War diaries - Gallipoli

[bob lembke]

I have still not posted my list of questions to "William", the curator of the Middle Eastern Studies material at my wife's university, who supposedly has good Arabic and possibly lesser Modern Turkish, about Ottoman Turkish, the Arabic alphabet used in that language(s), etc. Again, does anyone have any questions that I can pass to William? I don't think that anyone who has contributed to this thread has his qualifications to answer some of our questions.

Bob Lembke

[Eceabat]

Pals,

A bit of an update on the personal records of Ottoman troops in the First World War.

I spoke with Sahin Aldogan, one of Turkey’s leading experts on the campaign on the weekend. Sahin confirmed what Haluk Oral said about there not being a centralised personel file on each soldier.

However… (wait for it). Sahin did say that the initial file opened for a man at the centre where he was conscripted, mentioned by Haluk, would be updated during the course of that man’s career.

Now, here is the kicker. Those files were the reference point for pensions to be paid to families of those men who died while in uniform. As such, they contain information about next of kin, where the man served after joining the ranks, promotions, wounds and date of death, final rank, circumstances of death, etc.

And yes, Sahin has seen such records. Many years ago, he was able to trace one of his grandfathers who died while serving in Yemen. Previously, all his family knew was that he had gone to Yemen at the beginning of the war and never came back. Sahin only followed this up when he found out his grandmother was still receiving a pension. While this man was a second lieutenant, Sahin was also shown similar records of private soldiers.

I should mention a number of points here. One, these files only fully cover those men who lost their lives and for whom the Turkish state paid pensions. Secondly, they are not centralised but were still kept at the records office at the same regional centre where the man was called up. Thirdly, he was not sure that these records would be open to researchers off the street, remember, he was tracing a family member. Then again, it could be worth a try.

Again, this is not the whole picture and these records only covered those who died during the war and even then probably not all. Sahin said that during the War of Independence, when Greek forces occupied large parts of Turkey’s Aegean region, many of these enlistment records were destroyed. The same would probably apply in regions of eastern Turkey which were occupied by Russian forces until 1917 and areas of the Ottoman Empire lost during and after the War (sorry Bryn, this would include Syria and the records for the Arab 72nd and 77th regiments).

Sahin also said that it was possible that the Red Crescent may also have some records of men wounded or sick who were treated in hospitals, though he was not sure if these records still existed.

So, there are some records out there, though for the most part they are piecemeal and not centralised. That said, we may have added a piece or two to the puzzle.

Cheers

Bill

[Bryn]

Excellent. Thanks very much for chasing that up, Bill.

[bob lembke]

I have received a reply from William re: Ottoman Turkish. I might as well post the whole thing. I will insert a few comments after some items in italics.

" Dear Bob,

Thanks for your e-mail and interest. To answer your general question, Ottoman Turkish has quite a learning curve, in comparison with European languages. There is a lot of Arabic and Persian in Ottoman, and this can make it difficult for those who know modern Turkish to read such texts. I do not claim any degree of fluency in either, except having the ability to do title-page work in order to carry out my job requsome ents.

Looking at your questions:

1. There is no "New Ottoman" Turkish. Ottoman Turkish is written in Arabic script, with 31 letters. There are three letters that are not found in the Arabic language alphabet, but these letters are included in the Persian alphabet. (the letters, by the way, are pe, chim, and zhe).

I'm not sure what I wrote to create a question about "New Ottoman Turkish", an obvious oxymoron. I probably had a "senior moment".

2. For Ottoman Turkish, there have been several transliteration schemes. Ataturk's implemented the "new" latin-based Turkish alphabet in 1928, and as far as I know, this has remained the standard alphabet for Turkish since. However, in libraries, there are the romanization schemes for Ottoman that take into consideration the latin-script alphabet. You can see the tables and guidelines here:

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/ottoman.pdf

3. The letters of the Ottoman alphabet take different forms depending on if the letter is at the beginning, middle or end of the word. This is the same for Arabic, Persian, etc.

Megan, who has studied the Arabic alphabet, says that there is a fourth form for each, for letters standing by themselves. Perhaps such letters are not common, or this is not done in Ottoman Turkish. There is no mention of the zero, one, two, or three dots per letter. So there may be as few as 93 seperate letter-symbols. Perhaps the dots are simply some accent sign. I had thought that they are actual seperate letters. So the number of letters that would have to be recognized seem to be less than I feared.

