Ottoman Salonika
were all invited to the governor’s mansion and given gold watches. Galip
Pasha, later governor, helped finance and construct a new building.^13
Ahmet Kapancı, en route to western Europe, helped the school obtain
a teacher from Istanbul.^14 The school taught French, Ottoman Turkish,
and Islam. Turkish historians writing to promote the image of the school
claim that it was the first private Muslim school to open a preschool
for girls and to allow girls to continue their education, and established
close relations with administrators and teachers from French schools,
using the example of French textbooks to establish lesson plans and
curriculums.^15
Soon afterward, Şemsi Efendi moved the school to where it appears
on post- 1880 maps, behind Sufi Lodge street and across the street from
İpekçi street, named for another leading Karakaş family. The school was
both popular and famous for teaching critical thinking, rather than rote
memorization, and for inventing a new type of blackboard. There were
attacks and pressure on it, however, and the number of students declined.
Finally, Şemsi Efendi was forced to close it in 1891.
The Karakaş Dönme Galip Pasha (Pasiner) (not to be confused with
Governor Galip Pasha) also began his education under Şemsi Efendi.
In his memoirs, he recalls how at the age of six, he was in a traditional
school, where learning was by rote and students sat on the floor.^16 But like
Atatürk’s, his father decided one day to send him to a new school. When
he entered its courtyard, he noted twenty to thirty children at play and a
young teacher, perhaps twenty or twenty-one years old, in their midst, who
turned his attention to him. This was Şemsi Efendi. After he had played
for a while with the others, they were told to enter the classroom. They
formed two lines and fell in behind the teacher. As soon as Galip entered
the classroom, he was struck by the fragrant scent of two rows of brand-
new pine desks, a beautiful raised chair for the teacher, reached by two
steps, and the blackboard, chalk, and eraser. He recalls how the windows
were open, allowing in (symbolically charged) fresh air. The same windows
would also serve as an escape route for Şemsi Efendi after he was accused of
teaching the children according to “infidel” methods and letting them play
games and do gymnastics. Galip Pasha describes the last days of the school:
while they were in the classroom, a mob of forty or fifty men gathered
outside, cursing loudly, broke down the door, and entered. Şemsi Efendi
dived out of a window to escape, and the men threw the students out of
the classroom and then destroyed it, breaking the teacher’s chair, chalk-