Kuleli Kara Hasan

Born in a village in Bayburt in 1734. While still a child, he became the sole survivor of a plague that hit his village. (There are always survivors in any catastrophic disease and lots of them! Check items 25 and 32 on my list of publications. So this part of the story looks doubtful.) He walked a distance of 138 km across a big mountain and reached Of on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. There he joined the navy of the Ottoman empire and in 1764 became the signal officer of the Janissary unit at Galata Tower which dates back from the Genovese Colony established across the Golden Horn from Byzantium. That is how he received the nickname Kuleli.