4. Redhouse's dictionary is probably the most useful/accessible for Ottoman turkish. Newer editions are based on the Latin alphabet and do not include the Ottoman script. I have an 1890 edition in my office that is a 1974 Beirut reprint. For Ottoman Turkish and the work I need to do, I find it to be more than suitable.

For an understanding of the grammar, which can be quite complicated, I like to read the one by Nemeth. I showed this to Megan and we have another copy in the Van Pelt stacks ( PL123 .N42). It is very concise for the rules, and anything else would have to be supplemented by vocabulary acquisitions tools from elsewhere (there is not a lot available in English).

I hope this helps somewhat; obviously feel free to contact me if you would like further clarification or have additional questions....

best,

william. "

I understand that William came to this place already having excellent Arabic. At this library there are a lot of people with Ph. D.'s shelving books; I assume that he has a doctorate in Middle East linguistics, or something of the sort, and may have worked with Middle Eastern languages for 20 or more years.

It looks like that Ottoman Turkish is a bit less formidable than I thought, but still almost impossible to anyone without 10 years or so to spend to get a broad knowledge, especially for someone without already having a Turkic or Semitic language. But Bill's point that you only need a narrow sub-set of the language to read military documents is quite important.

Anyone with additional questions? I asked William how many of Penn's 24,000 students and professors know Ottoman Turkish, but he did not answer that.

Bob Lembke

PS: Again, possibly the most practical way to get into these materials usefully would be to begin supporting some Turkish people in Istanbul or Ankara (I guess) to get into the archives and actually start some research. It might simply be a matter of putting some money into this question. The archives must have some employees who can read this stuff; perhaps that can work on the side, and might have easy access. Either way, some $$s have to be spent, either for dropping out of work for a couple of years to learn this language, and then moving to Turkey; or by spending some $$s to hire Turks to do some research.

[Bryn]

I did ask what seems to me now to be a rather obvious question, which was about how Ed Erickson managed to translate the documents he refers to, but no answer has been forthcoming from anybody on that one.

If he doesn't do the 'finding' of the documents and translating himself, then he must know someone who does.

[bob lembke]

Someone may join this discussion who has as least as good qualifications to address the various questions that we have been struggling with as anyone who has posted to date. I will not be more specific as I am not sure how much he wishes to reveal about himself; many of us Pals of course "keep their cards close to his chest" and are quite coy about who they really are. (Not I, I love to talk about myself, one of my many flaws.) But it is someone who has worked in these archives, has a military background, is multi-lingual, including Turkish, (Not Ottoman Turkish, or possibly only a bit of it), and has had good access to things Turkish.

Any more questions for William, the Middle Eastern Studies librarian at the University of Pennsylvania? I personally feel that a precise understanding of the difficulties of Ottoman Turkish is vital to be able to actually proceed and eventually extract information from these archives. William's e-mail suggests to me that the linguistic problem is not quite as severe as I first thought, only mostly impossible.

Byrn; I will not presume to guess as to how Colonel Erickson translated those materials, but I assure you that he has had exceptional access to the archives and resources that most of us will not ever enjoy. However, the drift that I am getting is that access to these materials is now only difficult, not impossible. As I have pointed out, I myself have experienced having to prove my qualifications before using library materials, including in both the United States and in the UK; at the latter I had to be vetted and be approved before I could access even the most common materials in the British Library, which does not allow much reproduction of their older materials, even published books, never mind manuscript materials.

Bob Lembke

[demgbr]

Does anyone have contacts details (especially electronic) for any war diaries that cover the allies’ involvement on Gallipoli?

Cheers

Zack

Getting back somewhat to the original question that started this Forum, although I have followed the resulting discussion with interest I feel it may have drifted slightly away from the original request.

My rather mundane suggestion is that some further help may be obtainable from the following site :-

www. gallipoli-association.org.My wife and I were invited to the inauguration of their memorial plot at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alweras in Staffordshire. (My wife's father fought all through the Gallipoli Campaign) The plot was designed by a Turkish Architect who was present at the ceremony as also were representatives from the British and Australian Armed Forces amongst others. Therefore the Association seem to have close connections with their Turkish friends and together they may be in a position to answer the request above.

[Bryn]

Thanks denizon, I'm a member of the Gallipoli Association and will follow that up.

