Ottoman Engineers on the Hejaz Railway: A Prosopographical Study

The Hejaz Railway, a turning point in the annals of Ottoman railway history, has been the focus of rigorous scrutiny across a myriad of disciplines, includinghistory, economics, political science, religion studies, and sociology. Despite the geographical, climatic, financial and technical difficulties that arose over time during the railway project, which was intended to be carried out with local capital and labor, the determination shown in involving Ottoman engineers in the process enabledthem to gain experience in railway planning, construction, and operation, paving the way for them to play an active role in the development of domestic railway engineering in the following years. The Ottoman engineers, who had a large workforce in the project defined as the “railway school,” are a group that has not been examined previously. This article studies this group of engineers, most of whom were graduates of the Hendese-i Mülkiye Mektebi (School of Civil Engineering), theOttoman Empire's civil engineering school, using the prosopography method, aiming to analyze the position of certain status groups or professional communities within a society and the way their standings shifted over time. This study evaluates the formation and transformation of the identity of the civil engineering community that emerged during the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, in relation to the engineers' roles on the railway line, and draws on the biographies that form the core of the study.