Ziya Pasha: His Amasya Mutasarrıflık and the Poet of the Tanzimat

Ziya Pasha was a statesman and poet of the Tanzimat era, counted together with Şinasi and Namık Kemal among the founders of modern Turkish literature. Most of his career was spent far from Istanbul, in provincial posts as mutasarrıf and governor; those posts ran from Cyprus to Adana, and Amasya stood in the middle of them. His two-year term there, from 1863 to 1865, is a valuable case for understanding Ottoman provincial administration, both for its building programme and for the bitter struggle he fought with the local notables. The present clock tower of Amasya is one of the traces of that period.

To judge those two years properly, one has to look first at Ziya Pasha's formative years, at how he came to Amasya, and at what happened to him after he left. For his term in Amasya was, in his life, both an exile and a trial of his abilities as an administrator.

Birth and Education in Kandilli

Ziya Pasha, whose given name was Abdülhamid Ziyaeddin, was born in the Istanbul district of Kandilli. The sources disagree on his year of birth. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi adopts 1829 and gives the entry as 1829-1880, while some other sources write 1825. Here the encyclopedia's date is followed, although it must be said that there is no full agreement on the exact year. His father was Ferîdüddin Efendi, a clerk at the Galata Customs House, and the family came originally from the village of Kerab in the district of İspir in Erzurum. His mother was Itır Hanım.

After his first schooling he attended the Mekteb-i Ulûm-i Edebiyye near the Süleymaniye, which offered modern instruction by the standards of its day, and then the Bayezid Rüşdiye, learning Arabic and Persian at the same time. His broad knowledge and fine handwriting, remarkable for his age, won him a place as a clerk in the Mektûbî Kalemi, the correspondence bureau of the Grand Vizierate, when he was only sixteen or seventeen.

The most valuable information on his youth comes from his own accounts. In his memoir-like Defter-i A'mâl he says that while he was at the rüşdiye he secretly learned Persian at the urging of his tutor (lala) İsmail Ağa. In the preface to Harâbât he says he had begun to write poetry before the age of fifteen. Again at his tutor's prompting he wrote poems in the manner of the folk bards, and among the first works he read were the Divan of Âşık Ömer and some poems of Gevherî. He also states that he read folk tales such as Âşık Garib and Âşık Kerem, and wrote nazires, poems in answer to a model, on some pieces by Âşık Ömer and Gevherî.

The Grand Vizierate Bureau and the Turn to Poetry

For Ziya the Mektûbî Kalemi was less a place of employment than a school of literature. There he met Fatîn Efendi, Leskofçalı Galib, Osman Şems Efendi, Osman Nevres, Kâzım Paşa and others, and formed close friendships with them. According to Defter-i A'mâl he learned prosody (aruz) and the craft of poetry from Fatîn Efendi. He also realised that there was a far richer world of poetry than the folk tradition only after he met him; he began to read whatever divans came into his hands, and at this time he became acquainted with Hâfiz of Shiraz and took an interest in Persian literature.

During his years in the bureau he frequented the haunts of the well-known poets of the day: the taverns in Tavukpazarı, the coffeehouses in the courtyard of the Mahmud Pasha Mosque, and the mansion of Mehmed Lebîb Efendi, one of the literary circles. With some qasidas he presented to Şeyhülislam Ârif Hikmet Bey he earned his approval. In 1861 Ziya attended the meetings of the Encümen-i Şuarâ, the Society of Poets, and under the influence of that setting and of his friends from the coffeehouses he now began to write ghazals, qasidas, songs, nazires and satires in the classical manner. The famous Tercî-i Bend, which brought him his first fame and showed how well he had mastered the old poetry, also belongs to this period. Some sources give the poem as 132 couplets long and date it to 1859, while the TDV ties its composition to the years of the Encümen-i Şuarâ.

