The Turkish Embassy and the Lok Virsa (Heritage) Museum of Pakistan have joint hands to piece together an exhibition of nearly 1,500 camera photos of Ottoman Empire here from February 9 to 20.
The pictures revolve around the Ottoman Palestine, most in the Jerusalem and were recovered by the current Turkish Consul General in Jerusalem in a search spanning several years.
The Turkish officials here say the photographs depict the social, cultural and religious lives of Muslim and Christian Arabs, the Jews, the Russians, Serbs and Turks during the concluding century of the Ottoman rule.
They show army on parade, the domestic lives of the various groups, the portraits of Turkish Pashas and ruling officials and the scenes of the holy mosques and other temples.
These span the period from 1850 to 1917 and were recovered from the Orient House, the Arab Studies Society and other location institutions.
These have been grouped into three sections: "Urban Development", "Social Religious and Political Life" and "The World War I" that ended with the dismantling of the vast Turkish Empire and emergence of Kamal Attaturk.
The exhibits have already travelled to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Turkish Cyprus, Bulgaria and Iran and later will go to New Zealand, USA, Germany and also Syria.
The point underlined by the pictures is the peaceful co-existence of ethnic and religious communities during that period as it depicts congregations of foreign missionaries, teachers and diplomats as well as Christian and Jewish refugees.
It promises to be a different fare for Pakistanis than the one-country exhibits held here so far as it is the period when Khilafat was very popular with the Muslims of South Asia.
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