Hoca İshak Efendi

İshak ibn Abdullah, known as Hoca İshak Efendi and by his title Başhoca, was an Ottoman mathematician, engineer and educator, born probably in 1774 at Arta and deceased in 1836 on the reading the TDV encyclopaedia and the Turkish article give.¹²³ He is counted among the pioneers who founded modern science in Turkey.² As head instructor of the Imperial School of Military Engineering he reformed its teaching, and his four-volume Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziyye, the "Compendium of the Mathematical Sciences", published between 1831 and 1834, was the first printed Turkish text to present many of the natural and mathematical sciences together.²¹ He was the first in Turkey to speak of differential and integral calculus.²

He was born at Arta, the Narda of the TDV entry, in the Yanya province, in the Celalpaşa quarter.³² On his origin the texts differ and are stated as they stand: the TDV entry records that he was of a Jewish family and that he and his brother Esad Efendi entered Islam after their father's death and came to Istanbul; the English article says his father had converted to Islam; and the Turkish article reports that Fuat Köprülü and Bursalı Mehmed Tahir objected to the Jewish origin and claimed he was a Turk, some sources making him a Muslim of Karlova.³¹² No text names a school or order for the man himself, and his faith is therefore recorded as unknown, conversion and family background settling no value. In the family circle he learned Hebrew and Greek, and he is thought to have had a madrasa education, learning Turkish, Arabic and Persian.² A rival scholarly hypothesis would identify him with Sultanzade İshak Bey, a kapıcıbaşı's son born in 1748.²

By the Imperial School of Military Engineering's registers he studied there between 1806 and 1815, taking nine years over the school's last two years because no place fell vacant in the upper classes.² In 1816 he was appointed a teacher of mathematics (riyaziye) at the school — the English article gives 1815 or 1816 — and the title hoca, "master", comes from this teaching.²¹ He went to Medina as assistant to the then başhoca Hüseyin Rıfkı Tamani, who was charged with repairing the holy buildings there.² On Yahya Naci Efendi's death in 1824 he became dragoman, interpreter, of the Sublime Porte, a post he held until 1828 or 1829, when he was dismissed, possibly through the rivalry of the secretary of state Pertev Pasha.¹² During the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 he supervised the building and inspection of fortresses in the Balkans, before being recalled.¹²

He rose to become head instructor, başhoca, of the school in December 1830 or January 1831, and held the post until 1836 on the Turkish article's account.¹² As başhoca he reorganised the curriculum on the model of Western military schools, removed some teachers, and furnished the school with chairs, desks and blackboard classrooms in place of students sitting on the floor taking notes on their knees.² His greatest work, the Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziyye in four volumes, treats algebraic equations, plane and analytic geometry, conics and differential and integral calculus, and its scientific terms, coined from Arabic roots, were used in Turkey for a long time; as each volume came off the Mühendishane press it was announced in the Takvim-i Vekayi and met Mahmud II's praise.² Between 1826 and 1834 he translated or wrote, one after another, ten further scientific books in thirteen volumes, completing the French textbook translations the school had lacked.²

His influential predecessor Seyyid Ali Pasha, to whom his reforms were a thorn, contrived to have him sent to Medina under the pretext of the Hajj and of supervising restorations at the holy sites.¹ On the return journey to Istanbul he died at Suez, where he was buried.¹ The year is disputed between the texts: the TDV entry and the Turkish and German articles give 1836, the English article gives the return in 1834 or 1835 and Wikidata 1835, and the monograph tradition gives 1834; all three readings are preserved in his record.³²¹⁴