Ottoman ironclad Hifz-ur Rahman
Hifz-ur Rahman in the Golden Horn in the 1890s | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Ottoman Empire | |
| Name | Hifz-ur Rahman |
| Namesake | "Merciful Protector" |
| Ordered | 1867 |
| Builder | Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde |
| Laid down | 1868 |
| Launched | 1869 |
| Commissioned | March 1870 |
| Decommissioned | 1909 |
| Fate | Sold for scrap, 11 November 1909 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & type | Lütf-ü Celil class |
| Displacement | 2,540 t (2,500 long tons) |
| Length | 64.4 m (211 ft 3 in) (loa) |
| Beam | 13.6 m (44 ft 7 in) |
| Draft | 4.4 m (14 ft 5 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion | |
| Speed | 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Complement |
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| Armament |
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| Armor | |
Hifz-ur Rahman (Ottoman Turkish: Merciful Protector) was the second of two Lütf-ü Celil-class ironclads 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 229 mm (9 in) Armstrong guns and two 178 mm (7 in) 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.