Religious and Moral Education dents of the Terakki school, because of its stress on foreign language and
commerce, according to Mütalâa (Contemplation), a periodical founded
by Osman Tevfik,^48 Atatürk’s teacher of calligraphy and penmanship at
the military preparatory school in Salonika.^49 The Feyziye school also
produced many important people in the world of commerce, as well as
many people who would be of importance in the capital. Mehmet Rüştü
Karakaşzade (b. 1880 ) graduated in 1892 and became a merchant.^50 Eight
years his junior, Osman Tevfik’s son Ahmet Emin Yalman, who like
Atatürk also attended the military preparatory school in Salonika, studied
under Şemsi Efendi at the Feyziye in the 1890 s. Both Karakaşzade and
Yalman would play prominent roles in public debates over the Dönme in
Turkey in the 1920 s.
The Feyziye school had good relations with the state, which saw it as
a helpful asset. Şemsi Efendi in particular was on excellent terms with all
the sultans who ruled between the time he opened his first school and the
year Salonika was lost to Greece. He received many sultanic honors for
his efforts, from Sultan Murad V in 1876 to Sultan Abdülhamid II thirty
years later. After having brought his Feyziye students to Istanbul in 1909
to visit the sultan, the next year he was rewarded with the Education 3 rd
degree mark of distinction. In 1911 , he received the Mecidi 2 nd degree
from Sultan Mehmet V Reşat during the latter’s visit to Salonika.^51 One
of the reasons he was repeatedly honored was that students he taught
served the empire. Because the school emphasized commerce in the last
few years of the curriculum, most who graduated from the Feyziye sec-
ondary school went into business.^52 But all graduates were prepared to
matriculate at the preparatory school for civil servants (Mülkiye), and
many enlisted in government service.^53 Mehmet Tevfik Bey, governor of
Salonika in 1901 , notes in his memoirs that the Feyziye was superior to
all other schools and produced successful civil servants.^54 The Journal de
Salonique, established in 1895 , when Dönme were most influential, had a
very positive attitude toward their contributions to urban life, particularly
the establishment of progressive schools, and calls the school the most
beneficial and well administered.^55
Graduates at turn-of-the-twentieth century Feyziye ceremonies were
applauded by the leaders of the city, including its administrators, leading
financiers and merchants, and military men, illustrating the importance
of the school and the Dönme connection with, and membership, in the
bureaucratic, commercial, and military elite of the city. Foreign consuls