the Ottoman (or Osmanli) period it became fashionable to insert as much Arabic and Persian into your written or spoken text as you could, showing off your cultural level. But Attaturk purged most of that from Turkish during his reforms. There still is a bit of Arabic, at least, in common spoken Turkish. (Might be some Persian as well, I suspect.) For example, when a Turk leaves another Turk, the Turk leaving might say: "Allahaismarladik!" (The "i"s are the dot-less variety; I show my ignorance by not knowing the letter's name.) This is Arabic, not Turkish, possibly a bit different than pure Arabic; it means: "I place myself in the hands of Allah." The Turk being left will respond: "gule, gule!" (The "u"s are Uemlauts.) This is Turkish, I think it sort of means: "Happy, happy!"

Whether the Turks liked it or not, their rulers chose to use a script which many (or most) could not understand, even in those 'olden' times let alone NOW.!

I have seen two estimates that the literacy rate in Ottoman Turkey was 3-5% or 5%, despite a great bureaucracy and commercial class (the latter largely ethnic minorities); both my wife and I rate the considerably simpler Modern Turkish the most difficult major language today, all things considered.

Then Kemal Attaturk finished the job on that language by banning all reference to it, amidst the reforms that created the modern Turkey as we now know it.

I'm certainly no expert, but from what I've gathered the Osmanli was a mixture of Persian and Arabic, with enough subtle differences to cause a few problems.

What do you mean by "Osmanli" in that sentence? The main meanings of the word are either the ethnic Turk individual, or the Turkic language of the Ottoman people. I am assuming that you mean the Arabic script as used in Ottoman Turkish. Osmanli (the language) was largely Turkic, with many borrow-words and borrow-phrases from Arabic and Persian.

And now after many hours of struggle, I feel fairly safe in saying that I can now read, decipher and transliterate the Osmanli script from the Great War period.

Which is a good thing, because I have found there is quite a yawning gap in the knowledge base of this writing, especially amongst collectors of such artifacts.

You can see from the limited response that I have had in these couple of threads, that knowledge of the armaments of the Turks in the GW is a little 'below par'.

And yet I have been extremely surprised at what I have uncovered in my research, regarding the standard of equipment that they were able to put into the field.

The story of the German assistance to Turkey in and about 1915, in an attempt to supply sufficient arms and especially ammunition that actually worked, is to me, quite fascinating.

For example, shown below is a Turkish hand grenade that was locally manufactured, probably under German supervision, and reasonably modern in its design.

This style of grenade was produced in time to be used at Gallipoli, and is marked entirely in the Osmanli script. The more of this I find, the more I seem to learn.!

Cheers, S>S

Bob

PS: S>S, I am not trying to confuse you, but we need as much clarity as possible, as you state this is really complicated and not well-understood stuff.

[bob lembke]

I suspect you maybe conflating written Arabic (which is consistent throughout the Arab world) with spoken (which is not). I have overheard a business meeting between Arabs from the Magreb and Saudis in a coffee bar in a large hotel in Al Khobar. The salutations ('I trust you are well by the grace of God' sort of thing) were done in Arabic but the business was done in English only reverting to Arabic for the goodbyes.

My Arabic is very limited, but astonishingly the US Army approached me about five years ago for me to suit up and go to Iraq as a translator. (I wisely did not respond. I am sure that I would have gotten someone killed, quite possibly myself. The BBC has recently filmed, in Afghanistan, a US interpreter admitting to a village elder that he did not speak a word of the language that the Army was assuming that he spoke. That was in a combat situation. We are paying US translators in Afghanistan $235,000 a year; I was told that the firm that supplies the translators receives a million $$s. a year.) Without going out of my way, I manage to chatter a bit of Arabic about five times a week in Center-city Philadelphia. I am aware of the different dialects; my Arabic (such as it is), is mostly Standard Arabic (if that is what it is called), with a tiny bit of Carine Arabic (i.g., "Egyptian"), which I understand Palestinians understand (I only have one word of correctly Palestinian Arabic, a local term for "Arab bread") and I can recognize some Koranic Arabic from the herd. I rented an apartment to a freshly arrived Morrocan woman with a French Ph. D.; she had no spoken Engish (for about two weeks), and her minders were delighted that I had French and some Arabic, and I got the rental. She turned out to have four dialects of Arabic, and on her last trip to North Africa she came back with an Egyptian boy-toy, a tennis pro. She wore the pants in that Muslim family. (I understand that in the UK these artifacts are called toy-boys.) She offered to tutor my wife and I in Arabic, but my wife was not in the mood. Lost opportunity. (My wife has the Arabic alphabet, but not a word of vocabilary; I don't know the alphabet at all.) The Morrocan lady moved to Canada, as she could not get a visa for her Egyptian husband.

Bob

[shippingsteel]

Want to bore down on some definitions. I began to interject myself as "Osmanli" has several meanings ...

S>S, I am not trying to confuse you, but we need as much clarity as possible, as you state this is really complicated and not well-understood stuff.

I know what you are getting at Bob and I agree with some of your points. It is a complicated subject which is difficult to communicate in just a few lines.

However in this setting I try to limit myself to just a few lines, so there will always be cases of oversimplification, for most readers though this will be enough.

This is one of the major reasons that I strongly dislike pedantry when it occurs in THIS context on the forum. How is it possible to write all the points clearly.?

Most people will get the message easily enough, but of course any experts that are reading will pick up on the bits that are not incorporated in the message.

To cut a long story short HERE is a link to a modern definition of the word Osmanli, and it is this definition that I am using when speaking of this language.

Cheers, S>S

[shippingsteel]

Does anyone out there collect belt buckles.? Shown below is an example of the standard Turkish belt buckle that is inscribed with the Osmanli script.

It seems quite a lot of the Turkish equipment found its way back 'down under' with the returning ANZAC troops, who were always quick to grab a souvenir.

Was it the same in the UK for the troops that returned from Gallipoli.? And is there much interest in collecting the Turkish militaria over there these days.?

Cheers, S>S

[trajan]

Does anyone out there collect belt buckles.? Cheers, S>S

First one I have ever seen! I'll keep an eye open for any more.

Trajan

[shippingsteel]

Hi Trajan, you would not believe that I've now deciphered and transcribed 20 of the different Osmanli inscriptions that I've found during my research.!

Came across some old archived dictionaries and lexicons from the latter 1800's that had been digitalised on an 'open reader' - what a goldmine.

Cheers, S>S

[trajan]

I take my hat off to you as a scholar and gentleman and also raise an Effes Bira in your direction! BTW, the history dept. at my university welcomes Ph.D, candidates in Osmanli studies - fancy a break from whatever you do for a few years?!

Trajan

PS: Happy New Year!