The Mâbeyn Clerkship and Tension with Âlî Pasha

In 1856 Ziya Pasha entered the palace as fifth clerk of the Mâbeyn-i Hümâyun through the good offices of Grand Vizier Mustafa Reşid Pasha; some sources give this date as 1855. At the palace he learned French and tried to know Western culture and literature more closely. He completed the translation of the History of Andalusia, which Mâbeyn marshal İbrâhim Edhem Pasha had begun to render from French, at his urging, and then translated the History of the Inquisition. The TDV openly notes that an ambition for advancement in politics also appeared in him in these years.

The death of his patron Mustafa Reşid Pasha in 1858 somewhat shook Ziya's standing at the palace. When Sultan Abdülaziz came to the throne in June 1861, he succeeded in regaining favour with the qasidas he presented to the sovereign. But the hostile attitude he had taken toward Âlî Pasha marked the beginning of an enmity that would grow in time and turn against him. In 1861, when Âlî Pasha was removed from the grand vizierate and Fuad Pasha put in his place, Ziya's post in the Mâbeyn was ended because of certain odd actions that sprang from his ambition, and he was made Undersecretary of the Police (Zaptiye). Two weeks later his political rivals had him appointed to the embassy in Athens in order to remove him from Istanbul as soon as possible. Ziya argued that an uprising had begun in Greece and public opinion had turned against us, and did not go. In some sources his name appears among the ambassadors to Athens for the span 1861-1872; this conflicts with the TDV's account, for the appointment was issued but never taken up.

Cyprus and Bosnia

In April 1862 he was appointed mutasarrıf of Cyprus with the title of pasha; some sources write this date as 1861. He launched a wide-ranging building programme on the island, but could never come to terms with its climate. He caught malaria in Famagusta and one of his children was paralysed. When his father died as well, his application was accepted and the following year he returned to Istanbul as a member of the Meclis-i Vâlâ. His rank was raised to the first class of mîrimîran.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he went as an inspector, he dismissed a defterdar for malpractice. When he learned that this defterdar and the governor, Topal Osman Pasha, were being protected by the Minister of Finance, Mustafa Fâzıl Pasha, and had applied to the palace for his own dismissal, he resigned. On returning to Istanbul he was once again made a member of the Meclis-i Vâlâ and, a few months later, Minister of Lawsuits (Deâvî Nâzırı) in September 1863. Âlî Pasha, who was determined to keep Ziya away from the capital, sent him this time to Amasya.

The Amasya Mutasarrıflık

The dates of Ziya Pasha's term in Amasya are not given in exactly the same way in the sources. The TDV leaves the date somewhat vague by writing that he was sent to Amasya about three years after the appointment as Minister of Lawsuits in September 1863. The most reliable basis here is Kenan Akyüz's study built on archival documents and Halil İnalcık's review of it; both present the term as a two-year period between 1863 and 1865. Akyüz's Ziya Paşa'nın Amasya Mutasarrıflığı Sırasındaki Olaylar, published in 1964, rests on 39 documents drawn from the İrade registers of the Prime Ministry Archive, from an investigation file dated 1282. İnalcık notes that some documents are missing from this file, yet says that the published papers sufficiently illuminate Ziya's record as a governor and the true face of the local disputes.

Amasya was at that time under the effect of an economic crisis. The French traveller G. Perrot had visited Zile on his Anatolian journey in 1861 and spoke of the effects of the economic crisis there; İnalcık points out that Ziya Pasha became mutasarrıf precisely during this crisis. Perrot also writes that the ayan, the provincial notables, were on the whole useful to the people against the absolutism and arbitrary rule of the centre. This observation is important for understanding the background of the conflict Ziya was about to meet.

The Amasya Reform

According to the TDV, during his two years in Amasya Ziya Pasha launched an unprecedented building programme and won affection and respect by taking measures that eased the lot of the people. In the centre of Amasya and its five districts he had built six government mansions, six schools, one idadî (secondary school), six clock towers, a prison building, a bedesten and places of business, and he had new roads opened in the city centre. These activities are known as the "Amasya reform."

