Abdurrahman Peshawari (also known as Peshawarli Abdurrahman Bey or Abdurrahman Samdani) was born in 1886 in Peshawar, then the capital of British India’s North-West Frontier Province. His father, Ghulam Samdani, was a wealthy Kashmiri contractor who migrated to Peshawar in 1880 and endowed two mosques there. One of 13 children, Abdurrahman was well-educated locally and studied at Aligarh. Fair-skinned and a wrestling enthusiast, he admired Ottoman history, leading his brothers to nickname him “Turki Lala” (Turkish Older Brother).

In order to peep into the life and achievements of Lala Turki, we have consulted various sources for this article, including a document published by Tarih Haber in 2014 and a blog by Fahri Sarrafoğlu published in 2024.

Driven by a sense of Islamic solidarity, Peshawari came to volunteer for the Ottoman Empire in 1912. In 1912, the Indian Red Crescent Society sent a medical delegation to Istanbul led by Dr Ahmed Mukhtar Ansari. The team of five doctors, seven paramedics, and 10 male nurses arrived on December 30 and worked at Kadırga Hospital. After receiving medical training, he served in the Ottoman army as a medic and soldier until 1918. He served in Beirut and the Balkans and fought in the Gallipoli campaign against the British navy, where he was wounded three times.

After WWI, he dedicated himself to the new Turkish Republic, working directly under Atatürk’s leadership in two critical roles. In 1920, he became........

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