Bob, when you say, "access to these materials is now only difficult, not impossible", you are not talking about the records I'm talking about. The records I'm talking about aren't there, no matter what we're told we should 'just believe'. How difficult they may or may not be to read is irrelevant (to me) since they don't exist.

[Guest akinliat]

Hello,

I actually ran across this thread somewhat by accident, but as it happens, I have an interest in several of the issues under discussion here, and I may be able to help with some of the questions under discussion, especially those concerning the difficulties of Ottoman Turkish as a language. Some of this has already been mentioned above, but might bear repeating, so excuse me while I blather.

It's hard. I don't know who it was who saying otherwise, but that's just whistling in the dark. I noticed that someone put up an Ottoman "alphabet" for transcription, but if you try to use it, you'll notice that a) many of the forms don't actually seem to be in any Ottoman texts, and each of the letters themselves have several possible transcriptions. The first problem stems from the fact that the forms listed above are for letters that are not in words -- letters that are used as part of a word use different forms, depending on where they occur (beginning, middle, end). The second problem is due to the fact that, as someone else mentioned above, the Arabic script and Ottoman Turkish are not terribly well-suited to one another. One of the problems is that the script is designed for a language with three vowels (Turkish has at least eight, depending on how they're defined), and frequently uses consonant forms to imply vowels. Thus, in both Arabic and Ottoman, vowels are frequently not written -- somewhat more of a problem for the language that has more of them. Consonants also pose something of a problem, because the written word forms often remained static while spoken sounds evolved. Thus the word for stairs is "berpiden" or "berbiden" while pronounced "merdiven." You'll also note that there are several ways to represent a given letter -- the letter "n" can be represented by both the Arabic letter "nun" or by the Arabic letter "kef" (which is also used to represent "g" and "k"). This stems from the lost "ng" sound in old Turkish. Words such and the modern "sonra" would have been originally pronounced "songra" (the "g" sound being made as far back in throat as possible without actually choking). The sound, difficult to pronounce, died off -- the spelling remained. The end result is that you can have the same combination of letters representing different words -- words that are totally unrelated to one another. This is true to such an extent that a reader is often only sure of words that he or she has already seen (and sometimes not even then).

Of course all of this deals solely with the problems of transcription. The actual language presents entirely different issues. Turkish, modern or Ottoman, is an agglutinative language, which means that you can change not only meanings but parts of speech by simply adding syllables to a word. The best-known, if rather extreme, example of this is the word "Turklestiremedigimizlerdensiniz," which translates as "Y'all are among those whom we were unable to make Turkish." This, incidentally, is in the far-easier modern Turkish -- Ottoman Turkish combines this basic grammar with a few rules from Persian, Arabic word-form mutation, and the elliptical speech favored in classical Islamic cultures to produce obfuscations that are literally works of art.

And this brings us to the final reason that Ottoman Turkish is so difficult -- it was supposed to be. Although many of the problems outlined above were evolutionary, they were retained in the language because literacy and education were status markers. Creating prose that was fiendishly difficult to understand (while still being beautiful) was a mark of distinction in a culture where education alone was enough to qualify for admission into genteel society. The difficulties inherent in the language were designed as barriers to entry for those without the resources to devote to a fairly intensive course of study.

If any of y'all are interested in pursuing such study, I can post some images of some simple passages alongside their latin-alphabet transcriptions. I had intended on saying something about some of the other points in this thread, but having already written a small novel here, I think I'll just stop here and see what everyone says.

[bob lembke]

From what I have gathered from the various postings, there are a variety of records on individual Turkish soldiers, but they, amazingly, are not in the form that some western nations have kept and stored them. Seemingly, the most complete record on a given soldier was created when a Turkish soldier was inducted, and now we understand that the records at the regional administrative location was updated with some material sent there during his service, other material generated during his service must have gone to other locations, and some must have been destroyed or sent to other locations. Clearly there must have been a lot of material generated, due to the supposed fact that the company commander sat up half the night filling out the 146 forms that he supposedly had to produce on a regular basis.

This is in some ways similar to the situation in the German armies in WW I, where I am sure that a lot of personnel material was kept at the army corps Bizerk office (23 of them at 1914), which office also added more documentary input during the course of the war, and even after the war was over. These offices created or added to a document which I collect, one released to the individual German soldier when he left the service. I have never heard of any of this material kept in these offices being available, or even surviving. The Prussian Army records were largely destroyed in WW II, but the three other German armies' personnel to some extent still exist at the capitals of the states fielding those armies.