İnalcık, summarising Akyüz's work, gives a narrower list: a bridge, a market, a bedesten, a government mansion, six primary schools, an idadî school, a prison and roads. İnalcık also notes that Ziya tried to bring the bandits to heel. Akyüz puts his verdict on this record by saying that what Ziya Pasha achieved in the sanjak of Amasya truly deserves admiration. The difference between the two lists may arise from figures such as six mansions and six clock towers covering not only the city centre but also the affiliated districts; since the sources do not say so openly, no exact allocation can be made.

The best known of these structures today is the Amasya Clock Tower. According to cultural inventory records, the tower was built in 1865 by the mutasarrıf and poet Ziya Pasha. Rising on a square-plan base, the cylindrical shaft of regular cut stone carries at the top a wooden section in honeycomb form, and the tower as a whole is designed in the shape of a minaret; it is notable for its clock faces and large windows. It suffered a fire soon after it was first built and was demolished in 1940, and the present tower was rebuilt in 2002 in keeping with its original design. The present state of the other buildings Ziya Pasha had built could not be verified with the sources at hand.

The Money Problem and the Levies

The financing of so much work was a problem from the start. İnalcık sums up the conclusion he draws from Akyüz's documents as follows: the Tanzimat administration was undertaking public works in the provinces, but the central treasury was not enough to pay for them, and the solution was sought in local levies (salma). Ziya Pasha had resorted to the same course, laying certain financial burdens on the vücûh and ulema of the region and extending these levies to the people as well.

İnalcık adds a warning here. The administrative methods Ziya used were entirely in the way of earlier governors, and these methods unsettled the local wealthy and often the people too. Ziya meant to free the people from the grip of the ayan, but he saw that against the "customary" (örfî) procedure he applied, that is, actions resting on authority, the Sharia was being set up as a shield and abused.

Opposition and the Transfer to Canik

According to Akyüz's documents, the struggle was led by Lûtfullah, who had served as mufti of Zile for twenty-two years, and by Hacı Hasan Ağa, one of the notables of Zile. Behind them stood the leading families, the vücûh, the ulema and the merchants of Amasya. Ziya Pasha pressed them, accusing them of having acquired their wealth and property by illegitimate means, and went so far as to have them imprisoned. The other side in turn accused the governor of laying financial burdens on the people by unlawful means and of pocketing the money collected. The mufti's name differs in the sources: the article in Belleten says Lûtfullah, while the TDV writes "the mufti of Zile, Feyzullah Efendi." Here İnalcık, who reports Akyüz's examination of the archival documents, is followed, and the second name is left as a note.

When the opponents informed the Sublime Porte, in the manner of a threat, that unrest might break out among the people, Ziya Pasha was transferred to the mutasarrıflık of Canik in 1865. According to İnalcık, Ziya said that the mufti facing him was acting "nominally as mufti, but in fact as governor, director and judge all at once." In the petition he sent to the grand vizier he writes that in the hands of such powerful men the people were like captives, and says "alas, all of Anatolia is in this very sorrowful state."

İnalcık's assessment does not lean on either side. Those called the hanedan and vücûh were in fact the provincial ayan themselves. Mahmud II had managed to remove only the worst of the ayan; as a social class they went on dominating provincial life in Anatolia and Rumelia, and new institutions that the Tanzimat brought, such as the provincial councils, fell in most places under their influence. This circle, which put up a powerful resistance to the agents of the central administration who touched its interests, presented itself as protector of the people and defender of the Sharia. On the other hand, one reason for the ayan's gain in influence was that the governors acting on behalf of the centre, and their men, really did resort to unlawful and arbitrary conduct. There were those, like Ziya, who carried out useful public works through levies, but not a few governors worked for their own interest; there were ayan who protected the people from the abuses of administrators, but also those who used their influence to plunder the people. İnalcık says that Ziya's stand can be judged only within the general picture of Anatolian history.

