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The Indian Red Crescent Mission to theBalkan WarsSyed Tanvir Wasti

Available online: 11 Jun 2009

To cite this article: Syed Tanvir Wasti (2009): The Indian Red Crescent Mission to the Balkan Wars,Middle Eastern Studies, 45:3, 393-406

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The Indian Red Crescent Mission to theBalkan Wars

SYED TANVIR WASTI

Muslim dynasties ruled most of northern India for many centuries afterQutbuddin Aibak1 made Delhi the capital of his kingdom in 1206. As theeighteenth century rolled into the nineteenth, Muslim political power in India wasin complete eclipse. The death in battle of Tipu Sultan in 1799 at Seringapatamand the capture of Delhi in 1803 by the British were like the writing on the wallheralding, a few decades later, the conquest of the Punjab in 1849 and theannexation of Oudh in 1856. Like the flickering flame that burns brightly beforeextinction, India made a military attempt to fight the foreigners in 1857. Historyrecords this violent conflict either as the ‘First War of Independence’ or the ‘SepoyMutiny’. However, this uncoordinated and feeble effort was too little, too late. TheBritish, using Indian soldiers to fight other Indian soldiers, crushed it. The lastMoghul Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who had become a symbol of theuprising, was exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862. A further result was thatIndians, especially Muslims, were made to pay a heavy price. As theerstwhile rulers of India, they were unceremoniously removed from the centresof power. Far away, 20 years after 1857, Disraeli proclaimed Queen Victoriaas Empress of India. Indian Muslim reactions to these momentous events, andtheir subsequent attempts to re-assert themselves politically, have been summedup by Wasti.2 In the article cited in note 2, it is also explained in some detail howhistorical reasons as well as deep religious and cultural affinities led the IndianMuslims to consider that their political destinies were linked with the fate of theOttoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire, although it was the largest and virtually the onlyindependent Muslim state, was under onslaught from Europe as well. The Frenchseized Tunisia in 1881, the British occupied Cyprus in 1878 and Egypt in 1882.When the Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs combined to attack Ottoman Turkey in1912, a year after the Italians had unilaterally attacked the Ottoman territory ofLibya in North Africa, Indian Muslims could remain silent no longer. Ratherthan swords, they used pens, mighty pens such as those of Muhammad Iqbal,3

Maulana Zafar Ali Khan,4 Mohamed Ali5 and Abul Kalam Azad.6 Moreover,the foundation of major universities in India7 had resulted in new generations ofarticulate and politically aware Muslims appearing on the scene. The graduates ofthe Muslim University of Aligarh8 were in the forefront of pan-Islamic activity.In particular, the duo of Shaukat Ali9 and Mohamed Ali, known in literary,

Middle Eastern Studies,Vol. 45, No. 3, 393–406, May 2009

ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/09/030393-14 ª 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/00263200902853389

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political and social circles as the ‘Ali Brothers’, gave fiery speeches and combinedfund-raising skills with political sagacity. But words were not the only answer.Let us pick up the story in the words of Francis Robinson:

‘Shaukat Ali’, observed Theodore Morison10 who knew him well, ‘was filledwith josh [fervour] for Islam and rage at its impotence during the Balkan war’;he felt ‘he must do something for Islam . . .’

The Red Crescent Mission was the first project. Shaukat Ali suggested it inthe first Delhi edition of the Comrade and Dr Ansari later gave it form. Theirplan was that a group of Muslim doctors and assistants should go to theTurkish front as a medical mission.11

Dr Ansari had agreed to lead the Mission, but subscriptions from the Muslims ofIndia had to be raised in order to defray its expenses. There were no doubtswhatsoever where Dr Ansari’s sympathies lay – he had written in the issue of theComrade dated 26 October 1912:

It is perfectly obvious that the very existence of the Turkish nation dependsupon the issue of this war. Firstly, the medical service in the Turkish armyhas been very recently organized and as such will be unable to cope with therequirements of such a deadly war. Secondly, Turkey’s foes are alreadyreceiving, on a very large scale, medical . . . help from all parts of Europe;and the poor Turk is left entirely to his own limited resources.12

Dr Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari13 was properly chosen to lead the Medical Mission.To his skills as a surgeon he added an international outlook, a genial temperamentand an ability to organize. During the two-week journey from Bombay to Istanbul,he taught first-aid and gave some paramedical training to the members of theMedical Mission on the deck of the ship. His participation in the later politics ofIndia has been analyzed by Robb14 based on the book by Mushirul Hasan.15 It isfrom this book that the initial composition of the Medical Mission is given asfollows:16

Five Qualified Doctors:Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, Ali Azhar Fyzee,17 Mohammad Naim Ansari,Mahmud Ullah and Shamsul Bari.Seven Paramedics/Dressers:Ghulam Ahmad Khan, Nur ul Hasan, Mohammad Chiraghuddin, SyedTawangar Husain, Hamid Rasul, Abdul Wahid Khan and Husain Raza Beg.Ten Male Nurses and Ambulance Bearers:Abdur Rahman Siddiqi,18 Qazi Bashiruddin Ahmad, Shoaib Qureshi,19 M. AzizAnsari, Choudhry Khaliquzzaman,20 Abdur Rahman Peshawari, Manzoor Ali,Yusuf Ansari, Ismail Husain Shirazi21 and Tafazzul Husain.

Of these nurses and bearers, the first seven were students or alumni of AligarhCollege. As also pointed out by Barni,22 this group was composed of men fromall parts of India, from the North West frontier and the Punjab to Bihar and

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Bengal. With minor differences in spelling, this list23 is given in other sources, e.g.Aziz.24

It must be mentioned that the Indian Medical Mission was by no means the onlyforeign team helping the Ottoman Turks during the Balkan Wars – according tothe annual publication of the Ottoman Red Crescent Society25 there werevolunteers and teams from several European countries, from Egypt and evenfrom the United States. However, it was the Indian Medical Mission, composedentirely of Muslims from a faraway land, that captured the attention of theTurkish public.

