Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Abdul Ganivahoff (1703) was a 30-year-old Muslim seaman from Kazan, a city in Ta-tarstan (southwest Russia), on the banks of the Volga and Kazanka rivers, populated by the native Turkic ethnic group, the Tatars. Throughout history this region was known for its tough warriors. Ganivahoff’s Tatar ethnic identity was also noted as ‘different’, even from the majority of Slavic Russians, let alone Britons or Indians; however, he was able to ‘slip’ past the restrictions of the White Australia Policy because he arrived in Australia as a Rus-sian sailor. On 21 February 1916, as a Russian subject, Ganivahoff enlisted for service at the Melbourne Town Hall. Although the majority of Tatars identified themselves as Muslims, as is also indicated by his Muslim name, Ábdul, the religious denomination in his attesta-tion paper was noted as ‘Lutheran’. His parents were no longer alive, and the clerk who rec-orded him, Henry Nicholson, was entered as his named ‘relative’. He served in the 19th Aus-tralian Infantry Battalion and held the ranks of Sapper and Corporal, despite the fact that ‘he could barely speak English’.

Strong and as finely tempered as the Tatar soldiers of his former country, he did not want to betray the oath he had sworn in Melbourne, that he had put his heart into his military ser-vice of the AIF. Ganivahoff joined the army in Melbourne and embarked per A 60 Aeneas on 8 April 1916 for the Middle East. After a bout of measles in Egypt, he joined his unit on 29 July 1916, then as part of the 2-sapper battalion, he served on the Western Front and was involved in heavy fighting, receiving the rank of Corporal. In August 1916, he was wounded near Pozieres in northern France, but remained at his post. In January 1917, he was trans-ferred to the 19th Battalion, continuing to fight in that part of the Western front, a site of such costly fighting with many casualties, whose conditions the historian Charles Bean de-scribed as ‘the worst ever encountered by the AIF’. After the war, Henry Nicholson tried to find out what became of Ganivahoff and discovered that he was killed during an attack on 27 February 1917 on German fortifications built at the Hindenburg Line.

The Tatar community in Australia stated that ‘Abdullah Efendi’s (Efendi is a ‘Turkish title of respected man’) willingness to enlist in the Australian Army and risk his life is just one simple testament to Tatar character in their adopted country’. Posthumously, Abdul Ganivahoff was issued with the 1914/5 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

From the book:

Dzavid Haveric, 'A History of Muslims in the Australian Military from 1885 to 1945: Loyalty, Patriotism, Contribution’, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London, 2024