Background
Hasan Tahsini was born in 1811 in the village of Ninat, Konispol, Albania (then part of the Ottoman Empire). His father Osman Efendi Rushiti was a member of the ulama.
physicist psychologist university professor
Hasan Tahsini was born in 1811 in the village of Ninat, Konispol, Albania (then part of the Ottoman Empire). His father Osman Efendi Rushiti was a member of the ulama.
He studied in Paris for twelve years after being sent there by Resid Pasha, who was trying to create a Westernized ulama elite.
Tahsini is regarded as one of the most prominent scholars of the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century. When he was young he worked as tutor to the sons of Hayrullah Efendi, Minister of Education of the Ottoman Empire. Hayrullah Efendi later appointed Tahsini to the staff of the Ottoman school of Paris, where Tahsini taught Turkish and religious sciences, while also being the imam of the Ottoman embassy and a student of mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Paris.
In 1869 Tahsini returned in the Ottoman Empire to accompany the body of Fuad Pasha who had died in Nice.
In 1870 he became the first rector of the newly established, where he gave lectures on physics, astronomy and psychology. The government appointed Tahsini as rector as it was believed that he could establish a balance between western European and Islamic methods and ideologies.
Tahsini placed a pigeon underneath a glass bell, emptied the receptacle and the pigeon eventually suffocated proving Tahsini"s theory. After the experiment he was declared a heretic through a fatwa, dismissed from the university, and disallowed to give lectures.
The university was also closed for a period because Jamal-al-Din Afghani, another professor influenced by Tahsini, supported his theories.
He was the first rector of and one of the founders of the Central Committee for Defending Albanian Rights.