It is clear that the bitter experiences he had in Amasya left a deep mark on him. According to İnalcık, Ziya Pasha first came to believe that his enemies at the Palace and the Sublime Porte had wronged him, and then saw at close range how hard it was to get anything done in the provinces against the local strongmen, and how bad the administration was. In what he wrote in 1869 in the newspaper Hürriyet about provincial administration, strong traces of these old experiences can be found.

Canik and the Return to Istanbul

It appears that in Canik he had no time for literature because of health problems, administrative business and his dealings with his opponents. In October 1865 he returned again to Istanbul as a member of the Meclis-i Vâlâ; some sources give the return as 1866. He then began openly to criticise the internal and foreign policy of the Sublime Porte in articles published in the newspaper Muhbir. The TDV also records that the illness that began in Cyprus and recurred in Amasya would reappear years later in Adana.

The New Ottomans and the Flight to Europe

The Ottoman state's loss of a large amount of territory through the uprisings that broke out in Syria, Serbia and Crete, the blow to its standing among the European powers, and above all the handing over of Belgrade Fortress to Serbia by a fait accompli pushed Ziya Pasha, like many dissidents, into open opposition to Âlî Pasha. The TDV supposes that he joined the İttifâk-ı Hamiyyet Cemiyeti, the secret society founded to bring about a constitutional regime, which later took the name of the New Ottomans Society.

At the beginning of 1867 he claimed illness and asked leave to go to Paris for treatment. Âlî Pasha spoke of the expense and advised him to go with the commission sending goods to the Paris Exhibition. While he was thinking this over, he was appointed mutasarrıf of Cyprus for the second time (April 1867). Ziya asked to be sent elsewhere, saying that he had served on that island six years before, had never got used to its climate, and that a child and his father had died there; when the new post was changed to Rhodes he resigned.

In those same days Âlî Pasha had sent Namık Kemal, as a political measure, to Erzurum as assistant governor, and exiled Ali Suavi to Kastamonu for his articles in Muhbir. At the invitation of Mustafa Fâzıl Pasha, the Egyptian prince and patron of the New Ottomans, Ziya Pasha fled secretly to Paris together with Namık Kemal, with the help of Giampiétri, the owner of the newspaper Le Courrier d'Orient, and the French ambassador Bouret (17 May 1867). Ali Suavi joined them at Messina. According to some sources the group reached Paris on 30 May 1867, and because he was the eldest, Ziya was the leader of the group.

London, Hürriyet and Geneva

In Paris he lived on the allowance Mustafa Fâzıl Pasha had settled on him. About a month later, when Sultan Abdülaziz was invited to the international exhibition where agricultural products and machinery were displayed and came to Paris, he moved to London with some members of the society, on a warning from the French government (July 1867). When Abdülaziz came to London at Queen Victoria's invitation, Ziya set out to the sultan the reasons for his flight to Europe, in order to state his innocence, in a long letter titled Arz-ı Hâl. In this work he explains why he had been removed from his post at the palace and why he had been appointed to places he did not want.

When Ali Suavi did as he pleased in Muhbir, which he published in London on behalf of the society, the members decided jointly that Ziya Pasha and Namık Kemal should publish the newspaper Hürriyet (Freedom). The date of the first issue is given in the TDV as 29 June 1868, while some sources have 29 August 1868. During this time he had the chance to meet Simon Deutsch, the private physician of Mustafa Fâzıl Pasha, Comte W. Plater, Melek Hanım, the wife of Mehmed Pasha of Cyprus, and the noted Turkologist Léon Cahun.

For as long as they published Hürriyet, Ziya, while criticising the government's domestic and foreign policy from time to time, never made the political struggle he had joined a personal matter. This changed after Namık Kemal left to return to Istanbul following the 63rd issue of the paper; from then on Ziya began to publish articles that aimed directly at Âlî Pasha and made grave accusations. According to the TDV, because of an article in the 67th issue he was arrested by the British government at the request of the Sublime Porte. Some sources tie the same arrest to Ali Suavi's article "The Trial of Âlî Pasha" in the 78th issue. In both accounts he was released on bail. Seeing his life in danger, he went from London to Paris and then to Geneva, where he published the paper from issue 89 to issue 100 by lithograph. Hürriyet published its last issue on 29 May 1870 and closed.