Choudhry Khaliquzzaman has devoted several pages in his book of memoirs tothe Medical Mission.26 As members of the original delegation, apart from Dr Ansariand himself, Khaliquzzaman refers to Abdur Rahman Siddiqui, Shuaib Qureshi,Aziz Ansari, Manzur Mahmud27 and Abdur Rahman Peshawari.28

Azmi Ozcan has also dealt with the Mission in his exhaustive work on relationsbetween Great Britain and the Indian Muslims.29 He gives the names of the fivedoctors, but lists only Abdurrahman Siddiqi, Abdurrahman Peshawari, ChoudhryKhaliquzzaman and Shuaib Qureshi as prominent among the male nurses. Ozcancontinues as follows:

Peshawari remained in Turkey and fought in the Turkish army during WorldWar I. He later became a Turkish citizen and represented the Turkish Republicas an ambassador at Kabul in 192330 . . . Mirza Abdul Qayyum,31 anothermember of the Mission, also remained in Turkey and died fighting for theOttoman army during World War I.

Ozcan also lists some references from which he has obtained the information in thefootnote. These include Khaliquzzaman, and also the book published in Urdu fromthe material assembled by Muhammad Yusuf Peshawari chronicling the life anddeath of his elder brother Abdur Rahman Peshawari.32 This book, scripted by AbuSalman Shahjahanpuri from materials residing with Muhammad Yusuf Peshawariis, in fact, an interesting collective effort. More than 50 years elapsed between thedeath of Abdurrahman Peshawari in 192533 and the publication of the book in 1979– at his own personal expense – by Yusuf Peshawari. The dedication by YusufPeshawari is to three deceased persons: Peshawari’s own father Haji GhulamSamdani,34 Ghazi Rauf Pasha35 and Maulana Mohamed Ali Jauhar.36 According tothe introduction by Yusuf Peshawari, one of his elder brothers, Haji MuhammadAmin, had asked Sir Abdul Qadir37 in Lahore to recommend someone who might beable to write a biography of the late Abdurrahman Peshawari, whose exploits inTurkey went far beyond the demands of the Medical Mission. Sir Abdul Qadirsuggested Hafeez Hoshiarpuri,38 then a recent graduate of Government College,Lahore.39 Hoshiarpuri prepared a draft manuscript of some 50 pages and the issuelay dormant for several years, during which Haji Amin died. This matter came tolight many years later by complete chance when Hafeez Hoshiarpuri noticed somephotographs of Kemal Ataturk, other Turkish military commanders and Abdurrah-man Peshawari in Yusuf Peshawari’s Karachi office. On learning of Abdurrahman’srelationship with Yusuf Peshawari, Hoshiarpuri passed the manuscript to him andsubsequently Abu Salman Shahjahanpuri took over the task of compiling and

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editing the book. As might be expected, it is also a mine of information on theactivities of the Indian Medical Mission.

Furthermore, the book features a lengthy and valuable prologue by Dr ReyazulHasan, an enterprising Pakistani diplomat who originally met Rauf Orbay in Delhiin 1933 and renewed contact with him while posted to the Pakistan Embassy inTurkey in 1953. Fortuitously, Reyazul Hasan also met von Hentig40 in Jeddah in1955 when the latter was an advisor to the Saudi King. The frontispiece of the bookis a photograph of Abdurrahman Peshawari in Turkish uniform and has theinscription: Colonel Ghazi Abdurrahman Peshawari with the Turkish Medal ofIndependence41 pinned on his chest.

From all the accounts quoted above, it emerges that the All India RedCrescent Medical Mission (henceforth to be called the Indian Medical Mission orsimply the Mission) left in a triumphal procession that began in the UnitedProvinces and proceeded by train to Bombay. A huge crowd of well-wishers sawthe train off from Lucknow with poems, prayers and tears; the venerable ShibliNu’mani42 was there at the station, and Maulana Mohamed Ali himself was toescort the Mission by train to Bombay. A similar reception took place along thetrain’s route to Bombay at Bhopal. The Mission left Bombay in the Italian vesselSardegna on 15 December 1912.43 En route, at Aden and Suez, people turned upat the dockside to cheer. At Alexandria, the Mission transferred to a Romanianship, reaching Istanbul two weeks later. Most members of the Mission hadcontributed financially towards their own passage and Abdurrahman Peshawari,worried that his parents might veto his departure, had sold his clothes andpersonal effects to obtain money for the fare in order to be able to departsurreptitiously.44

The Mission was received at the port of Istanbul by Besim Omer Pasha45 andofficials of the Turkish Red Crescent Society with much fanfare. They werehoused in the Kadırga46 Hospital in Istanbul for a short period in preparation forbeing sent to the front. Members of the delegation took turns in sending accountsof the Mission’s progress (usually in letters) to Mohamed Ali and his editorialstaff in Delhi, as also to friends and relatives. These accounts were then publishedregularly first in the Comrade; subsequently they were translated into Urdu forpublication in the companion journal Hamdard, and have also formed the basisfor further work related to the Mission, its purpose and achievements. Notsurprisingly, the Mission took as much time as was possible to see the historicalsights and monuments that Istanbul has to offer. They visited the mosque andcemetery of Abu Ayyub Ansari on the Golden Horn,47 the mosque of theconqueror of Istanbul, the sultan Mehmed Fatih, and were able to offer Fridayprayers in the same mosque as Sultan Mehmed Resad.48 According toKhaliquzzaman, the Aligarh members of the Mission even presented themselvesat Enver Pasha’s house in Pera49 to greet him. The Mission was also invited to aluxurious repast by Ahmed _Izzet Pasha,50 then Army Commander at the front.The Pasha made an emotional speech welcoming the Mission members andcalling them ‘my children’.

