The Story of the Little Greek Boy Who Became a Powerful Pasha

Myth and Reality in the Life of İbrahim Edhem Pasha, c. 1818–1893

Edhem Eldem

Department of History, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Une figure très fine, assez distinguée, mais où l’on trouve quelque chose de faux. Un

Turc enté sur un Grec.1

İbrahim Edhem Pasha is a puzzling figure of nineteenth-century Ottoman history, if only

because of the paradoxical discrepancy between his considerably high notoriety among

historians and students of history and his relatively obscure career as a high-level dignitary of

the Empire. Part of this is due to the fact that he owes much of his fame not to his own

achievements but rather to those of his son, one of the major iconic figures of Ottoman

modernization, Westernization, culture, and science during the same period. Indeed, Osman

Hamdi Bey (1842–1910) is known to almost everyone as the first Ottoman Muslim painter in

the Western tradition, the founding father of Ottoman archaeology and of its showcase, the

Imperial Museum (today’s Archaeological Museum), and the promoter of protective measures

against the predatory appetite of Western archaeologists. Edhem Pasha is therefore at the

same time brought to the light and overshadowed by his own son, becoming a sort of

‘dependent variable’ of this historic character, but also granted some degree of agency and

responsibility in the formation and shaping of Osman Hamdi Bey’s atypical character and

career.

Not unrelated to all this is the fact that Edhem Pasha presented the rather remarkable

characteristic of having been born to a Greek family of Chios sometime before the massacre of

1822, and of having been promised to a bureaucratic career as a Muslim as a result of the

combined effects of captivity, enslavement, and conversion in the household of a prominent

political figure of the time, Mehmed Husrev Pasha. Although there is no ‘hard’ evidence to

confirm this extraordinary fate, there are quite a number of reasons why this version of facts 1 Destrilhes 1856:78.

2

is particularly attractive to historians and informed laymen alike. First, and probably most

obviously, the sheer ‘exoticism’ of the anachronistic revival in the nineteenth century of what

could have been standard practice three centuries earlier: the devşirme, or levy of young

Christian children from conquered lands, was one of the most favored (and somewhat

idealized) ways in which the Ottoman imperial system developed its bureaucratic and military

elite, based on the implicit replacement of feudal/aristocratic lineage by meritocratic

recruitment and formation. To what extent this was really as potent a system as it has been

claimed by some is open to discussion; nevertheless, it is quite clear that this system had

completely disappeared well before the capture of the little Greek boy who was to become

Edhem Pasha; the capture and enslavement of the youngest survivors of the 1822 massacre was

therefore an aberration, an anachronistic episode resulting from the very specific conditions

that arose from the revolt of the Chian population and from the violent Ottoman reaction it

triggered. The second, and probably less explicit, reason for the interest shown in Edhem’s

strange life story is somewhat linked, once again, to his son’s outstanding career. The notion

that the man who worked so intensely for the adoption of Western cultural and artistic norms

and did so in part through a museum and archaeological activity that was more or less directly

linked to Greek antiquities was of Greek origin is still considered as a tempting argument in

the direction of some sort of genetic inclination.

Finally, a third, and much more objective, reason for Edhem Pasha’s notoriety has to do

with the fact that at around age twelve, along with three other young slaves from Husrev

Pasha’s household, he was sent out to France to receive a Western education. Much symbolic

value is generally attached to this voyage that took place in 1831, for it is the first known

example of Muslim children being destined to an education in Europe following a decision of

the state or of a member of the ruling elite. To many, this is one of the first and most

significant signs of a form of prelude to the process of Westernization that would form the

core of the Tanzimat reforms. The fact that among the four children Edhem would eventually

reach the highest rank and achieve the most successful career is obviously one of the reasons

he seems to have overshadowed his three companions and has this become the example par

excellence. But this also fits in very well with the other specificities of the character: his Greek

origin, his status as a captive and slave, his long stay in France, his formation as an engineer,

his profile as a man of science, and, once again, the fact that not only his elder son Osman

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Hamdi, but two others, İsmail Galib and Halil Edhem, were also to become prominent figures in

the arts and sciences, turn Edhem Pasha’s life story into a sort of synopsis of successful

Westernization.

My point here being the investigation of the story and history of Edhem Pasha from the

perspective of his rather exceptional origins, a good starting point would be to examine the

available evidence about the most obscure period of his life, that of his infancy and childhood.

In the absence of any proper monograph or biography devoted to the character, the thirty-five

page long chapter that the famous biographer İbnülemin Mahmud Kemal İnal devoted to this

character in his monumental Son Sadrâzamlar (The Last Grand Viziers) is still the best and most

consistent source on the subject. Therefore, it is worthwhile to quote in extenso his description

of Edhem’s formative years:

İbrahim Edhem Pasha was born towards 1818 [1234 of the Hegira] in Chios. At a

time when the revolt of the Christian subjects (rayas) of Chios was being

repressed, he was brought to Istanbul as a captive. He was purchased by the

Grand Admiral Husrev Pasha. He was educated in the latter’s household

together with similar slaves.

In the short curriculum vitae written—upon my request—by his son Halil Bey,

the latter says the following: “A man by the name of Hacı Efendi at the service of

Mehmed Husrev Pasha, Mahmud II’s commander-in-chief, grand admiral and

grand vizier, found the one-year-old Edhem somewhere on the Anatolian shores

of the Black Sea, brought him to the pasha’s mansion, and the pasha’s wife had

brought up the orphan boy as if he were her own. Edhem did not know what

part of the Anatolian shores he came from or what his father’s name had been;

he only believed that he had been brought from the slopes of the Circassian

mountains.”