His break with Namık Kemal came in these years. According to Ziya the cause of the country's decline was the abuses of the viziers; according to Namık Kemal the system itself was rotten, and the two men at times put forward opposing views in the paper. When Mustafa Fâzıl Pasha, who had come to terms with Sultan Abdülaziz and returned to Istanbul, stopped the allowance he paid to the members of the society, the society began to fall apart of its own accord. Ziya began to write articles praising Khedive İsmâil Pasha of Egypt, the political rival of Mustafa Fâzıl Pasha.

These four years in Europe also shaped his literary output. He began Zafernâme in Paris in 1867 and finished it in Geneva in 1870. The work satirises the Cretan revolt of 1866 and Âlî Pasha's solving of the affair by a fait accompli, granting Crete autonomy, and his return to Istanbul in a triumphant manner. It consists of a qasida in the style of a panegyric of sixty-six couplets written for Âlî Pasha in the voice of Fâzıl Pasha, the mutasarrıf of İzmit, and two separate tahmis, and it is an example that shows all the features of the art of tehzîl, burlesque. Rüyâ (The Dream), which appeared in issues 68 and 69 of Hürriyet, is a political satire written in the hâbnâme tradition of divan literature, the dream-narrative, demanding Âlî Pasha's dismissal. It is counted among the successful early examples of political criticism and of the new prose in Turkish literature. Terkîb-i Bend, written in 1870 while he was in Europe, consists of twelve stanzas of ten couplets each, and many of its lines have become proverbs.

Return to Istanbul and the Constitutional Years

Âlî Pasha died on 7 September 1871; some sources give the date as 8 August. A qasida Ziya presented to Abdülaziz through the new grand vizier, Mahmud Nedim Pasha, softened the atmosphere and Ziya was able to return to Istanbul. In early 1872 he was made head of the İcra Cemiyeti, set up within the Dîvân-ı Ahkâm-ı Adliyye, worked with the Minister of Justice, Midhat Pasha, to give the judiciary a new order, and was appointed to the Şûrâ-yı Devlet, where he would remain until 1876. He published Harâbât in these years, in 1874-1875.

In May 1876, after Abdülaziz was deposed and Murad V enthroned, he was appointed chief secretary of the Mâbeyn and Undersecretary of Education. But in the first days of the post he was dismissed on the grounds that he had been hasty in informing the grand vizier of the sovereign's will on the pardon of political exiles, Namık Kemal first among them. After Abdülhamid II came to the throne following Murad V's three months' reign, he served for a while with Namık Kemal on the Kânûn-ı Esâsî Encümeni, the commission for the constitution. During the Russo-Turkish War, the War of '93, he presided over the Hediyye-i Askeriyye Cemiyeti, set up to meet the soldiers' winter needs.

The Governorships of Syria, Konya and Adana

Shortly before Abdülhamid II closed the Meclis-i Mebûsan indefinitely in February 1878, a rumour arose that Ziya would stand as a deputy for Istanbul, and he was appointed governor of Syria with the rank of vizier and the title of pasha (1877). According to some sources, the sultan, who after the proclamation of the constitution on 23 December 1876 was removing the Young Ottomans from his surroundings by exile and arrest, sent Ziya away from Istanbul with this post as well.

In Syria he fell out with the Muslim population over his free-thinking and with the Christian and Jewish subjects over his tight monetary policy, and after about three and a half months he was transferred to Konya. There he fought the moneylenders on one hand and began building works on the other. On the moneylenders' complaint he was removed from office and sent in 1878 to the governorship of Adana.

