Ottoman Salonika
merchant Duhani Hasan Akif, Mustafa Fazıl, and Osman Ahad / Ehat.^22
For the next few decades, its board of directors would include promi-
nent merchants (Ahmet Kapancı, Duhani Hasan Akif ), bankers (Mehmet
Kapancı, Yusuf Kapancı, Namık Kapancı, İbrahim Kapancı), professionals
(attorneys, doctors, pharmacists), and civil servants (directors of the state
monopoly tobacco factories, railway officials).^23 The Terakki school was
across the street from the Pinti Hasan Mosque and the Rüşdiye school for
boys, in a neighborhood in which Kapancı predominated.^24 It grew rap-
idly; by 1907 , it had three new buildings: a boys’ school, a girls’ school,
and a boarding school in the new Hamidiye suburb.
One of the founding board members was Duhani Hasan Akif, whose
life I learned about through interviews with a descendant.^25 Hasan Akif
was related to another board member, Abdurrahman Telci, a dealer in sil-
ver wire. Osman Telci (Telci Osman Efendi), a merchant dealing in silk
and gold wire and thread,^26 and his wife Emine Dudu, who are buried
in the Kapancı section of the main Dönme cemetery in Istanbul,^27 paid
for the construction of a new Terakki school building in Hamidiye.^28 A
street there was named after Osman Telci.^29 The family was evidently
devoted to the school, and Hasan Akif ’s six daughters were educated
there. Emine Akif (d. 1935 ) and her brother Hüsnü were both teachers
at the school, and Hasan Akif ’s granddaughter Nuriye (b. 1881 ) was also
among its students. The family possesses a photograph of Nuriye and
Şemsi Efendi on her graduation day.
Testifying to the role played by Kapancı merchants in establishing the
school, in 1906 , a plaque was hung on the wall of the principal’s office
thanking Mehmet Kapancı. It read: “This school building came into exis-
tence with the laudable, knowledge-promoting assistance and support of
his honor the fortunate Mehmet Kapancı Efendi.”^30 This man, who made
a name for himself in international commerce, saw to it that Dönme
youth were educated in Dönme principles.
Following the Kapancı Terakki, the Karakaş established a school in
1883 – 84 , named Feyz-i Sıbyân (The Excellence of Youth, later shortened to
simply Feyziye, Excellence). Its first location was in an old Qur’an school
in the Katip Musliheddin neighborhood, the second in Hacı İsmail, both
heavily populated by Karakaş and, like the Terakki school, near the seat
of government. The person who first conceived of the idea for the Feyziye
was Karakaş Dönme Mısırlızade Abdurrahman Zeki, a translator at the
French consulate, a man educated in foreign schools, who understood