Freemasonry in Izmir

10 years after the excommunication of freemasonry by Clement XII, in 1748 Mahmud I, under the pressure of his Christian subjects and also the Muslim clergy, which thought that the Pope would not charge a fraternity with atheism in vein, outlawed freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire. An English lodge was sacked by the police, but as the British ambassador gave notice in due time, the list of members had been rescued. 


In the Vatican archives, there is a letter by the Pope congratulating the French Cardinal Tencin, and wishing that the same could be done in Naples. According to Gould, the British Consul in Aleppo, Alexander Drumond had been appointed as District Grand Master for the Orient by the Grand Lodge of England. Later in 1764, Dr. Dionysios Menasse had been appointed District Grand Master for Asiatic Turkey and Armenia. 


 In 1786 a second charter had been given by the lodge Saint Jean d'Ecosse in Marseilles to the Lodge Saint Jean d'Ecosse des Nations Réunies in Izmir. The first charter had been lost during the big Izmir fire. According to the correspondence, this lodge had been consecrated after 1751 and before 1778. The lodge was closed in 1826.


The Crimean War / The arrival of British, French and Piemontise expeditionary forces and diplomats in Istanbul and Izmir in 1856 led to an explosion of lodges under different obediences. In 1857 the short lived Grande Loge de Turquie was founded in Izmir, by the Grand Orient of France. 


After the end of the Crimean War, with the departure of foreigners, this grand lodge came to an end. The creation of an irregular Irish Grand Lodge In 1856, Captain Atkinson, an Irish officer in the 47th British Regiment, claiming to possess an Irish warrant created three lodges in Izmir and then "The Grand Lodge of the Ancient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons of TURKEY". (The Constitution of this grand lodge is in the Irish archives.) This was a fraudulent commercial enterprise. Atkinson initiated 200 masons and then disappeared with the funds.


In 1873 Bro.Stephen Scouloudi has been elected Grand Master. The Provincial Grand Lodge was run inefficiently. Dues were not or could not be collected. 


In 1884 when Scouloudi resigned, no one was elected in his place. At that time there were 4 English Lodges in Istanbul and 7 in Izmir. Lodges at the end of the 19th Century At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th , there were 11 English, 7 Scottish, 2 Irish, 1 Polish, 2 Spanish, 5 German, 15 Italian, 2 Greek, 6 French, 1 Hungarian lodges plus a few chapters attached to the English, Scottish and Irish lodges in Istanbul, Izmir and Thessalonica alone. There were many lodges in the rest of the big cities of the Empire too (in the provinces of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia and also in different cities of Anatolia) but they were irrelevant in the creation of the Grand lodge of Turkey.


In 1948 lodges, under the Supreme Council, started to labour in Istanbul and Izmir, and in 1949 in Ankara. A troubled period started with lodges trying to liberate themselves from the Supreme Council's rule. The Grand Lodges of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir were created, and finally those three grand lodges united on the 16th December 1956 to create a totally independent Grand Lodge of Turkey.


SOURCE


Mavi Boncuk |

FREEMASONRY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IZMIR?

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ALEXANDER DRUMMOND’S TRAVELS (1754)

Maurits H. van den Boogert

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Excerpt

"In 1754 a work was printed in London with the title Travels through different Cities of Germany, Italy, Greece and several Parts of Asia, as far as the Banks of the Euphrates: in a Series of Letters, containing an Account of what is most remarkable in their Present State, as well as in their Monuments of Antiquity. The title page indicates that the volume was printed for the author, Alexander Drummond, Esq., “His Majesty’s Consul at Aleppo”. Alexander Drummond’s contribution to the Republic of Letters consists of thirteen epistles addressed to his elder brother in Edinburgh, George Drummond, over a period of six years, between 20 July 1744 and 13 November 1750. It is Drummond’s only publication, which is still consulted frequently, because it offers a detailed account of Cyprus under Ottoman rule in this period. Already in the eighteenth century Drummond’s chapters about the island were reprinted several times.


The rest of his book has received less attention, except for a brief passage about Izmir. Sarah Searight, for example, mentions “Alexander Drummond, a member of the Levant Company who founded the first freemason lodge in Smyrna in the eighteenth century”. 


The lodge does not appear to be mentioned by travellers who visited Izmir after Drummond. For example, the Society of Dilettanti in London sponsored the scientific expedition of Richard Chandler to the Eastern Mediterranean in 1763-1766.10 After his return to Britain Chandler (together with Nicolas Revett, the team’s architect, and William Pars, its painter) produced a work on Ionian antiquities (Inscriptiones Antiquae pleraeque nondum editae – Oxford, 1774), as well as a travelogue in two parts, the Travels in Asia Minor. This travel account appeared in 1775, while another, the Travels in Greece, followed a year later. The first account included their experiences in Izmir. Chandler reports interesting details about the intellectual pursuits of several Western consuls and merchants there, but says nothing about Drummond’s lodge. 


This raises a number of questions. Who was Alexander Drummond? Did he really establish a freemason lodge in Izmir? If so, when? It would also be interesting to know who the members of the lodge were, and how long it remained in existence. It is these questions which this article seeks to answer. "