Background and career
Ahmet Mithat (c. 1844 – 28 December 1912) was an Ottoman Turkish journalist, author, translator and publisher during the Tanzimat period. In scholarship, he is typically referred to as Ahmet Mithat Efendi to distinguish him from the contemporary politician Midhat Pasha; Ahmet Mithat took on his second name "Mithat" while working for Midhat Pasha as an official and newspaper editor in the Vilayet of the Danube.
Politically, his orientation was more conservative, compared to writers such as Namık Kemal. He was a prolific writer, more than 250 of his works have survived. From 1878 he published a newspaper entitled Tercüman-ı Hakikat (Interpreter of Truth). Before that he was one of the contributors of Basiret (Insightfulness), a newspaper published between 1870 and 1879.
His editorship and publication of Olga Lebedeva's translations of Russian literature into Turkish served as an introduction of Tolstoy, Lermontov and Pushkin to Turkey's readership. In addition, he was a patron and teacher to Fatma Aliye, one of the most famous female Ottoman authors.
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