On 14 January 1913 Dr Ansari went to Omerli with his Turkish hosts to decideupon the location of the first field hospital close to the battle front in Catalca. Alongwith army doctors, the delegation also included Talat Bey (later Pasha and Grand

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Vizier). On 16 January 1913 Besim Omer Pasha gave a sumptuous reception inhonour of the Indian Medical Mission, in which he offered thanks to all members forstrengthening ties with Turkey and hoped that this display of affection wouldcontinue also in peacetime. Dr Ansari asked Talat Bey if the Mission members couldbe introduced to Enver Pasha sometime. Talat Bey said that as Enver Pasha was atthe Catalca front, not too far away, he felt sure that he would accede to the request.The next day, in the afternoon, Enver Pasha came to the Kadırga Hospital quiteinformally and mingled with both members of the Mission and the soldiers they weretreating. He was young, handsome and charismatic, and greeted the Missionmembers with great warmth. He went up to the wounded soldiers in the hospital,slapped some gently on the back and said to them all: ‘Stop worrying, lift up yourhearts, your brothers are here to care for you, having travelled a great distance just toshare your troubles and to be of help. Forget your pain, get fit soon, and show theworld once again the courage and bravery of the Turk.’ The members of the Missiontook the opportunity to have a photograph taken with Enver Pasha.51 A couple ofdays later, the Mission shifted from the Kadırga Hospital to the field hospital atOmerli near the battlefront. Less than a week later, Enver Pasha and some of hisfollowers were involved in the storming of the Sublime Porte that resulted in the fall ofthe government of the veteran leader Kamil Pasha.52 Letters from the members of theMission written to friends and relatives are quick to dispel the impression that theywere promenading in clement weather on the banks of the Bosphorus and point outinstead the cold, damp and mud of the tent hospital in Omerli and the difficulty oftending the sick and wounded. All such communications are full of references to thekindnesses shown to the Mission by Turkish officers and their men, some of whomwere mildly baffled that the Indian Muslims should display such sympathy for theTurks.

The Indian Medical Mission had arrived in Turkey during a lull in the fighting as aceasefire had been proclaimed in December 1912.53 However, the surrender of thegreat fortress of Edirne on 26 March 1913 after a siege of many weeks createdimmense sorrow at the national level in Turkey. Abdurrahman Peshawari lost notime in writing to one of his sisters:

Oh dear one! Adrianople [Edirne] has slipped out of our hands! God grant ussafety. It is impossible to describe what we all feel after this cursed event, butwho can combat fate? The name of Shukri Pasha will live on in history for thevaliant manner in which he held back the enemy . . .54

While the Omerli Hospital continued to function, two Indian Muslims who wererecent medical graduates from London, Dr Abdur Rahman Bihari and Dr RazaHaider, arrived at Omerli to join the Mission. Aale Imran and Hasan Abid Jafri55

also arrived from England as volunteers, and Mirza Abdul Qayyum from India.A medical man from Egypt, Dr Fouad, also joined the Mission.

The Turkish Red Crescent and Enver Bey therefore requested Dr Ansari to sendabout half the members of the Mission to staff a second field hospital at Canakkaleon the Asian shores of the Dardanelles, opposite Gallipoli. A couple of membersstayed on in Istanbul under the supervision of Abdur Rahman Siddiqi to purchaseand despatch supplies for the two field hospitals and for liaison purposes.

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Khaliquzzaman was one of those who departed for the Dardanelles. He continues asfollows in his memoirs:

The same ship took us to our destination and we went to the Turkish hosital atChanak56 as their guest till such time as we had established our own hospital.The doctor in charge of the Chanak hospital, Dr Rushdi, became very friendlyto us and to me personally. I hardly imagined then that later on he would be DrRushdi Aras,57 Foreign Minister of Ghazi Mustafa Kamal Pasha.58

With the cessation of active warfare, the field hospital in Canakkale was closeddown and the Mission members from there returned to Istanbul at the end of April1913.59 In a letter to one of his brothers on 3 June 1913 from the field hospital nearthe Catalca front, Abdurrahman Peshawari writes: ‘The fame of the Indian Hospitalhas spread far and wide because of its medical facilities and the compassionate care itprovides. Virtually all of Turkey is heard to repeat: Efendim, Hind Hastanesi cokiyi.’60

The second field hospital also wound up its duties in the summer of 1913 andmost Mission members returned to Istanbul. This allowed them to renew theirsocial contacts with the cream of Istanbul society. Khaliquzzaman especially refersto frequent meetings with Halide Edib, the famous Turkish woman writer.61 Thefriendships and goodwill established at the time were of lasting value because inher book Inside India,62 written over 20 years after the Indian Medical Mission leftTurkey, Halide Edib devotes several pages to Dr Ansari, Abdur Rahman Siddiqiand Khaliquzzaman63 whom she met again during her travels in India. She alsovisited the home64 of the late Abdurrahman Peshawari and met members of hisfamily.

Khaliquzzaman mentions that apart from himself, Shuaib, Aziz and Dr GhulamMohammad did not return with the Mission when it departed from Turkey in thesecond half of June 1913 but stayed on for another three months travelling aroundthe country.65 Prior to the official departure of the Mission for India, the memberswere granted an audience with the Sultan-Caliph Mehmed Resad. The Sultanreceived the Mission in the Dolmabahce palace, made a short speech praising theIslamic spirit in which the Mission had performed its services and shook each personby the hand. As it happened, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan was visiting Istanbul at thetime and was also present at this leave-taking. He extemporaneously composed apanegyric for the Sultan in Persian which was recited with deep emotion by ManzoorMahmud, eliciting much praise from the Sultan himself. Dr Ansari and most of theMission members returned to an enthusiastic welcome on their arrival at Bombay on4 July 1913.66 Newspapers in India (such as the Al-Hilal of Abul Kalam Azad) werefull of praise for the work of the Mission. According to a report67 in the Comrade,Rauf Orbay Pasha was on a naval assignment but was able to greet Dr Ansari andhis delegation in Suez on 25 June 1913.68

As had been mentioned above, Abdurrahman Peshawari stayed on in Turkey afterthe final departure of his Mission colleagues in order to pursue a career in theTurkish Army. Initially, Manzoor Mahmud also remained in Turkey in order to jointhe Turkish Navy, but after some weeks he fell seriously ill and gave up the idea. Hetoo returned to India.

