One of the rifles used by the British archaeologist and later army officer Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, who worked as a spy for the United Kingdom during World War I and inspired the Arab rebellion in the Ottoman Empire, is on display in a museum in Istanbul.
The firearm, an Austrian-made Steyr Mannlicher M-95 rifle believed to have been used by Lawrence and which was also used in the Battle of Gallipoli, is on display at the Hisart Living History Museum in Kağıthane, a district on the European side of Istanbul. According to museum officials, the rifle was captured as booty by British and ANZAC soldiers during the battle, and later taken to the Middle East or Egypt, where Thomas Edward Lawrence – who was serving as an officer in the region at the time – received it as a gift.
The rifle is precisely engraved with the phrase “captured at Gallipoli” and the name “T. E. Lawrence“. It was included in the collection of the Hisart Museum in Istanbul five years ago, after being acquired from a collector. There is another similar rifle, also used by Lawrence of Arabia during World War I, which was later given as a gift to King George V of England, and is currently on display at Windsor Castle in the UK.
Speaking about the weapon on display in this Istanbul museum, Nejat Çuhadaroğlu, a Turkish collector, explained: “The writing technique on the rifle is a technique that must be done very carefully; I believe it was written in the Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence of Arabia stayed in the region for a long time until the end of the war, and afterwards. We think he received it as a gift. Since we were allies (in the Ottoman Empire) of Austria-Hungary and Germany, at that time we used rifles produced by these countries, the Mannlicher among them. The engraving says that it was taken as booty on the Çanakkale (Gallipoli) front; later, it is identified that the rifle was given as a gift to the spy nicknamed Lawrence of Arabia. There is no other explanation.”
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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