So the answer is that probably the most productive approach would be to figure out where those regional centers where and go there, or write, and see what still exists and what can be accessed. As I commented, part of those records seem to have been destroyed in Iraq by coalition forces. Clearly it would be almost impossible to collect a large part of these records and storing them in a central location.

So a major part of these records are scattered across a number of countries. Perhaps if the Turkish Empire had not been broken up they might be more accessible and even have been collected in a central archive, possibly the current Turkish Empire might still be using Ottoman Turkish. But Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, and the Allies pushed him off.

The person who has contacted me and hopefully will join this thread has not only worked in the (central) archives, but seems to have an interest in individuals and not just the mass. Additionally, the Turkish historian he pointed out to me has an interest in individual soldiers and not just the broad picture, which Colonel Erickson, for example, is focused on. So hopefully more information on these personnel files may soon appear in this thread.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

Akin;

Welcome to the Forum, and thank you for this learned contribution. I for one only had the slightest hint as to these complexities.

Please note the modern Turkish word in Akin's third paragraph. It certainly points out a hint of the complexity here. I can usually translate a language that I do not know, for example I am currently translating an Italian diary, but my attempt to translate modern Turkish was a head-splitter, largely due to words like the example, which usually cannot be found in a dictionary.

Additionally, my further reading shows that Ottoman Turkish was actually written in about eight different alphabets, not "merely" Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, and Persian. Alphabets that neither you or I have ever heard about.

Other problem. Someone sitting somewhere breaks his back and acquires some Ottoman Turkish, travels to say Syria to look at the personnel of Turkish Arab regiments, attempts to read the records. Draws a strike. Perhaps those records, or some of them, were actually written in Arabic in the Arabic alphabet, or at least in Ottoman Turkish with a lot more Arabic inserted that a Turkish personnel record written in Anatolia or in Istanbul would have.

What about the Persian poetry?

We are counting the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Anyone on this thread who does not have good modern Turkish, and perhaps some written Arabic, would need 5 or 10 years hard work to prepare to read these records (if they exist), and might then run into some of the problems above. Who knows if our presently good relations with Iraq and Syria will still exist in 5 or 10 years?

The practical approach would be to start talking to our Turkish friends and the few "Westerners" that have worked in these archives to see what sort of research and translation service we can organize. To further this, we have to cut back on our beer budget.

Bob Lembke

[Guest akinliat]

Thanks Bob,

If y'all are serious about tracking down those records, there are a couple of places to start. First, if you're near a major university, there may be an Ottomanist there (anyone in Chicago or Boston?). Bob, I noticed you seem to be in and around UPenn. Though there are no Ottomanists there per se, there are some folks in the Middle East Studies Center who have varying degrees of expertise with the language. None of them really specialize in the right era, but they may be able to answer some of your questions. The Center has a list of faculty interests and language skills at http://mec.sas.upenn.edu/facultybio.html. Just search for "Ottoman" in the page.

Also useful is Suraiya Faroqhi's book Approaching Ottoman History: an introduction to the sources. (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999). She does a pretty thorough job of covering most of the potential sources for research in the Ottoman period, in and out of Turkey, as well as what kinds of access and materials are available at each (if I remember correctly). Again, if you're near a major university library, finding this shouldn't be too hard.

I wish I could be more useful, but my Ottoman right now just isn't good enough to make any sort of trips to archives worthwhile.

Akin

[Ozzie]

Akin,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for your posts.

Question.

Would you know of anyone in Australia capable of translating documents from 1915, written in what I understand to be Ottoman script?

Cheers

Kim

[bob lembke]

Akin;

Thanks for the info. My wife has worked for the Van Pelt Research Library for over 25 years as a multi-lingual book acquisition librarian; she put me in touch with Willian, the Middle East Studies librarian, who has good Arabic, fair Turkish, and can read some Ottoman Turkish.

What might help Kim and others looking for an Ottoman translator is approaching your local Turkish consulate or possibly the cultural attache at your local Turkish Embassy. While they probably have no official duty to keep track of such people, they might actually have a good idea of what people might have these skills.

I have mentioned the various alphabets used in the Turkic languages. How about these? Chinese, Middle Greek, Soghdian, Uyghur, Manichaean, Arabic, East European runiform script, East Turkic Runiform Script, Tokharian Brahmi Script, Khotanese Brahmi, Tibetian, Orkhon Turkic runiform script; all of these were used for Old Turkic. Middle Turkic was written in Nestorian Script, Phags-pa Script, Armenian Script, and Arabic. Modern Turkic is written in Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and several different Cyrillic scripts.

