Lüft-ü Celil-class ironclad
Illustration of Lüft-ü Celil
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Operators: |
 Ottoman Empire |
| Preceded by: | Asar-i Şevket-class ironclad |
| Succeeded by: | Avnillah-class ironclad |
| Built: | 1868–1870 |
| In commission: | 1870–1909 |
| Completed: | 2 |
| Lost: | 1 |
| Scrapped: | 1 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 2,540 t (2,500 long tons; 2,800 short 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: |
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| Speed: | 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Complement: |
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| Armament: |
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| Armor: | |
The Lüft-ü Celil class was a pair of ironclad warships built for the Ottoman Navy by a French shipyard in the late 1860s. Originally ordered by the Eyalet of Egypt but confiscated by the Ottoman Empire while under construction, the class comprised the vessels Lüft-ü Celil and Hifz-ur Rahman. The ships were sea-going monitors that mounted their main battery of two 225 mm (8.9 in) Armstrong guns and two 178 mm (7.0 in) Armstrong guns in two revolving gun turrets.
Both vessels saw action during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, where Lüft-ü Celil was sunk by a Russian artillery battery on the Danube. Hifz-ur Rahman engaged Russian minelayers at the mouth of the Danube but otherwise saw little action. She survived the war and was laid up for the following twenty years. She was mobilized at the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War in 1897, but like the rest of the Ottoman fleet, was in poor condition. The ship was eventually sold in 1909 and broken up.
In the early 1860s, the Eyalet of Egypt, a province of the Ottoman Empire, ordered several ironclad warships for its fleet as part of a rearmament program to again challenge the power of the central government—the last having been the Second Egyptian–Ottoman War twenty years earlier. These included the two Lüft-ü Celil-class vessels, ordered in 1866. After lengthy negotiations, the crisis was resolved when the Egyptian ironclads, including Lüft-ü Celil and Hifz-ur Rahman, were transferred to the central government on 29 August 1868, among other concessions made by Egypt.
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