Ahmed Midhat (Ottoman writer and journalist, 1844–1912)

Ahmed Midhat (1844–1912) was an Ottoman writer and journalist. He worked in the provincial administration of Midhat Pasha, was exiled to Rhodes for his link with the Young Ottomans, and wrote about 150 books of popular fiction and knowledge.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) describes Ahmed Midhat as an Ottoman Turkish writer, born in Istanbul in 1260/1844, the son of a poor draper and a Circassian mother. After his father's death he was apprenticed to a shopkeeper. The family moved to Vidin, where his half-brother Hafiz Agha was a madir, and in 1859 Ahmed went back to Istanbul to school. In 1864, when Midhat Pasha took over the new province of Tuna, the family followed him to Rusçuk, where Ahmed worked as a clerk in the provincial chancery. Midhat Pasha gave him his own name and made him editor-in-chief of the provincial newspaper Tuna. In 1868 he followed Midhat Pasha to Baghdad, where he ran the government printing-press and the newspaper Zawra'. ¹

In 1871 he left state service to write and print. In 1872 he was arrested, because of his journalism's link with the Young Ottomans, and exiled to Rhodes together with Abu l-Diya Tevfik. He was pardoned in 1876 after the deposition of 'Abd al-'Aziz. In 1877, after publishing the Uss-i inkilab, a historical justification of the accession of 'Abd al-Hamid, he was given the direction of the official gazette and printing-press, and this brought a permanent breach with the Young Ottomans. From 1878 he edited the periodical Terdjuman-i Hakikat. In 1888 he went as official representative to the International Congress of Orientalists at Stockholm. After the Young Turk revolution of 1908 he was retired, and he taught for a few years before his death in Muharram 1331/December 1912 – January 1913. ¹

He is estimated to have written about 150 books, in two main groups, fiction and popularised knowledge. His novels, many first published as serials, were widely read by the generation that grew up under the Tanzimat, and they helped form new tastes and interests. He also wrote or adapted popular works on history, philosophy, religion, ethics and science to bring European knowledge to his compatriots, among them Uss-i inkilab, Zubdet ul-Hakayik (1878, on the Turkish defeat of 1877–78), a universal history in three volumes and a series of histories of European countries, Kainat. ²