The above scripts were used in a number of Turkic languages other than Ottoman, but New Ottoman was written in a number of these. Ottoman is subdivided into Old Ottoman, Middle Ottoman, and New Ottoman.

Another whiff of the complexity here.

Bob Lembke

[Bryn]

Seems nobody wants to ask either themselves or each other just who it is that does the translating from Ottoman script to English for Eric Erickson.

I note that on another thread Eric (the plummed goose) remarked, in relation to the names of Ottoman Battalion commanders at Anzac:

"It might be a bit difficult to find a list of the Bn commanders as usually official lists only include Regimental commanders. Will have a look together with a Turkish friend if we can find some while going through books."

So much for the meticulously-kept personnel records. Seems it's difficult even to find a battalion commander's name, let alone his service record, let alone that of an ordinary soldier.

[bob lembke]

Seems nobody wants to ask either themselves or each other just who it is that does the translating from Ottoman script to English for Eric Erickson.

I note that on another thread Eric (the plummed goose) remarked, in relation to the names of Ottoman Battalion commanders at Anzac:

"It might be a bit difficult to find a list of the Bn commanders as usually official lists only include Regimental commanders. Will have a look together with a Turkish friend if we can find some while going through books."

So much for the meticulously-kept personnel records. Seems it's difficult even to find a battalion commander's name, let alone his service record, let alone that of an ordinary soldier.

Byrn;

Allow me to address a couple of questions that you have posed several times.

You have asked several times how Colonel Erickson gets Ottoman Turkish documents translated in to English. It is apparent that he occasionally peeks into this thread; as he has not discussed this he presumably wishes to keep this to himself, for whatever reason. All of the Pals keep some things about themselves to themselves; many Pals do not mention their real or complete names, etc. So he has a perfect right to stand mute on this. I have some ideas on this question, but I do not even presume to mention them, since he has not responded himself. We should be happy that he participates, as he is clearly one of the best sources on these matters for the English-speaking public.

You have repeatedly asked about people maintaining that there are "meticulously-kept personnel records". I may be wrong, but I cannot recall anyone on this forum stating that. What we have established is that in 1915 the Ottoman Turkish Army was grinding out great masses of reports, etc. Do they still exist? Are they kept in "meticulous" order? Some seemingly do exist, I doubt that they can be accurately described as "meticulously-kept". (The company commander, perhaps the only literate person in his company, crouched in his dugout or a shell-hole trying to keep up with 146 reports to be kept up and filed, probably was not turning out the very best quality documents at the front end of this process.) I may be wrong. I assume that there are some Ottoman-reading curators, but probably not many, making it unlikely that much more organizing and cataloging is going on, even if there is interest in doing this. The archives of all the combatants in WW I are a mess, in different ways, and to different degrees. In the UK, Australia, and New Zeeland there is a great deal of popular interest in the individual soldiers who served in the Great War, and interest in accessing the archives; there seems to be a lot less interest in Turkey, although this seems to be changing a bit. A lot of local interest in this would stimulate more access. The Turkish authorities are probably less interested in the wishes of some bloke sitting in Japan.

Are you personally interested in gaining access to these archives and rooting about? Again, a practical way of possibly achieving useful acces to the Turkish archives would be to, perhaps working thru Pals that are either Turkish or resident in Turkey, recruiting locals who might wish to become researchers/translators.

I am hoping that a friend with much insight into these questions will soon join the Forum and share his opinions. He has worked in these archives.

Bob Lembke

[Bryn]

Bob,

I'll take it you're addressing me, though you seem not to have read my posts carefully enough to get my name right; your theories as to why Col. Erickson did not at the time he was posting on this forum, (when a lively discussion was occurring regarding translation, to which he himself contributed), mention anything about how he himself gets translations of Ottoman script done, are possibly right. Who knows.

To anyone who's interested,

It has definitely been stated in a reference work that the Ottoman records were 'meticulously-kept'. As that statement was a blanket one and did not specifically exclude personnel records, it did, by default, include them, since they are records after all. I'll find the statement again some day, but like most people, don't record every comment in every book that I read in the expectation that a discussion may some day arise in which it is pertinent. There are other sources where much the same thing is stated, though not in as strong terms.