As it is absurd to imagine that a “one-year-old” child “believed that he had been

brought from the slopes of the Circassian mountains,” this matter does not

deserve the least attention.

4

An article signed “M.S.” in the Hayat encyclopedia declares in subjective and

arbitrary fashion that “even though it is said that he was from Chios, that is a

false rumor” and then proceeds—much like Halil Bey—to say that “Husrev

Pasha’s steward came across this abandoned child in one of the regions of the

Black Sea shores and brought him to the pasha’s mansion when he was still one

year old.”

From what we have heard from some of the pasha’s acquaintances, it seems that

because he had been brought to Istanbul at a very young age, he did not know

where he came from, but he would say that he had come from the Bosporus and

would reject those who claimed to be related to him. But in actual fact, he seems

to have had Christian relatives in Chios at the time.

Quoting from Kitâbü’l-Akdü’l-Semin fi Tarihi Erbaati Selâtin, the author of Hızâneti’l-

Eyyâm fi Terâcimü’l-İzâm says the following: “He was born in Chios to a Greek

family. In 1822, during the Greek war of independence, when clashes occurred

on the island, he was one of the persons captured by the Turks. He was sold as a

slave in Istanbul. Husrev Pasha purchased him. Some have also claimed that he

was of Circassian origin.”

Mahmud Celâlüddin Pasha, who knew Edhem Pasha well, writes in his Mirat-ı

Hakikat that “he was from Chios and of Greek origin, and was brought as a

captive during the repression of the rebellious subjects of Chios,” which seems

to be the most reliable version.

As is well known, Husrev Pasha would have his slaves and foundlings trained

and educated in his mansion and would see to it that they be employed in the

highest offices once they had been formed.

He then decided to send Hüseyin, Ahmed, Abdüllatif and Edhem from among

these boys to Paris for their education and to cover all their expenses.2

2 İnal 1940–1953:600–603.

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What makes İnal’s biographical synopsis “the best and most consistent source” in my words is

not really its accuracy, but rather the author’s commendable effort at seeking all possible

sources, at recording all existing versions of the story, and at subjecting them to a critical—and

sometimes even sarcastic—treatment. In a nutshell, even though he does give some place to

those sources that go against it, he ends up clearly supporting the claim that the pasha was a

Greek child from Chios orphaned during the massacres of 1822.

The tension between these two major versions—Chios versus the Black Sea—is interesting

in ways that go clearly beyond the desire to ascertain factual information. One feels that there

is more at stake there, which makes it all the more tempting to go back to the roots of the two

stories. With respect to the “Black Sea story”—which I will avoid calling Pontic, since the

whole point is that it tries to negate Greekness—it is interesting to note that it is most

frequently encountered in sources from the 1930s and 1940s, starting with Alâettin Gövsa’s

Meşhur Adamlar (Great Men) and Türk Meşhurları (Great Turks). In both these biographical

dictionaries, the author insists on using vague expressions such as “the shores of Anatolia,”

“the slopes of Circassian mountains,” and “the Anatolian shores of the Black Sea,”3 while

relegating the Chian version to a cursory reference to “other rumors,”4 or even goes as far

calling it a “false story.”5 In a contemporary article, the historian İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı

chose to avoid the question altogether by inserting a vague reference to the fact that “he was

educated in Husrev Pasha’s household.”6 Again, during the same period, Mehmed Zeki Pakalın

would take up this issue in his Son Sadrâzamlar ve Başvekiller (The Last Grand Viziers and Prime

Ministers):

He is from Chios. He was born in 1818 (1234 of the Hegira). As one of Husrev

Pasha’s men, Hacı Ahmed Efendi, brought him to the mansion when he was one

3 Gövsa 1933–1936:437; Gövsa 1945–1946:125. 4 Gövsa 1945–1946:125. 5 See İnal’s reference above to Hayat Ansiklopedisi. 6 Uzunçarşılı 1948:67.

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year old to become a slave as was the custom then, like many others he was

brought up there and treated like a son.7

Pakalın’s statement above is a strange and awkward one, which, while accepting his Chian

origins, simply chooses to ignore the fact that he may have been Greek/Christian. As to his

career start as a slave, that matter is completely euphemized by suggesting that slavery was

“the custom then,” that many more shared this status, and that he was “treated like a son.”

The end of the quotation leaves the impression that Edhem might as well have been a little

Muslim orphan boy from Chios, adopted by a loving and caring family in Istanbul.

Pakalın’s predicament becomes obvious in the footnote attached to this passage.

Contrary to the body of the text, where the matter is treated in a cursory manner, the long

footnote reveals a much more complex situation. The first reference in the footnote is

meaningful: Pakalın starts by taking up the story of the “Circassian mountains” as it appeared

in Alâettin Gövsa’s Great Men. What is certainly striking is that Pakalın’s comment above

reproduces almost word for word the brief life story İnal said he had received from the pasha’s

son, Halil Edhem. The real difference, however, lies in the treatment these two authors will

give to this information. While İnal rather sarcastically dismissed it as an ‘absurdity,’ Pakalın

chose to use it as his main argument, without even commenting on it. An additional comment

by Pakalın allows us to see a strong connection between Halil Edhem’s version of his father’s

life story and Gövsa’s.

