Mahmudiye, named for Sultan Mahmud II, was the fourth of four Osmaniye-class ironclad warships built for the Ottoman Navy in the 1860s.

Among the more powerful of Ottoman ironclads, the Navy decided to keep the ship safely in the Mediterranean Sea during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 to preserve the vessel.

[1][2] The ship was powered by a single horizontal compound steam engine which drove one screw propeller.

[3] 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.

At the start of 1877, the ship was assigned to the 1st Division of the Mediterranean Fleet, based in Volo, along with the ironclad Asar-i Şevket.

[5] The Navy feared losing the largest ships of its fleet, and so kept them primarily in port for the duration of the conflict.

[6] The wooden warships of the Mediterranean Fleet sortied in April 1877 to patrol the coast of Albania, but Mahmudiye and the rest of the ironclads remained in Souda Bay.

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.

[2] 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.

The Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including Mahmudiye, to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy, which possessed the three modern Hydra-class ironclads.

With no possibility left to use the fleet in an active way, the Navy withdrew Mahmudiye from service and removed her guns at Çanakkale.

Following a lengthy process of negotiations, Krupp received the contract to rebuild Mahmudiye on 11 August 1900, along with several other warships.