Mehmet Said Halet Efendi

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Halet Efendi. Detail from Jacques-Louis David, Le Sacre de Napoléon , 1807

Meḥmet Saʿid Ḥālet Efendi (born around 1761 in Istanbul , died before December 3, 1822 near Konya , present-day Turkey) was an Islamic scholar , diplomat and high official of the Ottoman Empire .

Life

Training and first offices

Halet Efendi's father, Ḥüseyn Efendi, was a ḳāḍī . The family comes from the Crimea . He was brought up in the household of Şeyhülislam Şerif Efendi. He later joined the Mevlevi Brotherhood of Şeyh Galip , for whose lodge in Galata he donated an extensive library, the Hâlet Efendi Kütüphanesi, with writings on Sufism . Among other things, he served the grand drama of the Porte and later Prince of Moldavia , Alexandru Callimachi as secretary and in this function came into closer contact with the Greek Phanariotes .

Ambassador in Paris, fall of Selim III.

From 1802 to 1806 he served as the ambassador of Sultan Selim III. in Paris. In Jacques-Louis David's painting Le Sacre de Napoléon he is depicted as a bearded man with a turban among the eyewitnesses of Napoleon I's coronation as emperor . After his return from Paris he was first appointed keeper of the seal (beylikči) of the lordly Dīwān (dīvān-ı hümāyūn) and shortly afterwards head of the audiences (rikʿāb raʿisi) . He belonged to a group of conservative religious scholars who in alliance with the Janissaries in 1807 Selim III. fell. At the instigation of the French ambassador Sébastiani , who accused him of collaborating with the British, he was removed from office and held in Kütahya for a year .

Under Murad II.

In 1809 he was commissioned by Sultan Murad II to collect outstanding tax payments from the Beylerbey of Baghdad, Suleyman Pasha. When he did not succeed, he obtained a death sentence against Suleyman, confiscated his property and returned to Istanbul in 1810 with the proceeds. This earned him the title of kethüdâ-ı rikab-ı hümayūn (Deputy Grand Vizier). On September 10, 1815 he was appointed keeper of the seals (nişancı) . Although in this position ( equivalent to a Western European chancellor ) he was a close advisor to the reform-oriented Sultan Mahmud II, he took a more conservative position and was averse to reforms based on Western European models.

Clientele politics, opposition and overthrow

In the years up to 1821 Halet Efendi seems to have had a monopoly of power at the Istanbul court. He used his position of power at the Sultan's court to get his partisans into important offices, for example he occupied the Voivodeships of Moldova and Wallachia with his supporters. On April 21, 1821 he brought Benderli Ali Pascha to the office of Grand Vizier. Apparently he believed that in this way he could exert greater influence over Sultan Mahmud. However, after the new Grand Vizier had publicly declared that his actions were only owed to the Sultan, Halet Efendi obtained his removal and execution only nine days later on the pretext of incompetence. The exile and execution of Benderli Pasha is indirectly one of the triggers of the Greek Revolution .

His opponents were the modernizers at court, Hüsrev Mehmed Pascha , then Grand Admiral and military commander in chief, the chief secretary of the typing office (reʾīsü 'l-küttāb) Canip Mehmet Besim Efendi and the liberal-minded Grand Vizier Mehmet Said Galip Pascha . At the end of November 1822, Halet Efendi fell out of favor, his palace was officially sealed, and he himself was exiled to Konya. On December 3, 1822, his severed head was put on public display along with the death sentence in the First Courtyard of Topkapı Palace . He was later buried in the Mevlevi Lodge in Galata. The books of Hâlet Efendi Kütüphanesi are now in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul.

literature

  • Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808-1975 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1977, ISBN 978-0-521-29166-8 , pp. 8-22 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ottoman Empire. News of December 10th . In: Austrian observer . January 3, 1823 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ a b c d e E. Kuran: Ḥālet Efendi . In: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, CE Bosworth, E. van Donzel, WP Heinrichs (eds.): Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition . 2012, doi : 10.1163 / 1573-3912_islam_SIM_2644 .
  3. ^ Libraries in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey . In: Salim Ayduz (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of philosophy, science, and technology in Islam . Oxford University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-981257-8 , pp. 476 .
  4. ↑ a b Abdülkadir Özcan: Hâlet Efendi . In: Islam Ansiklopedisi . S. 249–251 ( islamansiklopedisi.info [PDF; accessed December 17, 2017]).
  5. ↑ Carter Vaughn Findley: Political culture and the great households . In: Kate Fleet, Suraiya Faroqhi, Reşat Kasaba (eds.): The Cambridge History of Turkey . tape 3 : The Later Ottoman Empire 1603–1839 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 2006, ISBN 0-521-62095-3 , pp. 77 .
  6. ↑ Turkey . In: The Peace and War Courier. Most gracious privilege with your royal majesty . Nuremberg August 12, 1822 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  7. ^ Column "Greece and Turkey" . In: Baireuther Zeitung on the year 1822 . Bayreuth 1822, p. 760 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
personal data
SURNAME Mehmet Said Halet Efendi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halet Efendi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Senior administrator and scholar in the Ottoman Empire
DATE OF BIRTH around 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul
DATE OF DEATH before December 3, 1822
Place of death near Konya , today's Turkey