What I have attempted to do is to see whether there is any basis in fact for this claim, and it seems there is not - as far as personnel records go anyway. In short, no evidence exists to support a claim that personnel records were meticulously-kept, well-kept, or - in fact - 'kept' at all. All evidence seems to be completely against it. Unless we are expected to believe they exist because we can't see them - like electricity.

The fact that there were apparently some personnel records kept for pension purposes would likely not apply to the regiments I am interested in obtaining evidence of the existence of such records for, as the 'local areas' that these soldiers were recruited from ceased to be part of the Ottoman Empire (as did the Empire itself) in 1918, and therefore I seriously doubt that they received pensions from Constantinople.

I have no doubt that personnel records existed, or that some may still exist. What I don't believe is that these personnel records were meticulously-kept, nor even well-kept. No evidence is no evidence, and no amount of pointing out language difficulties will make these records burst forth into meticulously-kept existence. It just won't happen. Whether I go 'rooting around' in the archives or not won't matter either - whether I do or don't, these particular meticulously-kept records still won't miraculously appear.

Sorry if I seem to be labouring this point, but I can't see what the problem is with stating that no evidence means no evidence.

PS, Bob: You have no idea how spectacularly uninterested I am in whether or not Turkish authorities are interested in some bloke sitting in Japan.

[erickson]

Hello to all,

It's been a while since I checked this post -- wow! I joined this site to assist those who need specific info -- and (honestly) I don't want to engage in the discussions nor do I want to justify my qualifications. Nevertheless, yes, I am fluent in modern Turkish, yes I am fluent in modern Turkish spellings of old Ottoman terms, and yes, I can (with a redhouse dictionary) interpret some Ottoman script (with minimal fluency and with great difficulty).

On the subject of soldier's records -- these do exist and I have just checked with an actual historian who uses them and researches in them (Dr. Mesut Uyar). Here are the details: The Ottomans used a personnel registry system called "Kunye" and as soldiers were inducted all relevant info was recorded in a defter (notebook). These were used in training centers and in units. Important developments were then added (WIA/KIA, illness, discharge, etc). Each man also had a smaller personal defter (similar to a British or American paybook) that accompanied him on his assignments. Officer's defters are much more descriptive and include assignments, awards, arrival & departures than soldier's defters. The Ottoman military school system also maintained student defters as well.

Possession of these records is as follows: most of the individual, unit level and recruitment center defters at located at the Milli Savunma Baskanligi Komunanligi (Ministry of Defence) in Ankara, but some are located at ATASE (the military archives that I have referred to previously) in Ankara. Branch specific defter (like artillery) are located at each service school's archives division as are the military academy's.

Finally, the Ministry of Defence produced a five volume series in the 1990s that lists each Ottoman soldier by name that died in combat from 1912 through the Cyprus invasion of 1973. It is a detailed and fascinating study (and I'm guessing here) is obviously based on the defters.

I hope that this assists those interested and I don't intend to return to this post.

[bob lembke]

Many thanks!

[Bryn]

Thanks for that information, Ed.

I'm still to be convinced that such records were meticulously-kept, but knowing they might still exist is a step forward.

[bob lembke]

Thanks for that information, Ed.

I'm still to be convinced that such records were meticulously-kept, but knowing they might still exist is a step forward.

At last we now know the general form of the records, and that many still exist. From what I know, I would characterise the Turkish records of the period as "entusiastically collected", but not necessarily "meticulously-kept", in the sense of costodial activity, cataloging, etc. Others have offered estimates of Turkish literacy then at 3 and 5%, and clearly most literate people were the educated upper classes, successful merchants and their clerks, and government officials. Many of these were conducting important matters or exercised influence and were probably not inducted, probably a lot of the upper classes signed up, but were snapped up as officers (I believe that someone posted that anyone inducted who was literate was generally quickly made an officer).

In the German company the Feldwebel ("sergant major') did much/most of the paperwork, and generally wrote out a lot of documents which was then just presented to the company CO for signature. I have a lot of company-level documents, and the text of the document's handwriting does not match the CO's signature, almost 100%. The Feldwebel prepared the document, the CO signed it. In one Militaer=Pass of a sergeant I have an entry notating that in 1905 he took a course in "military penmanship".

