1881
Born in Thessaloniki
Mustafa is born in Thessaloniki (then Salonica) in 1881. His father, Ali Rıza, is a minor official who later becomes a timber merchant, and his mother is Zübeyde. Thessaloniki is the largest port of the Ottoman Balkans, with Muslim, Jewish, Greek and Bulgarian communities and a railway to Europe.
The house in Thessaloniki where Mustafa was born, today the Atatürk MuseumWikimedia Commons, Kemal Cenk Sarioglu from Istanbul, Turkey, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Ataturk-birth-house.jpg)
Mustafa is sent first to a Quran school in his neighbourhood, then to the modern Şemsi Efendi school. He is seven when his father dies.
Thessaloniki from the sea, 1898Wikimedia Commons, Miller, William, 1864-1945, No restrictions (Travels and politics in the Near East (1898) (14761304036).jpg)
Sources
- Andrew Mango, Atatürk (1999).
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