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Abdurrahman Peshawari wrote an emotional letter to one of his sisters whenTurkish forces retook Edirne on 22 July 1913: ‘Dear one! With _Izzet Pasha putting alarge part of his forces at the disposal of Enver Pasha, Adrianople [Edirne] wassaved. The rest of the heroic Ottoman soldiers marched over 50 miles in a single dayto recapture Kırkkilise.’69 Abdurrahman Peshawari was inducted into the TurkishArmed Forces70 and taken under the wing by Rauf Orbay. Abdurrahman fought onseveral fronts and earned the respect of his Turkish fellow officers for his bravery. Inhis political memoirs, referring to Enver Pasha’s directive in 1915 for a Turkishmission to proceed to Afghanistan, Rauf Orbay mentions Abdurrahman Peshawarithus:

In my military delegation there were Hasan Atakan [who became full Generallater] and Osman Tufan Pasha and, seconded by Enver Pasha because of hisknowledge of the language and that he would be useful to us, was the AfghanAbdurrahman Nihat.71 The last named had come to Istanbul from Afghanistanseveral years back with a Medical Mission and stayed with us.72

Peshawari was also a member of a delegation sent by the Turks to Germany in1916.73 Separate accounts, e.g. Reyazul Hasan and Aybek,74 indicate thatAbdurrahman was like a younger brother or colleague of Rauf Orbay.75 In 1919,when Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Ataturk) left Istanbul76 for Samsun to organizethe Turkish national resistance in Anatolia, one of the first persons to join him inAmasya (in June 1919) was Rauf Orbay, along with the following companions:_Ibrahim Sureyya, Captain Osman Nuri, Reserve Officer Recep Zuhtu and theAfghan officer Abdurrahman.77 Rauf Orbay’s memoirs refer to ‘the Indian reserveofficer Abdurrahman who had come to Turkey to participate voluntarily in theBalkan wars’.78 Later, a high point in Peshawari’s life was when Mustafa KemalAtaturk sent him to Afghanistan as a diplomatic envoy in March 1921. In thechaotic circumstances of the time, it took Abdurrahman four months of overlandtravel to reach Kabul as he had to avoid possible apprehension by the British.During his stay of over a year in Kabul, Abdurrahman’s family was able to travelfrom Peshawar to visit him. In 1922, Abdurrahman was recalled to Turkey andreplaced as ambassador by Fahreddin Pasha.79 However, after a life of thrillingadventures,80 he came to a sad and untimely end in 1925. Halide Edib writes in herbook Inside India about her visit to Aligarh in 1936:

Abdur Rahman Qureshi was among the young members of the Red CrescentMission of the Balkan War. He remained in Turkey after 1912, and entered theTurkish Army. He fought at different fronts in the Great War. In 1920 he joinedthe Nationalist struggle at Ankara and worked with the writer at head-quarters.81 In 1923 he represented Turkey at Kabul. In 1927 he was murdered inIstanbul by an unknown person or persons. Neither the motive for this uglycrime nor the criminals have been brought to light. He himself was a brave andable officer, and a lovable person.

Many of the participants in the Indian Red Crescent Medical Mission achieved fameat various levels, whether in India, Pakistan, Turkey or elsewhere. More work needs

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to be done to trace the lives and careers of several others, such as Mirza AbdulQayyum.

Not surprisingly there has been of late a revival of interest in the activities of theMedical Mission from the Turkish point of view. Ozaydınlı’s article82 pays generoustribute to the services rendered by the Mission at a time when, in addition to thetravails of war, the outbreak of a serious cholera epidemic also resulted in the loss ofmany lives. The value of the article is enhanced by the inclusion of several rarephotographs of and from the field hospitals. Ozaydınlı points out that around thetime of the arrival of the Mission headed by Dr Ansari, two other volunteer IndianMuslim volunteer groups came to Turkey and were amalgamated into the medicalrelief effort.83

_Izgoer’s interest in Ottoman–Indian Muslim relations during the early part of thetwentieth century is well known, as he has rendered Mushir Hosain Kidwai’s booksinto Turkish.84 In a short article,85 he has touched upon the background to thearrival in Turkey of the Indian Medical Mission. In particular, he has mentionedthat Dr Ansari was also the background organizer for a medical mission to Tripoli in1912 that left England under the leadership of Syed Ameer Ali86 after the Italiansinvaded the Turkish province (now known as Libya). A part of _Izgoer’s article ismade up of a report of an emotional speech made by Dr Ansari on his return toIndia,87 which was sent to Turkey by the well-known journalist S.M .Tevfik.88

Within the sub-division of the province of Istanbul called Catalca lies the village ofOmerli, a distance of 20 miles to the European heart of the Ottoman capital.Although now part of a great megalopolis, it was a small but strategic locationbecause the main railway line connecting Istanbul with the former capital andfrontier city of Edirne (Adrianople) passes right through it. Computer websitespertaining to Omerli refer to three plaque-like stone tablets to be found respectivelyby the village mosque, the village fountain and near the source of the Cortlenwaters.89 All the plaques have the same inscription:

A fraternal souvenir from the All India Red Crescent Medical Mission whichcame from India during the Balkan Wars to help our Ottoman brothers 1913.90

Notes

1. Aibak is written as Aybek in Turkish.

2. S.T. Wasti, ‘The Political Aspirations of Indian Muslims and the Ottoman Nexus’, Middle Eastern

Studies, Vol.42, No.5 (Sept. 2006), pp.709–22.

3. Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), wrote poetry of the highest quality in Urdu and Persian. His

philosophical writings include The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Kapur Art

Printing Works, 1930), which has been translated into many languages. He is credited with putting

forward a concrete proposal for the establishment of an independent Muslim state in India.

4. The son of Maulvi Sirajuddin Ahmad, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan (1873–1956) was a poet, writer,

journalist and political activist. His newspaper called Zamindar (literally land-owner) was issued from

Lahore and had a decidedly pan-Islamic tone without being anti-British. Maulana Zafar Ali Khan was

one of the many seconders of the Lahore Resolution of 23 March 1940 which was passed at a meeting

of the Muslim League presided over by Mohamed Ali Jinnah. This resolution incorporated the

Muslim demand for a separate state.

5. Mohamed Ali (1878–1931) edited the Comrade in English first from Calcutta and then from Delhi, as

well as the Hamdard in Urdu. Further information on Maulana Mohamed Ali (and his elder brother

400 S. T. Wasti

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Shaukat Ali) may be found in S.T. Wasti, ‘The Circles of Maulana Mohamed Ali’, Middle Eastern

Studies, Vol.38, No.4 (Oct. 2002), pp.51–62.

6. Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958) was a poet, scholar and politician who rose to become Minister of

Education in India after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Earlier, he was the editor of the

influential paper Al-Hilal issued from Calcutta. He was a friend of Nehru and Gandhi and was a

prominent member of the Khilafat Movement. However, he was opposed to the political aspirations

of the Indian Muslims for a separate state.

7. The universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were founded in 1857, Aligarh Muslim University

was established as an educational institution in 1875, The University of the Punjab was founded in

Lahore in 1882 and Allahabad University in 1887.