But the situation was much different in the Ottoman Army. German Colonel/Turkish General Kannengiesser Pascha (a divisional commander at Gallipoli) complained that (if memory serves) that the Turkish infantry company commander was required to produce a set of 146 reports, on a regular basis. As he may have been the only literate person in the company, possibly excepting some of his platoon COs, he had this burden himself. I think that the Lone Pine Diaries of a Turkish lieutenant (later a general) mention him staying up half the night filling these out. Kannengiesser thought that it was a serious burden on his officers. It was unlikely that a single EM in an infantry company was literate, and could help. (Let's not mention the multiple languages and alphabets in use in the Ottoman Empire at that time. What language was used for what in, say, an Arab battalion?)

The same problem was probably in play back where the records were kept, and later in archives. Low literacy must have been a problem in filing and later maintaining the collected records. When Ataturk went to the Latin-based alphabet in 1928 I think that he banned the study of the old language (not only was the alphabet changed, but lots of the vocabilary such as borrow-words were dropped. I just saw an essay by a Turk on old military terms, and a lot of them were based on Arabic and Persian, not Turkish.)

When I conned myself into meeting the Turkish colonel who commanded the Military Library at the Askeri Mueze in Istanbul, I was told (as I have reported) that I had to apply in writing to the General Staff in Ankara (The large General Staff office bulding next door would not do), but I did not sense that it was thought that I could not get permission , only that I would have to follow proceedure. The EM who introduced me to the colonel and translated for us, when I replied in some dismay that I would have to write Ankara, he brightly responded that I could do it on the Internet. I generally got an optimistic read on getting access, although in the Middle East and thereabouts there is a tendency to tell people what they want to hear, out of politeness. I'm not sure that the Turkish Army tends to follow this cultural practice. I have a western European e-friend who has been able to work in these archives, but he has great entree.

Based on continuing information, and speaking with several "westerners" who have limited but useful ability to read Ottoman Turkish, it does not seem that it is quite as difficult to read Ottoman Turkish as I originally thought, although the people I have discussed this with have all had a minimum of six years' serious study of Modern Turkish as a taking off point.

Bob Lembke

[Bryn]

Right; so my point again - if keeping these records was so difficult, and nobody who's claimed they were well-kept has actually seen them, or if they have, is able to read them, on what basis do they claim them to be meticulously-kept, or even just well-kept?

[bob lembke]

Right; so my point again - if keeping these records was so difficult, and nobody who's claimed they were well-kept has actually seen them, or if they have, is able to read them, on what basis do they claim them to be meticulously-kept, or even just well-kept?

Bryn, not trying to be argumentative, but I have read thru this excessively long thread twice and I haven't seen where any one stated that they were "meticulously kept", although I might have missed it. We may be twisted in out semantic underwear here. I would say that they were "maniacally collected", but I for one would not use the phrase "meticiculously kept", as to me that implies the custodial function, rather than the ordering and collecting of reports. But I think that "record keeping" also can refer to the process of producing the records, not the long-term keeping and organizing of those records. No one seems to keep these well in the long term; most of the German records were burned in 1945, and both the US and UK have had disasterous fires in their military records in peacetime.

Bob Lembke

[Bryn]

As I said, the claim that records were meticulously-kept is not made on this thread, but in a book, and sprinkled here and there in different threads it's conjectured that the Turks 'must have' kept good records. I've still to see evidence of this when it comes to personnel records, and wonder why such claims have been made.

[bob lembke]

Bryn;

Just chatting with the spousal unit, the self-styled "Librarian of Fortune", over morning tea, and she dropped a couple of things that you might be interested in.

She is currently doing her Turkish buying. She rolls from language to language while doing her book-buying; she does almost all of the foreign book-buying, except for the Indian-languages and the Russian, as they have an Indian and a Russian native speaker on staff, and she sometimes does the Russian herself, to keep her Russian from getting rusty.

She is working with the catalog of her favorite Istanbul bookdealer, which is hard enough, as she has no Turkish to speak of (she looked at it for two days and then went on to the much easier Arabic), and, besides the Turkish, the catalog's entries are in no standard form, one entry will list the publisher first, the next perhaps the title or the author.

The good news is that she told me that several major Turkish university libraries are combining their catalogs, and are putting them on-line open to the Internet thru something called "Worldcat", which she was amazed that I did not know of. Additionally, she says that the cataloging is top-notch, and the Turks have assigned Library of Congress-style call numbers, and that that seems to be done with admirable accuracy.

All we need now is for them to lend to American or Japanese libraries!

Thought you might be interested.

Bob Lembke