Part I of a collection of photos taken during my recent 🇹🇷&🇯🇴 trip that’s related to TEL, Faisal and the Great Arab Revolt:
Imperial edict issued by Sultan Abdul Hamid II on November 1st, 1908 concerning Sherif Hussein’s appointment to Meeca Emirate. Since this day Emir Faisal’s father Hussein officially became the Sherif of Meeca and the Hashemite family returned to Mecca from an 18 years exile in Istanbul. Photo was secretly taken in the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul since photographs were not allowed in the palace (shush).
Photos of the Istanbul Military Museum. It was once used as the Imperial Military Academy in the Ottoman period for the purpose of cadets training. Many of the famous Ottoman subjects went to the academy in the capital city for school after their former military school trainings in Ottoman provinces (famous figures including Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Fawzi al-Qawuqji). Faisal’s old tutor Ahmed Safwat al-Awa used to be an assistant tutor of building and engineering at the academy before he was appointed by the Imperial decree to be Faisal and his brothers’ personal tutor when he was about thirty years old after Faisal and his family moved to Istanbul on the order of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
Charles Doughty-Wylie’s grave in the Gallipoli peninsula of Turkey near the V beach cemetery. Charles Doughty-Wylie was a British army officer who served in the First World War and killed in action during the Gallipoli campaign (in fact at the exact spot where he was buried). His grave was the only solitary British or Commonwealth war grave on the Gallipoli peninsula. He was also Gertrude Bell’s secret lover.
Talat and Enver Pasha’s graves in Istanbul. Djamal Pasha was buried in Erzurum, Turkey. They were the triumvirate known as the “Three Pashas” leading the Ottoman Empire in WWI after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution that overthrew Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s government.
Faisal and his family used to live in a district called Büyükdere in Istanbul and this is where he grew up. It’s a very beautiful neighbourhood that’s along the shores of the Bosphorous. Evidence can be found via Faisal’s older brother King Abdullah I of Jordan’s memoirs.
TBC
