Job title
Muhabere Basmemuru
Group of job titles: Telegraph service
Stored spellings: Muhabere Basmemuru; Muhabere basmemuru
Note: Kept apart from Basmuhabere Memuru: the words are in another order
2 officials held the job title Muhabere Basmemuru. Its 10 annual entries run from 1868 to 1886 (AH 1285 to 1303). The median of the 10 recorded monthly salaries is 500 kuruş, against 500 kuruş for the whole collection in the same years. The entries name 3 places. The place with the largest number of officials is Elassona (Alasonya), with 1.
- Officials
- 2
- Years on recordAH 1285 to 1303, 10 years with an entry
- 1868 to 1886
- Median monthly salaryfrom 10 recorded salaries
- 500 kuruş
- Places with officials
- 3
Profile of the group: Telegraph service
No source read describes Muhabere Basmemuru by itself, so this is the profile of its group of job titles.
The telegraph service of the Ottoman state, a government monopoly from the start. Its offices grew from 52 in 1863 to 320 in 1869, and the postal guide of 1892 lists 679.
Duties
- take in, send, receive and deliver telegrams for the state and the public, state telegrams first
- keep the lines and the apparatus working
Tools and technology
- Morse apparatus in most offices and Hughes printing telegraphs in some
- batteries
- lines on poles and submarine cables
- apparatus made from 1869 in the ministry's own factory
Hard skills
- the science of the telegraph, accounts, and correspondence in Turkish and French, the subjects in which the ministry found its trainees weak in 1871
Requirements for entry
- entry as an unpaid trainee (mülazım) in an office, with examinations before appointment
- from 1881 also from Darüşşafaka
- from 1911 by competitive examination to the ministry's new school
History
The first lines were built in 1855 during the Crimean War, and the Telegraph Directorate was founded the same year. Telegrams in Turkish were sent from 1856 with a Turkish Morse code. In 1869 the service had 3,607 employees by one count. The telegraph was joined with the post in 1871.
Sources
- Bektaş, Yakup (2000). The Sultan's messenger: cultural constructions of Ottoman telegraphy, 1847-1880. Technology and Culture 41 (4), 669-696.Pages or part: 688-689. Used for: tools and technology.
- Davison, Roderic H. (1990). The advent of the electric telegraph in the Ottoman Empire. In Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774-1923, 133-165. Austin: University of Texas Press. Read in the Turkish translation by Durdu Mehmet Burak, OTAM 14 (2003), 347-386; pages are those of the translation.Pages or part: 361-362, 365, 368, 375. Used for: summary, duties, tools and technology, history.
- Güneş, Mahir Melih (2026). Anadolu'da Telgrafın Toplumsal Tarihi (1856-1908). Doctoral thesis, Hacettepe University. Online copy (read 11 October 2026).Pages or part: 108, 113-122. Used for: duties, tools and technology, requirements for entry.
- Okan, Ayşegül (2003). The Ottoman postal and telegraph services in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. MA thesis, Boğaziçi University, Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History.Pages or part: 26-28, 30, 99, 102-103. Used for: summary, tools and technology, history.
- The school and the office: training, entry and pay in the Ottoman Post and Telegraph service, 1870-1905. Working paper, 2026 (the paper behind this collection; its Section II reports Akyıldız 2024, Ata 2022 and Ayhan and Maviş 1994).Pages or part: Section II. Used for: hard skills, requirements for entry, history.
Where the job was held
| Place | Officials | Remark |
|---|---|---|
| Elassona (Alasonya) | 1 | |
| Mitrovica (Mitroviça) | 1 | |
| Niš (Niş) | 1 |
Places
| Place | Province | Officials | Annual entries | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elassona (Alasonya) | Bitola (Manastır) province | 1 | 7 | 1879 to 1886 |
| Niš (Niş) | Danube (Tuna) province | 1 | 2 | 1868 to 1870 |
| Mitrovica (Mitroviça) | Kosovo (Kosova) province | 1 | 1 | 1878/79 |
Ottoman officials recorded
2 officials, the one with most annual entries first.
| Official | Years | Annual entries | Kuruş a month | Birthplace |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mehmet Cemal Efendi | 1878 to 1886 | 8 | 500 | Çatalca |
| Yordan Resmi Efendi | 1868 to 1870 | 2 | 600 | Kayseri |
Years run from the first to the last annual entry. An official without a recorded name is listed after the named officials.
How to read these records: years and calendars, what first recorded means, gaps between annual entries, and salaries.
Subjects
- Muhabere Basmemuru
- Ottoman job titles (Osmanlı memuriyet unvanları)
- Labour history (emek tarihi)
- Salaries of officials (memur maaşları)
- Ottoman history (Osmanlı tarihi)
- Ottoman bureaucracy (Osmanlı bürokrasisi)
- Ottoman officials (Osmanlı'da memurlar)
- Ottoman personnel registers (Sicill-i Ahvâl defterleri)
- Ottoman registers (Osmanlı defterleri)