In Adana too he began a serious building programme. First he had a theatre built and brought a theatre company from Istanbul to give performances. He opened new schools in the city and arranged compulsory courses to make civil servants work more efficiently. Some sources add that he took the governor of Bursa, Ahmed Vefik Pasha, as his model and opened a rüşdiye in the Gülek district. His last known work is the chronogram poem he wrote for the building of the government mansion in the town of Yarpuz, regarded as the centre of the sanjak of Cebelibereket. In Adana he also completed Riyânın Encâmı (Tartuffe), his translation from Molière. This five-act verse comedy, which he had begun translating while still in Europe, is regarded as the first example of verse drama in Turkish literature, and he finished it to be staged at the theatre he founded as governor.

Death and Tomb

The illness that began in Cyprus and recurred in Amasya reappeared in Adana. Ziya Pasha died on 17 May 1880 at the age of fifty-one; one source gives the cause of death as cirrhosis. His funeral was attended by a large crowd and he was buried in the graveyard of the Adana Great Mosque. According to some sources a tomb was built for him in 1881 by the governor of Adana, Abidin Pasha; its surroundings were turned into a park in the 1960s, and a busy avenue in Adana bears his name. Ziya Pasha died not in Amasya but in Adana, and he lies there.

Ziya Pasha married twice; from his first marriage he had three children, Hayali Bey, Seniha Hanım and Vahid Ziya Bey, and his second wife's name was Saadet Hanım. It is also reported that he lost his first wife, who had fallen ill on the return from Cyprus.

Literary Character

Ziya Pasha, together with Namık Kemal after Şinasi, is counted among the founders of the new Turkish literature that grew from the 1860s under the influence of French literature. The shared traits seen in most post-Tanzimat writers raised within a literary tradition of centuries, namely divan poetry, the folk bard manner and French influence, are intertwined in him. According to the TDV he came under the influence of the philosophers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment from the West; in his political and social writings he comes close to realism for the most part, while giving room to romanticism in some poems. While trying to stay native in his feelings, he differs from the older writers more in the direction of ideas than of form.

Traces of Western free thought are seen in his political and intellectual writing. In his articles in Hürriyet he turns to subjects such as rights, justice, the rule of law and equality, most of which had entered the Ottoman agenda with the Tanzimat Edict. Thinking on the constitution not much differently from Namık Kemal and Ali Suavi, Ziya cites the age of the Rightly Guided Caliphs to argue that the election of rulers by consultation exists in the Islamic tradition of state, and tries to give the Western parliamentary regime an Islamic framework. The TDV also records that in form and content he made no move toward innovation in the literary thinking of the period; amid his political struggles and official duties he could not be as productive a man of letters as expected, and his articles in Muhbir and Hürriyet have still not been published in book form.

He also has an inconsistency that has been criticised since Namık Kemal. At the opening of his article "Şiir ve İnşâ" (Poetry and Prose) in Hürriyet, with the ease that being abroad gave him, he asks whether there is anything that can be called Ottoman poetry, and whether the Turkish nation has a truly pure language of its own. He does not accept the poems in the divans of Necâtî, Bâkî and Nef'î, or the songs of Nedîm and Enderunlu Vâsıf, as Turkish poetry, and says that divan poetry cannot be called original; for the first time in the history of Turkish literature he argues that true Turkish poetry is folk poetry. In the same article he takes up Turkish prose as well. He writes that in the works of Veysî and Nergisî and in Feridun Bey's Münşeât Turkish words do not reach even a third, gives Mütercim Âsım Efendi's translation of the Kâmus and the language of Muhbir as examples of plain prose, but cannot write this article himself in the intelligible language he advocates. Six years later, in the preface to Harâbât, published in 1874, he says that Necâtî, Ahmed Pasha and Zâtî, divan poets he had criticised, laid the foundations of the Turkish language, while he compares the works of the folk poets to the braying of a donkey. This contradiction was harshly criticised for a long time by writers who defended the new literature; Namık Kemal answered with "Tahrib-i Harâbât."

