Hasan Tahsini (nonfiction)

Hasan Tahsini (7 April 1811 – 3 July 1881), also known as Hoxha Tahsin, was an Albanian astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher.

He was the first rector of Istanbul University and one of the founders of the Central Committee for Defending Albanian Rights.

Tahsini is regarded as one of the most prominent scholars of the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century.

In 1870 he became the first rector of the newly established Istanbul University, where he gave lectures on physics, astronomy and psychology. The government appointed Tahsini as rector as it was believed that he could establish a balance between western European and Islamic methods and ideologies. However, at that time Tahsini's scientific research, unreserved liberalism and alleged relations to freemasonry led to him being frequently attacked by conservative ulama circles The attacks against Tahsini began when he conducted experiments in order to illustrate the notion of vacuum to his students. Tahsini placed a pigeon underneath a glass bell, emptied the receptacle and the pigeon eventually suffocated proving Tahsini's theory. The conservative circles considered Tahsini's experiment as evidence of witchcraft and performance of magic. After the experiment he was declared a heretic through a fatwa, dismissed from the university, and disallowed to give lectures.

Tahsini wrote the first Turkish language treatise on psychology titled Psychology or the Science of Soul, a work influenced by modernism and the first book whose title contained the word psychology. He also wrote the first Turkish-language book on modern astronomy being also the first popular science book in Turkish.

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Mathematics (nonfiction)

External links:

• Hasan Tahsini @ Wikipedia

Attribution: