For many decades, only three Turkish burial grounds with a total of 48 known burials were known in Britain: Brookwood, Portsmouth/Gosport and the Isle of Man. However, as a result of Dr. Muhammed Hasanov’s extensive research on the topic, based on British and Ottoman archival sources, over 150 Ottoman graves have been discovered. These graves belong to individuals from a range of different professions, including ambassadors, naval officers, sailors, and merchants, and are located in public parks, graveyards, and hospital grounds across Britain. The talk will examine these unknown Ottoman subjects, whose lives and presence form part of the deep-rooted history of Anglo-Ottoman relations and explore how and why these individuals and their graves were forgotten for over a century and their effects on bilateral diplomacy.
About the speaker: Dr. Muhammed Hasanov, since November 2025, has been working as a Qualitative Researcher in the Department of International Development (ODID) at the University of Oxford. In April 2026, he completed his PhD. His doctoral thesis examined how the Armenian Question and Pan- Islamism affected the functioning of the Ottoman Consulates in Liverpool and Manchester between 1891 and 1908. He completed his bachelor’s degree in history in Turkey in 2020 and earned a Master’s degree in International Relations at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) in 2021. His research interests cover a wide range of topics in diplomatic history, with particular emphasis on Anglo Ottoman relations, Pan-Islamism and its impact on the British Isles, Balkan history, and Muslim communities in the Balkans.
