Order of the Crescent

The Imperial Order of the Crescent (in Ottoman Turkish Hilal Nişanı) was a chivalric order of the Ottoman Empire.

Order of the Crescent
Hilal Nişanı
The star of the Order of the Crescent of the Ottoman Empire
Awarded by

Ottoman Sultan
Country Ottoman Empire
TypeOrder of Merit
EligibilityNon-muslims
Awarded forMilitary service
StatusNo longer awarded
Statistics
Established1799
Nelson, by Lemuel Francis Abbott - his Order of the Crescent, circled, is here painted the right way up.
For the medieval Order of the Crescent, see Ordre du Croissant.

History

The order was instituted in 1799 by Sultan Selim III when he wished to reward Horatio Nelson, an Anglican Christian, for his victory at the Battle of the Nile.[1] None of the existing Ottoman orders could be awarded to non-Muslims, so Selim specially created the Order of the Crescent for Nelson, making him its first Knight and sending him the insignia in August 1799. (He also rewarded Nelson with the separate award of the chelengk.) The Order was then extended to reward further British military successes on land and sea against Napoleon's forces in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in 1801.[1]

Nelson was so proud of his award that he appended it to his name in the Articles of Capitulation with Denmark after the Battle of Copenhagen on 9 April 1801 (news of which appending so pleased the Sultan that he added a ribbon and gold medal to Nelson's star). However, the British Royal Warrant at the College of Arms allowing him to wear it is only dated 20 March 1802.[1]

Recipients (usually naval or army officers or representatives of Britain or France, highly present in the region during the Napoleonic Wars) were awarded a lozenge-shaped silver radiant star, embroidered in silver thread on an azure background with a star and crescent in the centre, and a red ribbon, to be worn with the crescent to the star's left. The order had two degrees, Knight First Class and Knight Second Class: the First Class members wore the insignia like a scarf, with the badge appendant (hung from the collar), whilst Second Class knights wore a slightly smaller version with no star, jewelling or ornamentation and a narrower ribbon saltier-wise (on a diagonal ribbon from one shoulder to the opposite waist).[1]

Sébastiani de La Porta with his star, the wrong way up.

British recipients sometimes used the postnominal letters KC.[2]

Recipients
gollark: But I suppose that counts as internals, not user-exposed API.
gollark: There are also times when I've had to tweak a bunch of potatOS things because for... kind of weird reasons... it runs its own BIOS code to do sandboxing... and that's been tweaked a lot recently.
gollark: There's stuff on the old CC wiki about some things being "deprecated", i.e. breaking-ly removed.
gollark: Not during you running it, mind.
gollark: It has a few times.

References
  1. "The Imperial Order of The Ottoman Crescent". About Nelson. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  2. For example in "No. 21640". The London Gazette. 12 December 1854. p. 4051..
  3. Thomas Staines obituary in The United service magazine, Volume 1870, Issue 3, p. 255
  4. Marshall, John (1825). Royal Naval Biography : or Memoirs of the services of all the flag-officers, superannuated rear-admirals, retired-captains, post-captains and commanders, whose names appeared on the Admiralty list of sea officers at the commencement of the year 1760, or who have since been promoted; illustrated by a series of historical and explanatory notes. With copious addenda. Vol. II, Part II. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. pp. 817–838. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
  5. Smyth, p. 154
  6. Pierre François Marie Massey de Tyronne, Biographie des députés de la Chambre septennale de 1824 à 1830, J.-G. Dentu, Paris, 1826, p.566–571

Sources
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