İbrahim Şinasi

İbrahim Şinasi Efendi was a pioneering Ottoman intellectual, founder of Turkish dramaturgy, author, journalist, translator, playwright, linguist and newspaper editor. He was an innovator across several fields: authoring one of the earliest examples of an Ottoman play, encouraging the translation of French poetry into Turkish, simplifying the script used for writing the Ottoman Turkish language, and being one of the first Ottoman writers to write specifically for the broader public. Şinasi used his newspapers, Tercüman-ı Ahvâl and Tasvîr-i Efkâr, to promote the proliferation of European Enlightenment ideals during the Tanzimat period, and he made the education of the literate Ottoman public his personal vocation. Though many of Şinasi's projects were incomplete at the time of his death, "he was at the forefront of a number of fields and put his stamp on the development of each field so long as it contained unsolved problems."