8. After a visit to Britain in 1869–70, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–98), started a residential educational

institution in 1875 patterned on Oxford and Cambridge. This institution developed into the

Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College and, in 1920, into the Aligarh Muslim University.

9. Maulana Shaukat Ali (1873–1938) was the elder brother of Maulana Mohamed Ali and financed his

education at Oxford. He studied at Aligarh and became Captain of the University cricket team. Later,

he worked as a civil servant. He took an active part in the Khilafat Movement and suffered

imprisonment along with Mohamed Ali.

10. Sir Theodore Morison (1863–1936), joined the staff of Aligarh College in 1889, serving as Principal of

the College between 1899 and 1905. He was Member of the Secretary of State’s Council of India

between 1906 and 1916.

11. F. Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.207.

12. Quoted in M. Hasan, A Nationalist Conscience – M.A. Ansari, the Congress and the Raj (New Delhi:

Manohar, 1987), pp.42–3.

13. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari (1880–1936) was a prominent political figure in India before his relatively

early death, becoming President of the Indian National Congress in 1927. Born in the United

Provinces, he studied medicine at Madras and in Edinburgh, becoming House Surgeon at the

Charing Cross Hospital, London where, according to several sources, e.g. Wikipedia, there is an

Ansari Ward named after him. In an essay on Ansari in his book Azmat-e Rafta [The Departed

Glory] (Karachi: Idara-e Ilm-o Funn, undated), Ziauddin Barni (see note 22), mentions that the

appointment of Dr Ansari to the position in the Charing Cross Hospital caused a minor furore at

the time, with a London evening paper publishing an item entitled: ‘Grave Injustice to British

Doctors’. The Governing Council of the Hospital issued a reply stating that the appointment of

Dr Ansari had been made entirely on the basis of his qualifications and abilities, and it would be

tragic for British hospitals if any criteria other than ability were invoked in making such

appointments.

Dr Mukhtar Ansari was the younger brother of the famous Hakim Abdul Wahab Ansari of

Delhi (known by his sobriquet of Na-beena because he was blind), who was a practitioner of

Asian alternative medicine. He was a close friend of the Ali Brothers and also of Gandhi and

Nehru. Dr Ansari and the members of his household are sympathetically described by the Turkish

novelist and author Halide Edib in the first chapter of the book Inside India (London: George

Allen & Unwin, 1937) which is dedicated in his memory.

14. P.G. Robb, ‘Muslim Identity and Separatism in India: The Significance of M.A. Ansari’, Bulletin of

the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol.54, No.1 (1991), pp.104–25. This is a thoughtful and

well-written essay, which correctly suggests that Hindu–Muslim political cooperation against the

British really took flight only during the Khilafat Movement (1919–22) and around 1935. M.A. Ansari

had excellent relations both with members of the Congress Party and the Muslim League. Most of

Ansari’s later family members have continued to live in India. Had he lived beyond 1936 it is possible

to speculate that he might well have lost hope and changed tack to pursue the path of Pakistan like

many of his Muslim colleagues.

15. Hasan, A Nationalist Conscience.

16. Ibid., pp.43–4.

17. According to Barni, q.v., Dr Fyzee moved to Britain in 1920 to practise medicine and died there in

1962 at the age of 81.

18. Abdur Rahman Siddiqi (1887–1953), student leader at Aligarh, later took a degree at Oxford and was

called to the Bar. He had a long journalistic career as Editor of the Morning News, Calcutta. He

became Mayor of Calcutta and subsequently rose to become Governor of East Pakistan. The name

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Abdur Rahman is sometimes (as in Turkish) written in the form of one word, but Abdur Rahman

Siddiqi along with a large number of people with the same name preferred to divide it into two words.

19. Shoaib Qureshi (1892–1962), studied at Aligarh, later took a degree at Oxford and was called to the

Bar. He served as a Minister in the State of Bhopal, and in ambassadorial and ministerial posts in

Pakistan. His first name is also quoted sometimes as Shuaib.

20. Choudhry Khaliquzzaman (1889–1973) was educated at Aligarh, and was a lifelong supporter of the

Muslim League. He served as Governor of East Pakistan and in ambassadorial assignments.

21. Syed Ismail Husain Shirazi (1880–1931) came from Sirajganj, Pabna District, in East Bengal. He was a

prolific writer of novels and poetry in Bengali and a political activist. In Sufia Ahmed’s article entitled

‘Tribute to Kamal Ataturk’ published in The Daily Star of Dacca (Vol.5, No.169, 10 November 2004)

on the 66th anniversary of the death of Ataturk, the following information on Shirazi is of interest:

In this connection the name of the talented poet Syed Abu Muhammad Ismail Hossain Shirazi of

Pabna deserves special mention. The Muslims of Bengal owe a great deal for their intellectual and

political renaissance to this fiery speaker, fighter, and writer in the realm of poetry and prose.

Shirazi had the unique opportunity to be included as a member of the All-Indian Medical Mission

which was sent in 1912 by the Indian Muslims to Turkey during the Balkan Wars, to aid the

Turkish soldiers with moral and material support. On his return Shirazi wrote about his

experiences in a book entitled Turoshka Bharaman (travels in Turkey) in Bengali published in

1913. In this book Shirazi depicts the tragic condition of the Ottoman army fighting the Balkan

wars, and the shabby treatment meted out to Turkey by the Western powers. He was a great

supporter of the Turkish war of Independence organized and led by Mustafa Kemal.

22. Z. Barni, Hayat-e Maulana Mohamed Ali Jauhar [Life of Maulana Mohamed Ali Jauhar] (Karachi:

Urdu Academy Sind, 2001), pp.99–100. Barni gives the place of domicile for each of the members of

the delegation.

23. In his prologue to the book by Shahjahanpuri (Ghazi Abdurrahman Peshawari Shaheed), Dr Reyazul

Hasan gives the initial number of members of the delegation as 24. However, he mentions that the

numbers rose to 27 or 28. He mentions that the Mission used the services of one Ghulam Jilani as

interpreter. He also writes that both Hamid Rasul and Qazi Bashiruddin had experience of working as

compounders. No comprehensive official list of all names is available.

24. K.K. Aziz, An Historical Handbook of Muslim India 1700–1947, Vol.2 (Lahore: Vanguard Books Pvt.,

1995), pp.335–6.

