Halil Hamid Pasha

Halil Hamid Pascha (* 1736 in Isparta ; † 1785 in Bozcaada ) was Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1782 to 1785 and pursued an outspoken policy of reform.

Life

He was born in southwest anatolia . In Constantinople he entered the administrative service of the Ottoman Empire and made a career on the basis of his skills. In 1782 he was appointed Grand Vizier.

During his tenure in 1783, the Russian annexation of Crimea fell . Halil Hamid had to accept this because the Ottoman army's military strength was too low.

He wanted to overcome the weakness of the empire through a comprehensive reform policy in many areas. In doing so, he was guided in many ways by the European model. In order to overcome the technical backwardness of the empire, he endeavored to import new knowledge. He reorganized the engineering schools and recruited French and Prussian specialists to modernize the army, including the Janissary Corps .

In his opinion, a basic problem of the empire was the economic inferiority in comparison with the European countries. Therefore he tried to prevent the import of luxury goods, especially textiles from Europe and India. Instead, he encouraged the domestic production of these goods. He also planned a major reform of agricultural production. In order to break the economic supremacy of the Russians in the Black Sea , he opened this area to international trade.

He also planned administrative reforms, in particular a reform of the state's pay, tax and recruitment systems. Halil Hamid tried to prevent the Janissaries from trading in wage slips, which were traded like fixed income securities .

With this policy he makes enemies with those who had benefited from the previous system. Among them were those like the Grand Admiral Cezayirli Gazi Hassan Pascha , who were quite ready for changes in their field. A fundamental reform would have threatened the foundations of their influence. Politically, too, they were on different sides. While Hassan Pasha was for aggressive action against Russia, Halil Hamid advocated a peaceful course. Since the Grand Admiral had the full confidence of the Sultan Abdülhamid I , Halil Hamid planned to overthrow the Sultan through an intrigue and in his place the later Selim III. to put. This attempt failed. He was deposed and later executed.

In a way, his politics laid the foundations for the reforms under Selim III.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Serif Mardin: The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish political ideas. Princeton, 1962 p. 144.

literature

• İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı Halil Hamid Paşa. In: Türkiyat Mecmuası. Volume V, 1935, pp. 213-267.
• Serif Mardin: The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish political ideas. Princeton 1962 p. 144
• Hans-Peter Laqueur: Ottoman cemeteries and tombstones in Istanbul. (= Istanbul Communications Supplement 38). Tübingen 1993 pp. 104-108.
• Christoph K. Neumann: The Ottoman Empire in its existential crisis (1768-1826). In: Klaus Kreiser, Christoph K. Neumann: Little History of Turkey (= Federal Center for Political Education. Series of publications. Vol. 529). Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 2005 p. 293f.
• Anton Cornelius Schaendlinger: Halil Hamid Pascha , in: Biographical Lexicon for the History of Southeast Europe . Vol. 2. Munich 1976, p. 116 f.
• Selçuk Akşin Somel: The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham 2006, p. 113

predecessor	Office	successor
Yeğen Hacı Mehmed Pasha	Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire December 31, 1782 - April 30, 1785	Şahin Ali Pasha