The “Hicaz ve Bağdat Demiryollarının 100 Yılı” (The centennial year of the Hejaz and Baghdad railways) exhibition reveals this story.The dream of a Hejaz railway that never became a reality has come back to us from time to time, even 100 years after it was first envisioned, sometimes in the form of a book, sometimes a documentary, and now it’s back in the form of a photography exhibition. The new and old photographs and historical documents that are on display at the Haydarpaşa Station in Kadıköy bring this grand dream back into the spotlight. This project, which could only be the product of a global mind, is still being examined with admiration today. The workers involved in the construction of this railway project, the station buildings, the steam locomotives, the metal coins created to finance the project, the stamps -- some of these documents still strike an emotional chord with us today. One of these being that the Islamic world was called upon to donate to the construction of this railway; some Ottoman civil servants and military officers made sacrificed their wages for the project. This is perhaps why the Hejaz Railway still has such an emotional impact today. Another detail that this exhibition reveals is that the Hejaz Railway had become an indispensible transportation artery and that this route was the only path on which soldiers in Syria could be transported to Palestine during World War I.
The photography exhibition, which was opened last week in a ceremony attended by Turkish State Railways (TCDD) General Director Süleyman Karaman and German Ambassador to Turkey Dr. Eckart Cuntz, is divided into three sections. Forty pictures, maps and postcards borrowed from German historical archives are on display under the historical section of the exhibition. Here one can witness İstanbulites preparing for their journey to go on the hajj (pilgrimage), pilgrims gathered on Mt. Arafat and photos of the Kaaba taken back in the beginning of the 1900s. The following information is included in a caption to a photo in which neither the railway nor wagons can be seen: “The Hejaz Railway would decrease the troublesome and lengthy journey to Mecca from eight weeks to three to four days.” There is a portrait among the photographs as well. This portrait is of German engineer Heinrich August Meissner. Meissner, who took over the management of the project in 1901, worked in Turkey until he died; he became an Ottoman pasha and is buried in İstanbul.
The exhibition also has a thing or two to say about Turkish-German relations in the past. A section allotted to this topic displays photographs of Dr. Jurgen Franzke, who travelled on the former Baghdad Railway in Anatolia and the Hejaz Railway in Syria and Jordan in October 2000, allowing visitors to juxtapose the old images with the new ones.
The exhibition, which will be on display until April 19, also contains pictures and documents from the archives of the TCDD General Directorate and the Turkish Republic Prime Ministry Directorate General of Press and Information. If you have the time, you may examine the photographs that capture Sultan Abdülhamit II at the opening ceremony of the station or the sultan’s firman (mandate) for the construction of the Baghdad Railway; however, if you are there en route on the Toros Express, which nowadays operates and extends not to Baghdad but the Turkish province of Gaziantep, then try to purchase the book that contains all of the photos on display in the exhibit. Happy viewing, and have a safe journey!