İbrahim Alâeddin Bey took this information from the precious work by the

name of İstanbul Şehreminleri (The Mayors of Istanbul) by the esteemed

researcher Osman Ergin, chief of the correspondence bureau of the city. The

biography in my dear friend’s work, which I quote below, was written by Halil

Bey, then mayor, and he tells me that he only changed in it the term “slave”

into “recruit.”

“He is one of Husrev Pasha’s recruits. As Husrev Pasha had no children of his

own, he would feed and train many orphaned children. There even was a

7 Pakalın 1942:403.

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separate school for them inside his mansion. Many of the children who were

thus educated ended up in the highest positions.

Edhem, when he was not even one year old, was brought to the mansion from

the Black Sea by one of Husrev Pasha’s men by the name of Hacı Efendi, Edhem

Pasha thought of himself as being Circassian. There is no clear information on

this. When he arrived at the mansion, Husrev Pasha’s second wife, known as the

Little Lady, adopted him and brought him up.”8

Indeed, this is exactly how the whole matter is presented in Osman Nuri Ergin’s work.9 In light

of this information, the picture gets clearer. By the end of the 1920s, Halil Edhem Bey seems to

have given Osman Nuri Ergin a text to be used for his own biography, and Ergin used this in his

1927 publication, which served as a reference for Gövsa’s biographical dictionary. In doing so,

he had brought slight modifications to the text, turning the “Black Sea” into the “Anatolian

shores,” granting “Hacı Efendi” the additional name of “Ahmed,” and reducing “Husrev

Pasha’s second wife, known as the Little Lady” to “the pasha’s wife.” Interestingly, when some

fifteen years later İnal would ask for the same information, instead of giving him the text he

had first given to Ergin, Halil Edhem would hand him Gövsa’s version of his own text, with the

only amendment of reverting from Hacı Ahmed Efendi to Hacı Efendi.

What we gather from this is that his son Halil Edhem seems to have played an important

role in the emergence of the claims that Edhem Pasha was not from Chios but from the Black

Sea or from the Caucasus, and that he was not Greek/Christian but Muslim. It would probably

make sense to link this to his character and to the political and ideological context of the time.

Indeed, even though Halil Edhem Bey (1861–1938) had an intellectual profile and a scientific

career very similar to his elder brother Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), the two siblings showed

some remarkable differences, too. As an archaeologist and as the director of the Imperial

Museum, Osman Hamdi Bey had devoted most of his energy to the study and preservation of a

pre-Islamic heritage, and his private life denoted a strong attachment to Western— in fact

predominantly Parisian—values and attitudes. Although issued from the same cultural

8 Pakalın 1942:403n1. 9 Osman Nuri 1927:260–261.

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environment, Halil Edhem Bey had professionally concentrated on Islamic and Ottoman

objects, and while he did succeed his brother at the head of the Imperial Museum at the latter’s

death in 1910, he had also played an essential role in the setting up of the Museum of Pious

Foundations, the ancestor of the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts. These differences,

rather than conscious choices and inclinations, should be seen as a logical consequence of the

times. After all, Osman Hamdi Bey had died in 1910, only a year and a half after the Young Turk

Revolution that had unleashed a new nationalist discourse; his allegiances were therefore still

to a large extent contained within the framework of Ottoman patriotism and a strong

commitment to the West. Halil Edhem Bey was almost twenty years younger, and had made

most of his independent career, after his brother’s demise, at a time when nationalist ideology

had reached its peak. In a country that had been through the Unionist era, had been defeated

and occupied at the end of World War I, had fought a war of independence against Greece, and

had been exposed to an ever-increasing dose of Turkish nationalism, there is little doubt that

there was little incentive for a high-level bureaucrat to promote the idea that he was the son

of a Greek convert. In short, then, it appears that as the combined result of his own

generational penchant for a more nationalist stand and of a gradual exacerbation of nationalist

feelings in the country, Halil Edhem Bey felt the need to revise his father’s already doubtful

origins, and that many authors, out of friendship, respect, empathy, or simply because they

believed it, chose to include this version of facts in their biographical compilations.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that while he implicitly embraced Halil Edhem Bey’s

“Black Sea thesis” in his long footnote, Pakalın still inserted a few comments that suggested

that the Chian version should not be dismissed altogether. Referring to an earlier work by

Ergin where Edhem Pasha is noted as having been born in Chios, he ends his footnote

with the following words:

Edhem Pasha, like many others, was brought to Izmir as a small child and sold

there as a slave during the massacres of Chios that were conducted in order to

take revenge from the Greeks after their rebellion in the Morea. Among these

slaves, known as the “slaves of Chios,” apart from Edhem Pasha and some

others, one can count Hekim İsmail Pasha and Cavid Pasha, once governor of

Manisa.

