During this period, the Ottoman fleet, under Hobart Pasha, remained largely inactive, with training confined to reading translated British instruction manuals.

[5] Avnillah was assigned to the II Squadron of the Asiatic Fleet, along with her sister ship Muin-i Zafer and the ironclads Hifz-ur Rahman and Lütf-ü Celil.

[6] Early in the ship's career, the Ottoman ironclad fleet was activated every summer for short cruises from the Golden Horn to the Bosporus to ensure their propulsion systems were in operable condition.

In December 1876, Avnillah and her sister ship Muin-i Zafer were transferred to Batumi owing to the increasingly active Russian naval forces in the area.

[9] The eight ironclads of the Ottoman fleet in the Black Sea, commanded by Hobart, were vastly superior to the Russian Black Sea Fleet; the only ironclads the Russians possessed there were Vitse-admiral Popov and Novgorod, circular vessels that had proved to be useless in service,[10] owing to their very low speed and the difficulty in controlling them.

Hobart Pasha took the fleet to the eastern Black Sea, where he was able to make a more aggressive use of it to support the Ottoman forces battling the Russians in the Caucasus.

[13][14] The fleet continued to support the Ottoman garrison at Batumi, when held out against constant Russian attacks to the end of the war.

At some point, she also received new Scotch marine boilers, and her brigantine rig was removed, with heavy military masts installed in its place.

The British naval attache to the Ottoman Empire at the time estimated that the Imperial Arsenal would take six months to get just five of the ironclads ready to go to sea.

During a period of tension with Greece in 1886, the fleet was brought to full crews and the ships were prepared to go to sea, but none actually left the Golden Horn, and they were quickly laid up again.

[17] At the start of the Greco-Turkish War in February 1897, the Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including Avnillah, to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy, which possessed the three modern Hydra-class ironclads.

[4] Long since obsolete, Avnillah was reduced to a stationary ship based in Beirut in 1910,[3] where she was tasked with providing local defense.

On the morning of 24 February 1912, two Italian armored cruisers, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Francesco Ferruccio arrived off the port and demanded that the two ships be surrendered.

At 09:00, having heard no reply from the Ottoman Vali (Governor), the Italian vessels opened fire at a range of 6,000 meters (6,600 yd).

The cruisers then entered the harbor, where Giuseppe Garibaldi fired two torpedoes at Avnillah, the first of which missed and sank six civilian vessels.