The directory «Plots»

Tarhan Abdülhak Hâmit
(1852—1937)

Turkish poet, diplomat, and politician. Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan was born into a wealthy Istanbul family; his grandfather was physician to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He was privately tutored, then enrolled in a French school, and after a tour of Europe became one of the first Muslim students to enroll at Robert College (now part of Bosporus University). In 1871, he married into an aristocratic family and served in the empire's embassy in Paris. In 1878, his play Nestren was deemed subversive, and he was dismissed. In 1881, he was readmitted to the Ottoman foreign service and was posted abroad (in Paris, Bombay, London, and Belgium) until 1921. This was also his most active period of literary production. In 1922, he returned to Turkey, where he was soon elected to represent Istanbul in the new Turkish Grand National Assembly.

Tarhan was a major writer of the Tanzimat era. His participation in the Servet-i Fünun (Wealth of Sciences) movement, with its concern for technique and its valorization of art for its own sake, helped to prepare an environment for the flowering of modern literature in Turkey. The sheer extent of his output - the drama Finten is five hundred pages - is more remarkable than the quality of his prose, with its mixed meters and bombastic language. Tarhan is not widely read today.

Turkey, 1952, Abdülhak Hâmit Tarhan

Turkey, 1952, Abdülhak Hâmit Tarhan

Turkey, 1952, Abdülhak Hâmit Tarhan

Turkey, 1952, Abdülhak Hâmit Tarhan