9

Edhem Pasha was known and recounted by all as being from Chios. Some even

say that he had relatives there who still maintained the Christian faith.10

It seems then that Pakalın had really inserted Halil Edhem Bey’s version into his footnote out

of a feeling of duty, but had then felt the need to end the note by recounting the Chian version,

which he evidently found much more likely. In the body of the text, however, he had rather

politically chosen a middle way by referring to Chios and to slavery, but by omitting any

reference to a possible Greek and Christian origin. At any rate, after İnal’s later publication and

his rather demeaning way of dismissing the Black Sea story, no serious author has ever dared

to revive this myth. A case in point would be İsmail Hami Danişmend, who basically

summarized İnal’s version together with its criticism of other scenarios,11 while Reşad Ekrem

Koçu simply resorted to a long quotation from İnal.12

True, the failure of Halil Edhem Bey’s version in the face of İnal’s insistence on the Chian

origins (the said insistence probably not unrelated to İnal’s animosity against Halil Edhem Bey)

is of no help to us for ascertaining Edhem Pasha’s origins. Indeed, while İnal’s version sounds

rather convincing, it is also true that his arguments against Halil Edhem Bey’s are much more

consistent than those he uses to promote his vision of the facts. It should be noted, for

example, that all the information he provides is in fact drawn from other sources, none of

which is based on any kind of ‘hard’ evidence, but rather on personal narratives. The only

direct evidence of a different kind that he uses is the popular—and rather amusing— satirical

poem composed by Hersekli Arif Hikmet and Deli Hikmet “while they were working on cups

(i.e. drinking) in one of the taverns of Yenikapı” on the occasion of Edhem Pasha’s nomination

as Grand Vizier in 1877:

That such a post of honor13 is filled

By a vile apostate like Georgi the Fool14

10 Pakalın 1942:404n1. 11 Danişmend 1955:510. 12 İstanbul Ansiklopedisi s.v. “Edhem Paşa (Sakızlı İbrahim),” (Koçu 1968:4915-4916). 13 The grand vizierate.

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Helps you understand in what state we are;

True, though Server15 is also a man of conceit,

Compared to shit, dung smells like amber.16

Not very ‘hard’ evidence, but certainly a good indication that Edhem Pasha’s identity as a

convert was common knowledge among the popular masses of the Ottoman capital. What is

surprising, however, is that İnal did not use some sources that might have confirmed even

further his beliefs. One of these is Mehmed Süreyya’s famous biographical dictionary, Sicill-i

Osmanî, where the author explicitly noted the following: “He is from Chios. After conversion,

he was brought up and educated in Husrev Pasha’s household and thus started his military

career, before being sent to France for his education.” There is no ambiguity here about his

origins and the fact that he was a convert; the mention that “he has knowledge of French and

Greek” is an additional indication that goes in the direction of İnal’s thesis.17 To this one should

add the crucial source that is constituted by his personnel file in the State archives, according

to which “he was born around 1232 (1816/1817), was brought up, trained, and educated until

the age of twelve as a slave in the household of his master, Husrev Pasha” and was then sent

out to Europe.18 Interestingly, this document, while giving a birth date that precedes the

massacres and explicitly mentioning his status as a slave, does not mention any place of birth

or any linguistic skill whatsoever. The core of this record seems to have been established in

1882, and it is generally the rule that these records were filled out on the basis of information

provided by the bureaucrats themselves. In that case, one would have to assume that it was

14 A popular nickname for Edhem Pasha, derived from the fact that he was Greek

(Yorghi/Georgi) and that he was somewhat eccentric and obsessive compulsive (Deli/Fool).

İnal claims that there was a madman in the streets of Istanbul known by this name. 15 Server Pasha (1821–1886) several times minister, and later senator. 16 İnal 1942:625: Böyle bir günde olub sadr nişin / Deli Corci gibi mürtedd ü mühin / Bundan et hali

kıyas ü tahmin / Gerçi Server ise de bir hud-bin / Boka nisbetle tezek anberdir. 17 Süreyya Bey 1893-1894:844–845. 18 Ottoman State Archives (BOA), DH.SAİDd. 2/218, 25 Rebiyülahir 1299 (16 March 1882),

personnel file of İbrahim Edhem Pasha.

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Edhem Pasha’s own choice, as a high-ranking bureaucrat with more than forty years of service

behind him, to withhold—without having to really lie otherwise than by omission—any

information that might have been connected to his Greek/Chian origins.

Obviously, if that were the case, one would have to admit that Edhem Pasha was rather

naïve if he really believed that common and popular knowledge could be erased by such

tactics. To any careful reader, the combination of a birth date before 1822 and of male slave

status was rather transparent. The episode of 1822 was exceptional in nature not only because

of its violence, but also because of the fact that there had been no military action against a

Christian population for over a century that could have resulted in such a massive outflow of

captives. Referring to these events, the chronicler Cevdet Pasha noted that “penniless Zeybeks

made a fortune” and that “male and female slaves were sold for fifty piastres,” a ludicrous sum

that told of the extent to which the market had been flooded by the incoming captives.19 In

1856, the French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges was struck by the way in which

slavery had created a form of ‘recycling’ of the survivors of the massacres:

Once Chios was devastated, what became of the Chians? They had not all died;

some had been saved by fleeing, while slavery preserved a large number of

them. In the face of the greatest misfortunes that a race may endure, the Chians

have remained as industrious, as capable, and as happy as in the times of

prosperity. They have survived the destruction of their land. Many enslaved

Chians have remained in Turkish lands. Slavery in Turkey is a means of making

a fortune and of rising to the offices of the administration; there is presently a

certain minister of the Porte whose price can be seen at the slave market of

Constantinople. Under these circumstances, those Chians who have become

Muslims have managed to follow their path in life. In April of the year 1855,

when I was in Chios, I saw an Egyptian man-of-war carrying troops to the

Crimea anchor off the island; the captain of the ship and the colonel of the

regiment, both bearing the title of bey, were born in Chios; captured and taken

to Alexandria, they had risen in the army and the navy and were now on their

19 Cevdet Paşa 1893:41.

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way to defend the country where they had been enslaved. There are countless