Even so, his works that are read with pleasure in every age and most admired are the poems he wrote in the old manner. Tercî-i Bend almost sums up the philosophy of life that has been valid in the Islamic world for centuries and, in line with the Jabriyya outlook, expresses the absolute helplessness of human beings and of all existence before fate; it has been regarded as the last link of a tradition that has continued in Turkish literature since Nâbî. Terkîb-i Bend is said to continue, in the nineteenth century, the path opened in the sixteenth by Rûhî-yi Bağdâdî. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar describes this poem as, for all its tavern-ruin mood, a work of polemic. Two of its couplets circulate like proverbs:

A person's mirror is his deeds, not his words
A man's rank of mind shows in his work

Who will not be set right by counsel should be rebuked
Who will not be tamed by rebuke deserves the cudgel

Principal Works

• Tercî-i Bend and Terkîb-i Bend: two famous poems on man's helplessness before fate and on the intellectual world of the age; first printed separately in 1872.
• Harâbât (1874-1875): a three-volume anthology of Arabic, Persian and Turkish poetry.
• Zafernâme, Rüyâ, Arz-ı Hâl: political satires and letters aimed at Âlî Pasha and the administration of the day.
• Verâset-i Saltanat-ı Seniyye Hakkında Mektup (London 1868): a treatise defending the rights of Mustafa Fâzıl Pasha.
• Eş'âr-ı Ziyâ (1881): his poems, compiled by his son-in-law Hamdi Bey; reprinted in 1924 as Külliyât-ı Ziyâ Paşa with corrections by Süleyman Nazif.
• Translations: History of Andalusia, History of the Inquisition, Riyânın Encâmı from Molière; his translations of Émile from Rousseau, of Les Confessions, and of Télémaque from Fénelon remained unpublished or incomplete.

Ziya Pasha in the Memory of Amasya

In Amasya, Ziya Pasha is remembered less for his poetry than for his administration. The most detailed information on his term as mutasarrıf rests on the documents Kenan Akyüz published in 1964. These documents show together the works he had built, the levies he resorted to because the treasury was not enough, the accusations of his opponents and his own defence. The clock tower still stands today in the centre of the city, as the most visible trace of those two years.

Chronology

1829: Born in Kandilli, Istanbul (TDV; 1825 in some sources).

1856: Became fifth clerk of the Mâbeyn-i Hümâyun through Mustafa Reşid Pasha (TDV; 1855 in some sources).

1858: Mustafa Reşid Pasha died.

June 1861: Abdülaziz came to the throne.

April 1862: Appointed mutasarrıf of Cyprus with the title of pasha (TDV; 1861 in some sources).

September 1863: Appointed Minister of Lawsuits.

1863-1865: Mutasarrıf of Amasya.

1865: Amasya Clock Tower built; transferred to the mutasarrıflık of Canik.

October 1865: Returned to Istanbul as a member of the Meclis-i Vâlâ.

May 1867: Fled to Paris on 17 May.

1868: Began publishing the newspaper Hürriyet in London (TDV 29 June, 29 August in some sources).

1870: Finished Zafernâme in Geneva; Hürriyet closed on 29 May.

September 1871: Âlî Pasha died on 7 September; Ziya returned to Istanbul afterward.

1874-1875: Harâbât published.

1877: Appointed governor of Syria; transferred to Konya three and a half months later.

1878: Became governor of Adana.

May 1880: Died in Adana on 17 May and was buried in the graveyard of the Great Mosque.

Sources

Academic studies

• Abdullah Uçman, "Ziyâ Paşa", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 44, Istanbul 2013, pp. 475-479 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr) islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
• Halil İnalcık, review of Kenan Akyüz's "Ziya Paşa'nın Amasya Mutasarrıflığı Sırasındaki Olaylar, Belgeler I" (Ankara 1964), Belleten, vol. 30, no. 117, January 1966, pp. 163-164 belleten.gov.tr

Other sources

• Wikipedia (Turkish), "Ziyâ Paşa" entry (tr.wikipedia.org, supplementary source) tr.wikipedia.org
• Kültür Envanteri, "Amasya Saat Kulesi" (kulturenvanteri.com) kulturenvanteri.com