A relative recently sent my family a box of family papers. Most of these papers are wills, estate papers, letters, etc, but there's a document written in Ottoman Turkish with the insignia (tughra) of the sultan. Members of the family were merchants, so may have visited Turkey.
The best guess (forget which subreddit someone posted it to) was that it was a document granting one of my ancestors access to a port in the Ottoman Empire, which seems likely but it's only a guess.
If it's relevant, the family's name was Brown and they were from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Members of the family married into the Doeg, Pearson, Hatton, and Crerar families. I have no idea who Thomas Lightfoot is.
Edit: the tughra here was used by Sultan Mahmud II (reigned 1808-1839)
I can't add a lot, and I definitely don't wanna play the guessing game. I'm Syrian, I can read most of the script, it's in Diwani, an arabic style that I can read and write, but since the document is in Turkish I can't understand most of it.
Here's what I got from the document:
ping /u/yodatsracist, /u/PaxOttomanica
Do we have anybody around here that can read Ottoman Turkish?
You could try /r/islam
They're really good at Islamic related stuff, especially history since the Ottoman empire is well known among muslims generally.
You might also try /r/translator - it's a bigger community than /r/translation
What you really need is a qualified turkish historian as they are taught the language afaik. But ottoman turkish is a dead language and im betting chances are slim you reach one
You could also try r/Iran or r/iranian as Ottoman Turkish borrows heavily from Persian and usas the same alphabet and style of handwriting. There are many Turks/Azeris in Iran.
Your best bet might be to look around history or regional studies departments for people who work on the late Ottoman Empire, and find someone who works with documents in Ottoman Turkish regularly.
It's likely that /r/turkish couldn't help you because that's written in Ottoman Turkish, not Turkish. Ottoman Turkish uses the Arabic script and most of the vocabulary is drawn from Farsi and Arabic -- despite also having "Turkish" in the name, it's essentially unintelligible to people who haven't studied it. And since it fell out of favor with Ataturk's reforms, it's unlikely that anyone who was born in Turkey in the past century actually speaks it.
Translating it is going to require finding someone who speaks Ottoman Turkish. That means you're looking at a very narrow demographic.
If Reddit can't help you (and if /r/rbi can't, odds are there aren't any subs on Reddit that can), your best bet might be to email the history departments at universities that specialize in Ottoman history. I know the University of Chicago offers Ottoman Turkish as part of their Ottoman and Turkish Studies program, so maybe email their history department? Worst case scenario is they can't or won't help. Best case is they solve this little puzzle.
Failing that, I can probably dig through the acknowledgements of the works of Caroline Finkel and Rhoads Murphey. One of them probably thanks a translator. That might be a helpful lead.
only litterateuran or histroian turks can read ottoman language. It's turkish language with arabic alphabet. r/islam members are nonturks so they cant help you. If you are really interested in about this documant follow my instructions.
1-) http://forum.donanimhaber.com/
sign up this forum that biggest turkish forum of internet.
2-) http://forum.donanimhaber.com/forumid_2079/tt.htm
add your topic on this history literature and culture thread and ask your question to people may help you.
;or you can show it to iranian people, because they still use same language and there are so many azeris who may understand turkish
Update - I showed this to my roomate and he said he couldn't understand it either :( sorry
İ may be able to understand what's being said but reading it seems very difficult, İ could try but that's just an unusual, but beautiful, script.