Chians who thus occupy high posts in the Ottoman administration: one of them

once ruled over Tunis.20

This was common knowledge, and any Muslim official of some standing known to be from the

island was bound to be identified with one of the (possibly) hundreds of young boys who were

captured and then converted to Islam. This was all the more obvious to foreign observers, not

the least because it provided them with a rather typical Orientalist story to tell. Already in the

1850s a certain Destrilhes, ferociously opposed to Mustafa Reşid Pasha, was very outspoken

about Edhem Pasha’s identity: “A very elegant fine face, rather noble, but with something

dishonest about it. A Turk grafted on a Greek.”21 In 1858, commenting on his mission to

Belgrade, the Times of London spoke of “Ethem Pasha, who is said to speak the Slavonic language

fluently,” probably due to a confusion between Greek and Slovenian.22 Following his accession

to the post of Grand Vizier in 1877, these reports had started increasing in frequency. One such

article in the New York Times was particularly rich in details concerning the statesman’s

origins, down to the cliché of the overzealous convert:

It is a curious fact that the destinies of the Turkish Empire should, at this, the

greatest crisis it has ever encountered since it existed, be intrusted (sic) to two

men who are not only not of Turkish race, but not of any Mussulman race—such

as Arab, Persian, Indian, Caucasian, Kurd, &c. The Grand Vizier is by origin a

Greek, saved when a child by the Turkish troops in the massacre of the Christian

20 De Coulanges 1856:641. The person described as the ‘ruler of Tunis’ was in fact the prime

minister of the Bey of Tunis, Mustafa Haznedar or Hazinedar Mustafa Pasha (1817–1878), who

married in 1839 Kolthoum, daughter of the Bey Mustafa Pasha (1786–1837, bey from 1835 to his

death). Hazinedar Mustafa Pasha was in fact a certain Yorghi Stravelakis, born in Chios in 1817,

son of Stephanos Stravelakis, who was killed during the massacres of 1822. Kolthoum and

Mustafa Pasha’s daughter, Cenine (Lella Kebire) would eventually marry Tunuslu Hayreddin

Pacha (1821–1890), Ottoman Grand Vizier in 1878–1879 (Yılmaz Öztuna 1989:482, 872–873). 21 Destrilhes 1856:78. 22 The Times of London, 12 February 1858.

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inhabitants of the island of Chio, and brought up in the faith of the Prophet; a

brother who escaped remained true to the religion of his ancestors, and has for

some years past had the care of the orthodox souls resident at Couscoundjouk, a

suburb of Constantinople, situated on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, nearly

opposite the Yali of his brother, the Sadr’azam, with whom, nevertheless, he has

held no intercourse. [. . .] Like most converts—or perverts, or renegades, as you

will—and especially those brought up in early life to Islamism—Edhem Pasha is a

thorough-going disciple of Mohammed, though too well educated a man and too

much imbued with European ideas and manners to wish to be considered a

fanatic.23

The pasha’s death in 1893 was yet another occasion for foreign sources to remember his exotic

profile. An article in Le Temps had him born “in 1813 in the island of Chios of Greek parents,”

adding that “he was captured by the Turks who devastated the island in 1822.”24 The French

geologist Gabriel-Auguste Daubrée, who had studied with the young Edhem at the Mining

School of Paris, remembered him in an obituary as a Greek from Chios:

Edhem Pasha was of Greek origin and from the island of Chios, where he almost

perished during the massacres that bloodied this island in 1822. Khosrew Pasha,

a Turkish personality who then took him in, was struck by the precocious

intelligence of the boy, and had him educated, and then sent to Paris to perfect

his instruction.25

Most interesting were the comments made by his contemporaries, people who had known him

personally and had regular social intercourse with him. Among these, most remarkable were

the Greeks, who, for understandable reasons, had always a more specific interest in the pasha’s

life story. Georges Adossidès, writing under the pseudonym of Georges Dorys, devoted a

paragraph to Edhem Pasha, a contemporary of his father, Kostaki Adosidis Pasha (1822–1895),

the ruler of Samos:

23 “Renegades in Turkish Service,” The New York Times, 27 August 1877. 24 Le Temps, 26 March 1893. 25 Daubrée 1893:148.

14

Most of the war prisoners, on the other hand, were converted to

Mohammedanism. During the Hellenic rebellion alone, tens of thousands of

Greeks were reduced to slavery and forcefully made Muslims.

This practice sometimes had strange results. Thus a Greek who was enslaved in

Chios became, under the reign of Abdülaziz, the eminent Grand Vizier Edhem

Pasha, while his brother, who had escaped capture, became a simple priest in a

poor parish of his island. By the way, Pappa Nicoli, as he was named, kept the

best of relations with his brother.26

Another son of a contemporary, Alexandre Mavroyeni Bey, the son of the famous Spyridon

Mavroyeni Pasha (1817–1902), had a similar story to tell:

Edhem Pasha was of Greek origin and a Chian. In 1821, during the Greek

revolution, he was only two or three years old. The Turks captured him and

made him a Muslim. His paternal uncle was a Greek priest. They say that Edhem

would receive him at home. His eldest son, who married a French bourgeoise, is

Hamdi Bey, the founder and director of the Imperial Museum of

Constantinople.27

Most striking of all, because the reference is ‘from the horse’s mouth,’ so to speak, that of the

famous banker Georgios Zarifi in his memoirs:

Osman Hamdi used to say he was of Greek origin and a member of the

Scaramanga family; and that his grandfather was captured in Chios. His

grandfather was brought up as a Turk and one day became grand vizier.28

One immediately notices how superficial and potentially unreliable all this information is.