25. The salname [yearbook] of the Osmanlı Hilal-i Ahmer Cemiyeti [Ottoman Red Crescent Society].

26. C. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans Pakistan Branch, 1961), Chapter IV,

entitled ‘Balkan War and Medical Mission 1912–1913’.

27. On a point of minor interest, Manzur Mahmud [also spelt Manzoor Mahmood and given in some lists

as Manzur Ali] was the father of the well-known Indian ghazal singer Talat Mahmood.

28. Minor differences in the spelling of the names occur in virtually every reference.

29. A. Ozcan, Pan-Islamism, Great Britain and the Indian Muslims (1877–1927) (Leiden: Brill, 2001), note

19, pp.150–51.

30. A.S. Shahjahanpuri, Ghazi Abdurrahman Peshawari Shaheed [in Urdu] (Karachi: North Western

Hotel, 1979).

31. It will be observed that apart from Ozcan, only Khaliquzzaman gives this name as that of one of the

members of the Medical Mission.

32. A.S. Shahjahanpuri, Ghazi Abdurrahman Peshawari Shaheed [in Urdu] (Karachi: North Western

Hotel, 1979).

33. 1925 is the year given by Zafer Hasan Aybek, who visited Abdurrahman Peshawari even on the day of

his death in hospital. However, Halide Edib gives 1927 and Dr Reyazul Hasan gives 1926.

Khaliquzzaman’s memoirs (Pathway to Pakistan) contain the following:

Abdur Rahman Peshawari did not return to India at all. He joined the Military Academy, became

an army officer and fought for the Turks in the battlefields of the first World War. Thereafter he

used to live with Rauf Bey in the same house, but one night in 1923 he was found dead, having

been shot by someone near his house; someone who wanted to play foul with the life of Rauf Bey

mistaking Rahman for him is suspected to have killed him, pp. 24–5.

402 S. T. Wasti

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While this is certainly a plausible explanation for the attack on Abdurrahman Peshawari, the year

given by Khaliquzzaman is incorrect, and indicates the dangers of writing about events long after they

occur. More detailed information on Abdurrahman Peshawari’s stay in Afghanistan and his activities

after his return to Turkey in 1922 including his last days are given in Z.H. Aybek, Khatiraat: Aap Beeti

[Memoirs: Stories of Events that Befell], ed. Dr G. H. Zulfiqar (Lahore: Sang-e Meel Publications,

1990). For Aybek, refer to Wasti, ‘The Political Aspirations of Indian Muslims and the Ottoman

Nexus’.

34. Haji Ghulam Samdani (died 1926) came from a family of Kashmiri origin and was a very successful

businessman in Peshawar. He spent a lot of his wealth for the welfare of his community. Haji Samdani

was married several times and had a large family.

35. Huseyin Rauf Orbay (1881–1964) was a naval hero as a result of his daring exploits with the cruiser

Hamidiye in the Balkan Wars. In 1915, as one of the core members of the Teskilatı Mahsusa (the

Turkish Intelligence ‘Special Force’) he led a Turkish expedition (coordinated with a similar German

military and diplomatic venture known as the von Hentig–Niedermayer expedition) the objective of

which was to persuade Afghanistan to take up an active anti-British stance. In the event, Rauf Orbay

and his men (who included Abdurrahman Peshawari) could get no further than Kirmanshah, but the

German expedition eventually reached Kabul where it established contact with local Turkish officials

as well as with Raja Mahendra Pratap and Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi. See Wasti, ‘The Political

Aspirations of Indian Muslims and the Ottoman Nexus’.

After the establishment of the Republic, Rauf Orbay served as the first Prime Minister in 1922. He

helped found the Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Progressive Republican Party) in 1924. When this

party was closed down in 1925, he went into political exile for ten years. During this time he accepted

an invitation from Dr M.A. Ansari to visit India and lecture at Jamia Millia Islamia Delhi in 1933.

Later, Rauf Orbay was cleared of all accusations and became a member of the Turkish parliament. He

was Turkish Ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1942 and 1944.

36. See note 5.

37. Sir Sheikh Abdul Qadir (1874–1950) was a writer of prose and poetry and the editor of the Urdu

literary magazine Makhzan (storehouse of valuable goods). He visited Turkey with Mushir Hosain

Kidwai in 1906. He became a High Court judge in 1921 and Minister for Education in the Punjab

Government in 1925. He was made a Member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Council of India in

1934.

38. Hafeez Hoshiarpuri (1912–73) was a poet, prose writer, journalist and broadcaster. His real name was

Abdul Hafeez Saleem. He served in several civil administrative positions in Pakistan, and retired as

Deputy Director-General, Radio Pakistan.

39. A celebrated academic institution in Lahore, Pakistan which is now a University. Over the years, it has

produced large numbers of graduates from the Punjab and beyond, including major poets, writers,

journalists, diplomats and politicians.

40. Werner Otto von Hentig (1886–1984) joined the German diplomatic service in 1909 and served in

Beijing. He was later posted to Constantinopole and Tehran. In 1915, along with Oskar Niedermayer,

he led the German mission to Kabul via Iran. The objective of this mission was to enlist the Afghan

Amir’s support for the Central Powers and to create political unrest in British India. See also note 35.

41. This highly coveted medal (called the _Istiklal Madalyası in Turkish) was awarded only in the early

years of the Republic to those who had taken an active part in the Turkish War of Independence. The

right to wear the medal is hereditary.

42. Shibli Nu’mani (1857–1914), scholar of Urdu, Persian and Arabic, poet and biographer. Further

information on Shibli and his trip to Istanbul may be found in S.T. Wasti, ‘Two Muslim Travelogues:

To and from Istanbul’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.27, No.3 (July 1991), pp.457–76.

43. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, incorrectly gives 6 November as the departure date.

44. Peshawari mentions this in a letter to one of his sister posted from Bombay two days before the

departure of the ship carrying the Medical Mission. See Shahjahanpuri, Ghazi Abdurrahman

Peshawari Shaheed, pp.122–4.

