Ottoman ironclad Hifz-ur Rahman
Hifz-ur Rahman (Ottoman Turkish: Merciful Protector) was the second of two s built for the Ottoman Navy in the late 1860s. Originally ordered by the Khedivate of Egypt, an autonomous vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, the central Ottoman government forced Egypt to surrender "Hifz-ur Rahman" while she was still under construction at the French Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde shipyard. The vessel was a turret ship, armed with two Armstrong guns and two Armstrong guns, both pairs in revolving gun turrets. "Hifz-ur Rahman" saw action during the Russo-Turkish War  in 1877–1878, where she operated on the Danube to try to prevent Russian forces from crossing the river. While defending the port of Sulina, she engaged Russian gunboats in an inconclusive action. She was laid up for twenty years, until the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War in 1897, which highlighted the badly deteriorated state of the Ottoman fleet. A large-scale reconstruction program was put in place, and "Hifz-ur Rahman" was rebuilt in the Imperial Arsenal in the early 1890s. Nevertheless, she saw no further service of any significance, and she was sold for scrap in 1909. Design . "Hifz-ur Rahman" was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . The hull was constructed with iron, incorporated ram bow, and displaced normally and BOM. She had a crew of 12 officers and 110 enlisted men. The ship was powered by a single horizontal compound steam engine which drove two screw propellers. Steam was provided by two coal-fired locomotive boilers that were trunked into a single funnel amidships. The engine was rated at and produced a top speed of , though by 1877 she was only capable of . "Hifz-ur Rahman" carried of coal. A supplementary barque  rig was also fitted. "Hifz-ur Rahman" was armed with a battery of two muzzle loading Armstrong guns and two Armstrong guns, each pair mounted in a revolving gun turret, both of which were on the centerline. The 229 mm guns were placed in the forward turret and the turret for the 178 mm guns was located aft of the main mast. The ship's armored belt consisted of wrought iron that was thick and was reduced to toward the bow and stern. Above the main belt, a strake of armor thick protected the turret bases, magazines, and machinery spaces . The turrets were protected by 140 mm of iron plating. Service history. The Khedivate of Egypt, an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, awarded the contract for "Hifz-ur Rahman" to the Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde shipyard in Bordeaux in 1867, where her keel was laid down the following year. Egyptian efforts to assert their independence angered Sultan Abdülaziz, who, on 5 June 1867, demanded Egypt surrender all of the ironclads ordered from foreign shipyards. After lengthy negotiations, the vessel was formally transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 29 August 1868. Her completed hull was launched in  1869 and fitting-out work was completed by 1870, when sea trials began. Later that year, "Hifz-ur Rahman", meaning "Merciful Protector", was commissioned into the Ottoman fleet in March. Upon completion, "Hifz-ur Rahman" and the other ironclads then being built in Britain and France were sent to Crete to assist in the aftermath of the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869. During this period, the Ottoman fleet, under Hobart Pasha, remained largely inactive, with training confined to reading translated British instruction manuals. "Hifz-ur Rahman" was assigned to the II Squadron of the Asiatic Fleet, along with her sister ship  and the ironclads and . Early in the ship's career, the Ottoman ironclad fleet was activated every summer for short cruises from the Golden Horn to the Bosporus to ensure their propulsion systems were in operable condition. In 1875, the ship received a single gun manufactured by Krupp. The Ottoman fleet began mobilizing in September 1876 to prepare for a conflict with Russia, as tensions with the country had been growing for several years, an insurrection had begun in Ottoman Bosnia in mid-1875, and Serbia had declared war on the Ottoman Empire in July 1876. The Russo-Turkish War began  on 24 April 1877 with a Russian declaration of war. At the start of the war, "Hifz-ur Rahman" and "Lüft-ü Celil" were assigned to the Danube Squadron, where they were tasked with preventing Russian forces from crossing the river. "Hifz-ur Rahman" was stationed at the port of Sulina at the mouth of the Danube, along with the ironclads and . The ships were tasked with defending the seaward approach to the port, supporting three coastal fortifications. Starting in November, a Russian flotilla of small vessels attempted to lay a minefield off Sulina to block the Ottoman vessels. After  the ironclad drove off the minelayers on 8 November, the Russians returned with mortar-equipped gunboats the next day. In the ensuing engagement, "Hifz-ur Rahman" was hit once by a shell that struck one of her boilers, forcing her to withdraw. The ship was laid up in Constantinople in 1878; she did not see further activity for the next twenty years. The annual summer cruises to the Bosporus ended. By the mid-1880s, the Ottoman ironclad fleet was in poor condition, and "Hifz-ur Rahman" was unable to go to sea. Many of the ships' engines were unusable, having seized  up from rust, and their hulls were badly fouled. The British naval attache to the Ottoman Empire at the time estimated that the Imperial Arsenal would take six months to get just five of the ironclads ready to go to sea. Throughout this period, the ship's crew was limited to about one-third the normal figure. During a period of tension with Greece in 1886, the fleet was brought to full crews and the ships were prepared to go to sea, but none actually left the Golden Horn, and they were quickly laid up again. By that time, most  of the ships were capable of little more than . "Hifz-ur Rahman" was modernized at the Imperial Arsenal between 1891 and 1894. Her armament was significantly revised; her two original 229 mm guns were removed. In their place, she received Krupp guns, and four Hotchkiss guns and two Nordenfelt guns were also added. At the start of the Greco-Turkish War in February 1897, "Hifz-ur Rahman" was assigned to the II Squadron. The Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including "Hifz-ur Rahman", to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy . Many of the ships had rotted hulls and their crews are poorly trained. Through April and May, the Ottoman fleet made several sorties into the Aegean Sea in an attempt to raise morale among the ships' crews, though the Ottomans had no intention of attacking Greek forces. During these operations, "Hifz-ur Rahman" were stationed at Morto Bay at the mouth of the Dardanelles, while the rest of the ironclads remained safely inside the straits. The condition of the Ottoman fleet could not be concealed from foreign observers, which proved to be an embarrassment for the government and finally forced  Sultan Abdul Hamid II to authorize a modernization program, which recommended that the ironclads be modernized in foreign shipyards. "Hifz-ur Rahman" was not included in the program, and instead she was decommissioned in 1909 and placed on the disposal list on 31 July. She was sold for scrap on 11 November that year and subsequently broken up.