Apart from the many factual errors that can be verified—the fact that Edhem Pasha was not

Abdülaziz’s but Abdülhamid’s grand vizier or, more blatantly even, the fact that he was not

Osman Hamdi’s grandfather but his father—one realizes that the whole story of the Orthodox

26 Dorys 1902:176. 27 Mavroyéni 1989:21. 28 Ζαρίφης 2002:273–274.

15

priest relative is extremely ‘flexible’: he is generally a brother, but can become an uncle; he is

generally considered to have remained in Chios, but some locate him in Istanbul; he generally

has contacts with Edhem Pasha, but some tell a very different story … From the strictest point

of view of historical rigor and method, one is likely to have to dismiss all these erratic

references as the building blocks of a myth. But one can as well claim that while

methodologically not extremely solid, the ‘no smoke without fire’ approach is not to be

discarded altogether. The least one could say is that even if this were to amount to little more

than an urban legend, the persistence and longevity of these references certainly make it

worthwhile to consider investigating the smoke, if not the fire. It is my impression, therefore,

that there is here much more than a myth; and that what we may be witnessing among all this

confusion, are the inevitable inconsistencies of a story that lacks its most decisive backing,

that of the protagonist himself. Indeed, the most remarkable feature of all these testimonies is

that they are all based on hearsay and never from any kind of declaration or confidence made

by Edhem Pasha himself. As such, the most valuable of all is certainly the one provided by

Zarifi about Osman Hamdi Bey telling him about his ancestry. Despite the major

inconsistencies in this information—the confusion between grandfather and father and the

certainly rather imaginative link to the Scaramangas—one has to admit that, unless Georgios

Zarifi had a hidden agenda that made him distort or invent this information, Osman Hamdi

Bey did know (or believe) that his father was of Chian origin.

The picture becomes thus becomes clearer, in terms of the smoke, if not in terms of the

fire. Against the backdrop of a ‘public opinion,’ local and foreign, unanimous about the Chian

origins of Edhem Pasha, we have a different attitude that seems to characterize three family

members’ approach to the question. Osman Hamdi Bey, the eldest son, and the one closest to a

Parisian and cosmopolitan profile, seems to have been openly an advocate of the Chian thesis.

His brother Halil Edhem, some twenty years younger, seems on the contrary to have dismissed

this thesis, to the point of inventing and promoting an alternative ancestry that might have

replaced and occulted the undesirable Greek connection. The one who is not easy to

understand is Edhem Pasha himself, the ‘Greek boy,’ whose attitude in this respect is

extremely difficult to fathom, in the absence of any indication, direct or indirect, of his

thoughts on this matter. Indeed, while one can explain and understand to a large extent the

two sons’ opposite stands in terms of their mentalities and, most of all, of the political context

16

in which they evolved, the father’s position remains a mystery, veiled by the thick silence with

which he seems to have covered the whole issue.

As I have shown earlier, there are some indications that may suggest that Edhem Pasha was

trying to hide—without lying—his origins or that at least he was certainly not a partisan of

disclosing openly his possible links to the Chian tragedy. The fact that he did not mention his

birth place or his linguistic skills in his official record goes in that direction. Yet there is one

more source that may point even more clearly at a desire to avoid the matter altogether: his

biography in the famous French biographical dictionary edited by Gustave Vapereau:

Edhem Pasha, an Ottoman statesman, born around 1823, is one of the first

among his compatriots to have been sent to France for his education. He was

brought to Paris in 1831 by Mr. Amédée Jaubert, together with four other

children of Circassian origin, and placed at the Institution Barbet.29

This version of the pasha’s life story is extremely different from most of the Western

narratives we have seen up to now, mostly because there is no reference whatsoever to his Chian

origins. In fact, this text goes further than just not mentioning Edhem Pasha’s birth place: it

gives a date that, although an approximation, is designed to make sure that it does not fit the

‘Greek boy’ tale. Indeed, given that the events took place in 1822 and that to be captured as a

boy one would have had to be born before that date, the mention of “around 1823” vague as it

may be, sounds like a rather subtle way of misleading the reader, while at the same time not

lying. The same could be said of the notion of him being “the first among his compatriots” to

have been educated in France: the reference is implicitly to Muslim Ottomans, and to the fact

that Edhem was one of them. True, he was a “compatriot,” or rather he had become one

through conversion; but in the absence of any reference to Chios or to 1822, there is simply no

way the innocent reader would assume that he had not been born a “compatriot” from the

very start. Again a ‘white lie,’ it seems, designed to cover up any possible religious difference.