45. Besim Omer Pasha (1862–1940) took the surname Akalın in 1934 after the Surname Law was passed

in Turkey. He was born in Istanbul and graduated from the Military School of Medicine in 1885. He

specialized in Obstetrics in France and later joined Istanbul University. The Ottoman Red Crescent

Society, founded in 1877, where he lectured, and which he supported and represented, was only finally

allowed to use its red crescent ‘logo’ officially in 1897 due to the efforts of Besim Omer Pasha at the

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VIII International Conference of the Red Cross in London. He authored dozens of books, and was

Rector of Istanbul University between 1919 and 1923.

46. Kadırga means ‘nautical galley’ in Turkish and is the name of a district in the historical European part

of Istanbul.

47. Eyup is the Turkish name for the district with the mosque and cemetery surrounding the tomb of Abu

Ayyub b. Zayd al-Ansari, a Companion of the Prophet, who died while on a military mission to

Constantinople during the rule of the Caliph Mu’awiya in the late 7th century. Eyup covers a very

large area and ranks first among the very many graveyards of historical interest in Istanbul.

48. Sultan Mehmed Resad, otherwise Mehmed V (1844–1918), Ottoman Turkey’s penultimate sovereign

during whose reign political power lay with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Refer to

S.T. Wasti, ‘The Last Chroniclers of the Mabeyn’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.32, No.2 (April 1996),

pp.1–29.

49. Pera is now called Beyo�glu.

50. Ahmed _Izzet Pasha (1864–1937), was a distinguished Ottoman Army Commander and later Sadrazam

(Grand Vizier). He took the surname Furgac in 1934. His memoirs, in two volumes, are entitled:

Feryadım [My Lament].

51. A photograph of Enver Pasha alone and another with the Mission members appear between pages 134

and 135 in Shahjahanpuri, Ghazi Abdurrahman Peshawari Shaheed.

52. Some Mission members were in the area at the time of the raid on the Sublime Porte as they used to

rendezvous in the house of the old political activist Abdulaziz Cavus (1876–1929). They heard the

populace shouting: ‘Long Live Enver Bey!’

53. See S.T. Wasti, ‘The 1912–13 Balkan Wars and the Siege of Edirne’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.40,

No.4 (July 2004), pp.59–78.

54. Letters of Abdurrahman Peshawari to his siblings were generally written in Persian. They are quoted

in Urdu translation in Shahjahanpuri, Ghazi Abdurrahman Peshawari Shaheed.

55. According to Dr Reyazul Hasan, Jafri interrupted his studies at Oxford University to join the Mission

to give first aid as a male nurse.

56. Khaliquzzaman transliterates Turkish names into English inaccurately.

57. Tevfik Rustu Aras (1883–1972) qualified as a doctor at the French Medical Faculty in Beirut. He was

elected to the first Parliament of the Republic from Izmir and served as Foreign Minister of the

Republic of Turkey between 1923 and 1939. Reyazul Hasan also met him in 1954 when stationed in

Ankara.

58. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, p. 23.

59. Khaliquzzaman is quoted as follows in Shahjahanpuri, p.153:

We must have attended to four or five hundred wounded patients at the Canakkale field hospital.

All were restored to proper health except only for a severely wounded Arab soldier who died

before an operation could be carried out to amputate his gangrenous foot. They plied him with

medicines and also gave him brandy to keep up his strength but before daybreak he recited the

Kalima [the attestation of the Islamic faith] and died. I gave my Turkish orderly Jalal some money

to purchase a winding sheet and arrange for his burial. Jalal said: Khaliq Bey, this man is a

shaheed [martyr] and therefore should be buried in his blood-stained uniform.

60. The Turkish expression means: Sir, the Indian Hospital is very good indeed.

61. Halide Edib (1884–1964), was a Turkish novelist, professor and political worker. She was equally

fluent in English and Turkish and had a working knowledge of several other languages. She was first

married to the mathematician Salih Zeki and later to Dr Adnan Adıvar. She visited India in 1936 to

give lectures at the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi at the invitation of Dr Mukhtar Ansari, who was the

Chancellor of this University. She mentions that in the hall where she delivered the lectures, there was

a framed photograph of Abdurrahman Peshawari.

62. Edib, Inside India.

63. She calls Khaliquzzaman by his Turkified name Haliq Zaman and presciently describes him as ‘a man

with a political future’.

64. She describes the house located in Peshawar – with the plan of which, she says, she was quite familiar

because Abdurrahman use to refer to it with nostalgia. In her book (Inside India), Halide Edib

attaches the surname Qureshi to Abdurrahman’s name for reasons not entirely clear.

404 S. T. Wasti

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65. A letter from Abdur Rahman Siddiqi indicates that this group went to visit Edirne shortly after its

relief and recapture by Turkish forces on 22 July 1913.

66. Shibli Nu‘mani was at the quayside in Bombay to greet Dr Ansari and the Mission with a long poem

in Urdu in praise of their humanitarian work.

67. Sent to the Comrade by Qazi Bashiruddin.

68. Khaliquzzaman and his comrades, who returned to India a few months later, also met up with Rauf

Pasha and his destroyer Hamidiye in Alexandria. See Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan, p.25.

69. Kırkkilise is now called Kırklareli.

70. He began his regular military training in Istanbul and later in Beirut. When the First World War

broke out in 1914, he was commissioned as a lieutenant and sent to the Gallipoli front, where he

fought in several engagements and (according to Shahjahanpuri) was said by Rauf Pasha to have been

wounded three times.

71. There is a minor confusion in the sense that the second name Nihat is used for Abdurrahman by Rauf

Orbay, whereas Halide Edib gives Qureshi and other accounts give Peshawari (i.e., from Peshawar).

Surnames as such were not in vogue at the time, but it is clear that the references are to the same

person. Furthermore, Aybek mentions that Abdurrahman Peshawari’s dislike of British rule in India

was so great that he preferred to identify with the Afghans, whose languages (Persian and Pashto) he

spoke and who were at least independent as a state.

72. Rauf Orbay, Siyası Hatıralar [Political Memoirs] (Istanbul: Orgun Yayınevi, 2003), pp.41–2.

73. The travails of war meant that Abdurrahman – like most Turks in their beleaguered country –

had virtually forgotten what real milk tasted like. In Germany in 1916, he was delighted to

find large supplies of milk bottles, but on guzzling them down he was shattered to discover that

their contents were only water that had been artificially given the colour of milk. ‘My

disappointment was unimaginable’ is the quote attributed to him in Shahjahanpuri, p.179. It also

mentions a trip to Baghdad by Abdurrahman during the War but no substantiating details are

given.

