Mahmud Hamdi Pasha

Mahmud Hamdi Pascha (* 1828 as Fischel Freund in Brzeziny , Poland ; † August 15, 1885 in Beirut ) was a Polish Jew who rose to the highest ranks in the military of the Ottoman Empire , became governor in Syria and later became an adviser to the sultan.

Life

Fischel Freund (Gedalia Fiszel Frajnd in the birth register) was born in 1828 as the youngest son of Shlama Freund. The years of his childhood were marked by stories from the Polish uprising of 1830 . After his bar mitzvah , he was apprenticed to a watchmaker at the age of 13 . In addition, his father hired a teacher who taught him German and Polish, so his mother tongue was obviously Yiddish . When his father suddenly achieved prosperity by winning a ticket, the 15- or 16-year-old appropriated a considerable sum of money and went out into the world.

For some time he stayed in Germany , where he used the name Fischel-Ferdinand, and finally ended up penniless in Hungary . In Budapest he found work in a wine tavern. Here a high- ranking Hungarian cavalry officer took him into his service as an officer's boy. On the recommendation of this officer, Fischel Freund joined the folk hero Lajos Kossuth in the Hungarian uprising of 1848 and fought alongside him for the independence of Hungary. He was quickly promoted to officer and earned numerous awards.

When the Hungarian uprising was put down, Fischel Freund went to Turkey , where he converted to Islam and joined the army . His military career developed at a rapid pace. When the Crimean War broke out in 1853 , he was denounced as a former Russian citizen as a spy and banished to Rhodes . The Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz , who came to Constantinople in 1853 to collect Polish and Jewish units for the Crimean War against Russia , heard of the fate of his compatriot. He convinced the Sultan to re-investigate the matter. Then he was able to return to Constantinople, where he was henceforth under the protection of the sultan.

In the war against Montenegro , Fischel Freund, who now called himself Mahmud Hamid, gained combat experience. One day when he got the impression that his superior wanted to surrender to a difficult situation, he beheaded him without further ado. The sultan was impressed by this and promoted him to pasha .

The peace negotiations with Montenegro and Serbia were unsuccessful, and in the end Russia entered the war against the Ottoman Empire in 1877 , while Great Britain fought on the Turkish side. Mahmud Pasha received high military awards in this war, including one from Queen Victoria of England . The sultan appointed him governor for Syria . After the end of the war in 1878, the new Sultan Abdul Hamid made him a vizier and a close adviser.

Mahmud Pasha later also campaigned for his former co-religionists in Constantinople and achieved various improvements for the Jewish minority. During this time, Mahmud Pasha had contact with his Polish relatives again, including sending them money on a regular basis. His brother-in-law visited him in Constantinople, and on a second visit he was accompanied by his wife, Fischel Freund's sister, and his son-in-law. Mahmud Pasha did not come to a planned return visit to his native Brzeziny, however, because he died of malaria before the execution in Beirut .

Names

Fischel Freund or Mahmud Pascha used different names in the course of his life. In the birth register of the city of Brzeziny he was entered in Polish spelling as Gedalia Fiszel Frajnd . Later in Germany and probably also in Hungary he called himself Fischel-Ferdinand, in the Ottoman Empire Mahmud Hamid or Mahmud Hamdi, sometimes with the addition of Magyar , Macar or Madzer with the meaning of the Hungarian .

All of these names have different forms and spellings in the different languages ​​that Fischel Freund had to do with (especially Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, German, Turkish), plus the spellings in the sources and in the literature, so it doesn't it is always easy to judge whether a source is actually about that person.

literature

• Abraham Galanté: Turcs et Juifs: étude historique, politique , 1932, p. 110ff.

Web links

• A Brzeziner Jew - A Grand-Vizier in Turkey