Playwright (b. 1844, İstanbul – d.
1899). He learned French on private lessons and firstly he worked at the
Babiâli* Translation Office as a clerk, then he became a member of the Health
Council and the first secretary of the Directorate of Quarantine. He went to
the Eastern Anatolia, Iraq and Japan as an inspector of public debts (1855-88).
After his duty as the Governor of Trabzon (1890-93) he became the director of
the Office of Public Debts (1890-93), which would last to the end of his life.
It is for this reason that he was called Direktör Ali Bey.
His first work was published in Diyojen
(1869-72), the first humorous review, published by Teodor Kasap. Ali Bey, who
was one of the regular writers of this review, wrote plays for the Gedik Paşa
Theater, which was founded by the Armenian Güllü Agop and his friends, and
wrote scripts adapted from French plays. He gave Turkish diction lessons to the
Armenian actors and participated in theater activities. His plays were
performed under the authorship “A Person” to hide his official identity. He
explained the meanings of words satirically in his dictionary Lehçetü’l Hakayık (Language of Realities) which he wrote in 1897 and was the first work
of its field; the faults of the 19th century Ottoman Empire were
also criticized in this dictionary.
WORKS:
Kokana
Yatıyor (Coquette
Sleeps, comedy, 1870), Tosun Ağa (Lord
Tosun, a comedy adapted from Moliere’s “Georges Dandin”, 1870), Ayyar Hamza (Hamza the Cheater, adapted from Moliere's Les Fourberies
de Scapin. 1871), Misafiri İstiskal (Troublesome
Guests, comedy, 1871), Gevete Beber (Gevete
Beber, comedy, 1873), Govo Minar ve
Şürekası (Govo Minar and His Colleagues, translated from Edmont Gondinet,
comedy), Letafet (Beauty,
opera-comedy, 1897), Çıngırak (The
Bell, play, not published), Evlenmek
İster Bir Adam (A Man Wants to Marry, novel, by Paul de Kocak, 1897), Seyahat Jurnali (Travel Journal, notes
on travels from İstanbul to India, 1897),
Seyyareler (Planets, mythological humorous tales, 1897). Lehçetü'l-Hakayık (a humorous dictionary, 1894, 1908; together
with the writer’s story Seyyareler-Planets,
by N. Hacıeminoğlu, 1962; by Şemsettin Kutlu together with the writer’s works Kokana
Yatıyor-Coquette Sleeps, Misafiri İstiskal-Troublesome Guests,
Ayyar Hamza-Hamza the Cheater and
Seyahat Jurnali-Travel Journal, 1974).