Finally, yet another subtle innuendo in the text works in the same direction of distortion: the

phrase “together with four other children of Circassian origin” (avec quatre autres enfants

d’origine circassienne) is a gem of ambiguity. Is one to understand that he was brought to Paris

29 Vapereau 1858:611–612.

17

with four other children, who (unlike him) were of Circassian origin, or with four other

children, who (like him) were (also) of Circassian origin? Grammatically and syntactically, both

are possible, but it is clear that the most obvious meaning the reader would give to this

statement is the latter meaning of a shared regional origin. All in all, without ever having to

lie, the author of this biographical entry had made sure that Edhem Pasha looked like an

Ottoman Muslim subject of Circassian origin.

Who would that author be, then, and why would he resort to all these subtleties to ‘clear’

the pasha’s reputation? The answer is rather simple, when one knows that Who’s Who type of

compilations generally function on the basis of the collection of biographical data from the

individuals themselves. In all likeliness, this short biography was sent by Edhem Pasha in

response to Vapereau’s request. Moreover, this kind of a text would be entirely consistent with

the tactics Edhem Pasha seems to have developed of juggling half lies, half truths, and

judicious omissions. One has, therefore, to come to terms with the likelihood that Halil Edhem

may not have been the initiator of this ‘negationist’ version of his father’s life story, and that

Edhem Pasha himself should have started it at a relatively early date. In fact, one could even

find traces of yet earlier efforts by the young Edhem to cover up his origins. Thus, if one is to

consult the archives of the prestigious École des Mines in Paris, where he spent some three

years as a foreign student, it is striking to note that his record, which has him registered on 26

October 1835 under the name of “Etem Efendy” provides the date of birth of 1818, but

combined with “Constantinople” as his place of birth.30 Unless this was a shortcut used by the

school’s administration, who may have assumed that any Ottoman subject was bound to be

born in Istanbul, this may well be the first instance of Edhem’s effort at forging a new identity

for himself at a very early stage of his life, when he was only seventeen, which might in turn

explain that he should have resorted to an outright lie instead of using the subtle tactics he

would develop later.

From the perspective of the historian, all this points in the direction of a rather

paradoxical situation. In the absence of real ‘hard’ evidence linking Edhem Pasha to his Chian

roots, those sources that seem most trustworthy—his official record, his student record, his

earliest published biography and many later ones—are in fact the most likely to distort reality,

30 Archives de l’École des Mines, Registre des élèves, 178, Paris.

18

which, on the contrary, seems to be more consistently conveyed by the much less formal

sources of hearsay, gossip, and potentially subjective memoirs. In other words, what most

would consider being of historical significance turns out to be little more than a story, while

the stories that circulated with a strong undertone of myth and urban legend end up being

more likely to help us reconstitute the historical reality of the little Greek boy who became a

powerful pasha.

Interestingly enough, although Edhem Pasha’s counterfactual claims end up blurring our

vision of historical reality, they do help us understand better how an alternative story came to

emerge in the mind of Halil Edhem Bey. What makes it possible to retrace the genealogy of the

Circassian/Black Sea story is a ‘missing link’ that connects the Vapereau biography of 1858—

which we assume has been written by Edhem Pasha himself—to the Osman Nuri [Ergin]

biography of 1927—which we know was written on the basis of information provided by Halil

Edhem Bey. The missing link, interestingly, is by the same author, Osman Nuri, but dates from

1911 and is not a properly biographical work, which is why it seems to have been overlooked.

This work was about Sultan Abdülhamid II and his reign, and it was under the topic of the

conference held in 1876 that Edhem Pasha came into the foreground. Before analyzing the

conference itself, Osman Nuri had chosen to present the Ottoman delegates, the second of

which was Edhem Pasha:

Edhem Pasha, the ambassador in Berlin, who was the second delegate at the

Conference, was born in the island of Chios in 1238 of the Hegira. As his parents

were poor, they sent the boy to Istanbul and placed him as a slave in Husrev

Pasha’s mansion. As Husrev Pasha soon understood that his slave was

extraordinarily bright and gifted, and that he possessed a remarkably strong

character, he decided to have him sent at his expense to be educated in one of

the great cities of Europe; indeed in 1832 he sent him to Paris for his education,

together with four Circassian boys, under the supervision of Amédée Jaubert.31

Once again, the text started with an implicit negation of the Greek/Chian/Christian scenario.

The choice of the year 1238 was not innocent: given that that particular lunar year started on

31 Nuri 1911:162.

19

17 September 1822, it was once again a way of placing the pasha’s birth date after the bloody

events of the spring of that year. Yet the real ‘creative’ element came with the story of the

poor parents who surrendered their child as a slave to Husrev Pasha. This incredible and

fairytale-like story—somewhere between Cinderella and Tom Thumb—was evidently invented

to provide an alternative to some of the most basic elements of the story. If the parents

surrendered their child, it meant that they were still alive, and that therefore they were not

victims of the massacres. In fact, the whole story could be understood without ever needing to

think that the parents were Greek; the poor Chian Muslim parents of the child see no other

way out of their misery than to entrust him to a powerful household in Istanbul. Not very

convincing, perhaps, but still a good try at ‘cleaning’ a dubious curriculum vitae. The link

between this biographical synopsis and the entry in Vapereau’s consecutive editions of 1858,

1865, 1870, and 1893, has to do with the very similar wording of the two texts, especially with

respect of the factual information from his return to Istanbul to the beginning of his career at

the palace. True, the introductory sentences were very different, but this was mostly due to

the different audiences that were targeted. One could easily fool a Western audience by

omitting whatever was felt to be problematic; but when it came to a local audience who

already knew the man as a Chian and possibly as a Greek, there was need for more detail,

hence the whole story of ‘voluntary’ enslavement by possibly Muslim parents. Once this initial

point was made, however, the rest of the Turkish text read pretty much like a translation of

the Vapereau biography. Clearly, then, Halil Edhem Bey had given Osman Nuri a Turkish

translation of the biography his father had himself written, adapting only the first lines to the

needs of a public that was likely to know that the pasha was of Chian origin. Denial, as it were,

was not the making of the son alone; the father had started well before him and provided him

with a blueprint of an alternative story to tell. The difference between the two lay probably in

the fact that the father had been content with occulting the facts by omitting some of the

information, while the son, obviously pressed by a very different political context, had gone

one step further and tried to rewrite his father’s history.

