Aid with no strings attached – Generosity of Ottoman Turks during “The Great Irish (Potato) Famine”

In the Name of Allah, The Most Merciful, The Bestower of Mercy.

Abdullah ibn Amr reported that Allah’s Messenger, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said, “The merciful will be shown mercy by the Most Merciful. Be merciful to those on the earth, and the One in the heavens will have mercy upon you.” [Sahih Abu Dawud 4941]

Potatoes have a special place in Irish culture, as for centuries the people of the Emerald Isle have depended on this tuber as a diet staple.

A seven-year famine in the 19th century, known as the Great Famine or Potato Famine, killed more than a million people in Ireland. The famine in Ireland, which was under British rule at the time, was triggered by the potato blight or late blight, a disease caused by a fungus-like organism causing collapse and decay.

The greatest single disaster Ireland has ever suffered – Gorta Mor in Gaelic – forced more than a million citizens to migrate to the U.S., but those who were too poor to go anywhere were doomed to die from starvation or illnesses that struck the weak and malnourished.

Observing the suffering, English philanthropist James Hack Tuke said people in the worst-affected areas were “living, or rather starving, upon turnip-tops, sand-eels and seaweed, a diet which no one in England would consider fit for the meanest animal.”

The worst year for the famine was 1847, as it saw no improvement in crop yields from the first two years of the plague. But it was at that time, the plague’s worst year – “Black ’47” – that unexpected aid arrived from afar.

Thousands of miles away, in the Ottoman capital Istanbul, Sultan Abdul Majid I was made aware of this great human suffering when his dentist, who came from Ireland, told him about the desperate situation. The sultan quickly offered 10,000 British pounds – just over a million pounds at current values, or $1.3 million – to be used to help the starving people of Ireland.

However, Queen Victoria had already aided Ireland with 2,000 British pounds, and her advisors in London refused to accept any offer exceeding the monarch’s aid.

Faced with this dictate, the unwillingly slashed his original offer of aid and sent Ireland 1,000 British pounds instead.
However, he had a fierce desire to extend more help for this humanitarian cause. “He was eager to do more, and that’s why he ordered three ships to take food, medicine and other urgent necessities to Ireland,” said Levent Murat Burhan, Turkey’s ambassador in Dublin, describing what happened next.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Burhan said the historic aid operation was done on the sly, as the British navy would not allow any foreign ships to dock at harbors in either the capital Dublin or Cork.

“So the Ottoman ships had to travel further north and deliver the aid to the harbor of Drogheda,” Burhan said.

The aid was delivered to the wharves of Drogheda on the coast of the River Boyne, and it is especially in that place that the generosity of the Ottoman Empire is still remembered by the locals, 173 years later.

Visitors to Dublin museums can come across memorials and information about this unforgettable aid from the Ottoman Turks, but a plaque on the wall of a central Drogheda building, unveiled in 1995 by Mayor Alderman Godfrey and then-Turkish Ambassador to Ireland Taner Baytok, reads, “The Great Irish Famine of 1847 – In remembrance and recognition of the generosity of the People of Turkey toward the People of Ireland.”

During a 2010 visit to Ankara, Ireland’s then-President Mary McAleese expressed the Irish people’s gratitude for the aid, saying that the people of Drogheda had “incorporated into their coat of arms your own beautiful emblems, beautiful crescent and star, and they are there to the present day.”

Apart from the plaque of gratitude in the center of the town, the crescent and star are engraved on stones and painted on a wall.

But perhaps the most significant evidence of the aid and the local gratitude for it comes in a letter signed by local dignitaries of Drogheda. Ambassador Burhan showed AA a copy of the letter in his official room in Dublin. The letter reads: “We, as Irish nobles, dignitaries and people, submit our gratitude to the Ottoman Sultan for his generous assistance to us due to famine disaster. It is inevitable that we apply for other countries’ assistance to get rid of the threat of hunger and death.

The answer given to assistance call generously by the Ottoman Sultan has also been a model for the European countries. Thanks to this accurate behavior, many people have been relaxed and got rid of death. We submit our gratitude on behalf of them and pray for the Ottoman Sultan and his country not to face any disasters as we do.”

Irish novelist James Joyce referred to the Sultan’s aid in his work, Ulysses. “Even the Grand Turk sent us his piasters”.

Excerpt from Daily Sabah (Turkish Online News)