Abdulhak Adnan Adivar

1881 - 1955

Turkish doctor, historian, and writer.

Born in Gallipoli to a prominent family of Ottoman ulama (Islamic clergy), Abdulhak Adnan Adivar was graduated from the Imperial School of Medicine in 1905. Suspected of working against the regime, he left for Europe and became an assistant at the Berlin Faculty of Medicine. Returning to Constantinople (now Istanbul) upon the restoration of the constitution, he taught at and became dean of the School of Medicine (1909 - 1911). He worked with the Red Crescent Society during the Tripoli War and with the Ottoman Department of Public Health in World War I, being credited with contributing substantially to the reorganization of both institutions.

At the armistice, Adivar became a member of the last Ottoman parliament but avoided British arrest and deportation, escaping to Anatolia with his wife Halide Edib Adivar and becoming one of Atatürk's inner circle. During the war of independence, he served in various ministerial positions and was vice-president of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. After the armistice, he served in the national government's delegation in Istanbul. He supported the short-lived Progressive Republican Party but was in Europe when news broke of a conspiracy against Atatürk (June 1926).

Tried in absentia for complicity, he was acquitted but chose to remain in exile until 1939, at first in England, then Paris, teaching at the École des Langues Orientales and engaged in scholarly research and writing. Upon his return, Adivar fostered the teaching and practice of science and was a founder and first president of the International Society for Oriental Research.

He directed publication of the Turkish edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, contributing its introduction and a number of articles. His other works include La science chez les Turks Ottomans (Paris, 1939), a Turkish translation of Bertrand Russell's Philosophical Matters (1936), a two-volume work in Turkish on science and religion through history, and many essays and articles on cultural and scientific topics. He served a final period as deputy for Istanbul (1946 - 1950).

Bibliography

Shaw, Stanford, and Shaw, Ezel Kural. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808 - 1975. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Toynbee, Arnold S. Acquaintances. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

— KATHLEEN R. F. BURRILL