Making a Revolution, 1908 allowed him to launch the Ottoman Water Company of Salonika with
the backing of Belgian financiers. All of the companies that he founded or
directed in the city were partly funded with Belgian capital or by Belgian
companies. By 1900 , his family was established in Brussels, where he later
died and was buried. Hamdi Bey and his brother Ömer were granted a
fifty-year imperial concession to make the Vardar River navigable for ships
with small carrying capacities.^27 Hamdi Bey was also given a concession
to establish and develop tramways, leading to his founding the Ottoman
Tramway Company of Salonika; and he was granted authority to establish
the Ottoman Gas Company.^28 After he became mayor, his municipality
supported and controlled the horse-drawn tramway (the electric version
arrived, along with electricity and the telephone, in 1907 – 8 ).^29
Hamdi Bey considered paving all the streets in the city. He may not
have been able to do so, but he altered the face of the city in other ways,
hiring the Italian architect Vitaliano Poselli to plan and build most of
the new public buildings in Salonika, including the neoclassical army
barracks, government house, and municipal hospital.^30 Hamdi Bey was
the mayor responsible for the fountain that delivered sour cherry juice,
and he also built a public fish market on the waterfront, which was both
Islamic and modern: customers entered the clean and hygienic market
through the building’s façade, which contained numerous Islamic archi-
tectural features.^31 It has already been mentioned that Poselli designed the
eclectic Dönme New Mosque.
The fact that Hamdi Bey was a Dönme, and not a Jew, was the key
to his mayoralty. No Christian or Jew, no matter how wealthy or in-
fluential, could have become mayor. Hamdi Bey was also the leader of
the Yakubis—the Dönme group who most closely followed the public
requirements of being Muslim—when he was mayor (which led to all
Yakubis subsequently being referred to as “Hamdi Beys”). Being mayor
allowed him to further the financial interests of the Yakubis, and to ensure
that Yakubis could serve in local politics without suspicion or interference
from governors sent from Istanbul, although the prevalence of Yakubi
Dönme in municipal offices—recognizable by their shaved heads—had
caused at least one governor, Midhat Pasha, to take notice less than a de-
cade after the municipality was established.^32
It may not be a coincidence that the Dönme schools in Salonika were
very close to the seat of power in the city, the konak, where other Dönme
presided. Şemsi Efendi’s school was located just two blocks east of the