The question to be answered, then, is why Edhem Pasha may have felt the need to hide his

identity, even if this was a futile effort. In the absence of any explicit statement from him, one

can only try to guess what his motivations may have been. His sons’ radically opposite

attitudes towards their father’s exceptional identity are relatively easy to grasp. Educated in

20

Paris in the 1860s, fascinated by Western civilization, science, art, and culture, eventually

becoming a full and recognized member of the select world of archaeology, his father’s

Greekness was not a liability to Osman Hamdi, who might even have found some appeal to the

rather striking irony behind the situation. His brother, on the contrary, educated in the

Germanic tradition some twenty years later, and scientifically most active at a time when

Turkish nationalism had reached its apex, Halil Edhem was bound to feel uncomfortable with

such a ‘mixed’ ancestry. Yet, when it came to Edhem Pasha himself, the matter must have been

very different: after all, it was about him, his childhood, his parents, and what must have

been—depending on how young he was—a very traumatic experience. One can only imagine

that once he had reached an age where he fully understood the ‘transformation’ he had been

through he would have chosen to leave behind him as much of his painful past as possible. It

would certainly be wrong to assume any kind of similarity between the experience of, say, a

sixteenth-century devşirme and that of Edhem Pasha in the nineteenth century. The fluid and

hybrid identities that might have existed in the Early Modern period were hardly imaginable

in the context of the nineteenth century, not to mention the fact that the practice of

devşirme had long fallen into oblivion. This sense of anachronism must have been all the more

true in the eyes of the young Edhem during his long stay in Paris. What could still have been

tolerable—and probably inevitable—in an Ottoman context must have felt extremely awkward

in the French capital. A Greek identity, the massacres, conversion, captivity, and enslavement:

all of this must by far have exceeded what the young boy was willing to reveal of his complex

past to the people who surrounded him. It was only natural, then, that he should have tried to

forge a new past, one that was consistent with the new identity that he had acquired and on

which depended his very future. Back in Istanbul, even if he knew that the story of his origins

would never go away, he stuck to his new identity, reinforcing it with a strong patriotic stand

that found its most basic expression in an allegiance to Islamic forms and traditions. Yet, at the

same time, he also played the Western card and became one of the strongest advocates of a

total commitment to the scientific values he had acquired during his education in Paris. No

wonder, then, that his character and personality should have been considered by many as

somewhat out of the ordinary, not to say eccentric.

At any rate, the point here is not to write a psychohistory of Edhem Pasha; rather, this

whole matter constitutes an interesting occasion to discuss the very thin line that lies between

21

story and history, as well as the grey zone of identities at the crossroads of imperial and

national histories. Edhem Pasha’s strange life story lacks the kind of documentary evidence

that one would require for a proper and reliable historical analysis, and it is more than likely

that it will have to remain so. In that sense, it has little more to offer than the appeal of a good

story, with even the possibility that it may be just a little bit too good to be true, if one

considers that the most reliable documentation—the rare and indirect records emanating from

the pasha himself—seems to suggest it may have been entirely fabricated. Interestingly

enough, however, a careful ‘archaeology’ of the sources reveals that however badly

documented it may be, the ‘myth’ is in fact more plausible and likely than what appears to

have been a rather conscious effort by Edhem Pasha, soon followed by his younger son, to

distort an already blurry historical reality. This, to the historian, is a sobering realization of the

fragility of what one tends to label a little too hastily as historical evidence, and of the very

relative nature of the distinction between story and history.

At another level, this story is a slap in the face of national(ist) historical constructs and of

modernist historiography. Edhem Pasha is one of the last and in that sense almost

anachronistic, products of a pre-modern empire, but it is also one of its first experiments with

modernity. A child survives the traditional imperial response—a massacre—to a (somewhat)

modern form of insubordination—a revolution—by being assimilated through traditional

means—enslavement and conversion—, only to be transformed through modernity—education

in Europe. More importantly, however, and despite some efforts to avoid it, this modern

product of tradition embodies a disturbing identity that challenges every possible nationalist

scenario. From a Turkish perspective, he is a man of dubious origins, which is precisely why his

son will eventually attempt to rewrite his history to fit the requirements of a new ideological

context. From a Greek perspective, he is lost from the moment he crosses over into a new

identity and thus ‘betrays’ the teleological construct of the formation of the Greek nation.

Compared to Victor Hugo’s story of the Greek boy who asks for “powder and bullets,”32 Edhem

Pasha’s life story stands like an aberration; it can only be understood by transcending the

Manichean categories of modernist and nationalist historiography.

32 Hugo 1929.

22

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