1914 — Very Good Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928) Original color map of Eastern Anatolia, Dogu Beyazit, Bayazid, Bargiri, Nakhchevan, Karakilise, Van, etc. 50x60 cm. In Ottoman script (Enverî). 1 p. Scale: 1:200.000. Slightly toned, several small holes on paper. Otherwise a very good copy. Enverî script is the war minister Enver Pasha's alphabet and writing amendment, which he tried to implement within the Ministry of War between 12 March 1914 and 10 August 1914. Starting from the Tanzimat (Westernization) period in the Ottoman Empire, the discussions on simplification in language, writing, alphabet and reading-writing had increased and at the end of the 19th century, military necessities also became one of the concerns. The problems such as the low rate of literacy among the recruited soldiers, the need to teach the soldiers how to read and write in a short time, and their misconceptions about the spelling of proper nouns led Enver Pasha to add the writing problem to his reform agenda, once he took office. Enver Pasha's reform is based on the principle of writing the Ottoman letters, which take different forms in the beginning, in the middle and at the end according to their unification with the other letters, separately in their original state without merging them. While this new alphabet was being created, the existing 32 letters in the Ottoman were preserved. The 8 vowels in the Turkish language, which could not be written with the old letters, was shown by placing small marks on the existing vowels and by doing so a new alphabet consisting of a total of 40 letters was created. With this alphabet, officially called 'Ordu Elifbasi', rules were adopted such as writing of the letters without merging them, writing the words as they are pronounced. At first glance, Enver Pasha's writing reform, which appeared as a definite solution to the theory of the solution of the ongoing debates on the alphabet and the spelling, formed a wide experiment field in the military. It was not possible to use Ordu Elifbasi, which essentially is a transliteration alphabet that allows transferring the sounds of these three different languages (Turkish, Arabic, Persian) to a single alphabet, in the daily life. Thanks to this new alphabet and spelling, learning to read and write were accelerated to some extent. However, it was seen that the literacy rate of the well-educated, literate people fell to the spelling and did not even progress. This alphabet and spelling reform, which Enver Pasha thought of spreading to the whole country, caused much more problems as it was experienced in the army. Although it was postponed until the end of the mobilization period following the declaration of the mobilization, Ordu Elifbasi, which remained in force for 152 days, eventually failed to be realized. (Source: Karakus: Enver Pasha's Alphabet And Spelling Attempt: Ordu Elifbasi (Army Alphabet)).In this extremely rare document, there are some articles and thoughts on a case. This is one the serie of the Bonn projection maps which are the first map series in modern techniques in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. In order to produce these maps covering Turkish territory, Reconnaissance Branch was incorporated into The Mapping Commission. The maps were produced in the datum based on the latitude and longitude of Ayasofya Mosque in equal area Bonn Projection. The field works for the 123 sheets covering the country were conducted by 76 staff. The production was completed in 18 years starting from east west. Field works continued without stopping except in years 1914 and 1920. This map series called also reconnaissance maps contributed a lot to producing 1:25.000 scale maps. Extremely rare. KW: "Harfleri Islah Cemiyeti" Hurûf-i munfasila Reform Turkish Letter revolution First World War WW 1 Map Geography Military maps.