74. For Aybek, see note 33.

75. Thus, in his Introduction to Shahjahanpuri’s book (Ghazi Abdurrahman Peshawari Shaheed), Reyazul

Hasan mentions that when Rauf Orbay visited Aligarh on his trip to India in 1933, he unveiled a

plaque in Abdurrahman’s memory in the room on campus where the latter had stayed while a student.

He also met a younger brother of Abdurrahman at Aligarh with much emotion, and later travelled to

Peshawar to visit Abdurrahman’s family at their ancestral home.

76. On 19 May 1919.

77. See explanation to List of those who accompanied Mustafa Kemal Pasha to Samsun in _I. Gorgulu, On

Yıllık Harbin Kadrosu 1912–1922 [The Cadres of the Ten Year War 1912–1922] (Ankara: Turk Tarih

Kurumu Yayınları, 1993), p.201.

78. Orbay, Siyası Hatıralar, pp.298–9.

79. Omer Fahreddin Pasha (1868–1948) is famous as the Defender of Medina at the end of the First

World War. He took the surname Turkkan in 1934. See S.T. Wasti, ‘The Defence of Medina, 1916–

19’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.27, No.4 (Oct. 1991), pp.642–53.

80. As an example, Reyazul Hasan writes (having heard it from Maulana Mohamed Ali at a public

gathering) that Abdurrahman Peshawari as one of the officers of the Turkish general Halil Pasha (who

was also an uncle of Enver Pasha) also took part in the famous Kut al Amara battles in 1915–16. In

one engagement, it would appear that Abdurrahman seriously risked harm and capture by a company

of Indian soldiers, whereupon he discarded his Turkish uniform and – in vest and underwear –

convinced the soldiers in Punjabi that he was not an enemy combatant, and so made good his escape

back to the Turkish lines.

81. Websites related to the establishment of the Turkish news agency called Anadolu Ajansı [Anatolian

Agency] in April 1920 in Ankara mention Halide Edib describing early days as follows: The news was

typed on a borrowed typewriter with one finger by Abdurrahman the Afghan.

82. Z. Ozaydınlı, ‘The Indian Muslims Red Crescent Society’s Aid to the Ottoman State during the

Balkan War in 1912’, Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine [JISHIM],

Vol.2, No.8 (Oct. 2003), pp.12–18.

83. Although the volunteers came in three separate groups, this does not indicate that they were

uncoordinated. Ozaydınlı mentions that the first group came from the United Kingdom, and

comprised generally well-to-do Oxford students (the names given may be transliterated as Abdul Haq,

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Aale Imran, Mohammad Hussain and Hasan Abid Jafri). She suggests that a Dr Selim from Egypt

was with this group. The second group was under the direction of Dr Fyzee, and the names given for

this group may be rendered as follows: Dr Mohammad Hussain, Dr Nimkar, Dr Mulkehn, Dr Nizar

Ahmed, Dr Salim, a pharmacist Roshan, with Abdul Wajid, Sharif Mashhadi, Hakeem Sirajuddin

and Abdul Latif in various other capacities (nurses, assistants, secretary, cashier, etc.). The names

given for Dr Ansari’s team, i.e. the third and main group, are as follows: Dr M.A. Ansari, Dr Ali

Azhar Fyzee, Dr Mohammad Naim Ansari, Dr Abdurrahman, Dr Shamsul Bari, Dr Mahmudullah,

Dr Mirza Raza Khan and in other capacities, Ghulam Ahmad Khan, Nurul Shams, Abdul Wahid

Khan, Hamid Rasul and Syed Tawangar Hussain. Ozaydınlı quotes these names from the Red

Crescent publications of the time and from other references.

As will be observed, there is a certain overall confusion with respect to some names. In particular, Dr

Nimkar and Dr Mulkehn appear to be Turkish mispronunciations of some unfamiliar Indian

surnames.

84. These include A.Z. _Izgoer, Paris Sulh Konferansı ve Osmanlı’nın Cokusu: Seyh Musir Huseyin Kidwai

[The Paris Peace Conference and the Collapse of the Ottoman Empire: Mushir Hosain Kidwai]

(Istanbul: Nehir Yayınları, 1991), and A.Z. _Izgoer, Osmanlı’nın son dostları (Hint alt kıtasında Turk

imajı) – Musir Huseyin Kıdwai [The Last Friends of the Ottomans (The Turkish Image in the Indian

Subcontinent) – Mushir Hosain Kidwai] (Istanbul: Nehir Yayınları, 2004). For more information on

Kidwai, see S.T. Wasti, ‘Mushir Hosain Kidwai and the Ottoman Cause’, Middle Eastern Studies,

Vol.30, No.2 (April 1994), pp.252–61.

85. A.Z. _Izgoer, ‘Osmanlı’nın Yıkılısı Oncesinde Hind Hilal-i Ahmer Yardımları ve Dr. Ensarı’ nin

Faaliyetleriyle _Ilgili Bazı Notlar’ [Some Notes concerning the Aid provided by the Indian Red

Crescent before the Collapse of the Ottomans and the Activities of Dr Ansari], Yeni Tıp Tarihi

Arastırmaları [New Researches in Medical History] (Istanbul, 2002), Vol.VIII, pp.17–31.

86. Syed Ameer Ali (1849–1928), lawyer, author and Privy Councillor, who established the first mosque in

London in 1910 and was also a supporter of the Khilafat Movement.

87. The speech was made in Bombay – in the presence of the Turkish Consul-General Halil Halid.

88. S.M. Tevfik was a prolific Turkish journalist who wrote on many Islamic subjects. His dates of birth

and death have not been traced. He was well-known by educated Indian Muslims and served as the

special Indian correspondent for the journal Sebılurresad (The Straight Path). See Wasti, ‘The Political

Aspirations of Indian Muslims and the Ottoman Nexus’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.42, No.5 (Sept.

2006), pp.709–22.

89. The waters when consumed are claimed locally to ease the passage of kidney stones.

90. The Turkish text of the inscriptions is as follows: ‘Balkan muharebesinde Osmanlı kardeslerine yardım

etmek icin Hindistandan gelen Umum Hindistan Hilal-i Ahmer Heyet-i Tıbbiyesinin uhuvvet yadigarı

1913.

406 S. T. Wasti

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