Midhat Paşa

1822 - 1884

Ottoman provincial governor, grand vizier, and father of the first written Ottoman constitution.

Midhat Paşa (also called Ahmet Şefik) was born into an Ottoman Turkish family in Istanbul. His father, a native of Rusçuk on the Danube, held judgeships in Muslim courts. In his youth, Midhat studied Arabic and Persian in mosque schools, while employed from the age of twelve in offices of the Ottoman Empire's central government at the Sublime Porte. He began to learn French when he was about thirty-five; in 1858, he spent six months on leave in Europe, improving his French.

Midhat was on the payroll of the Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances from the 1840s to 1861, but was often sent out of Istanbul as inspector or trouble-shooter on short-term missions that took him to Damascus, Konya, Kastamonu, Edirne, Bursa, Silistre, and Vidin. In 1861 he achieved the rank of vizier when appointed governor of the eyalet (province) of Niş, where he proved successful as a provincial administrator. In 1864 he was brought back to Istanbul to help the grand vizier, Mehmet Fuad Paşa, draft a law recasting provincial government in larger units (the vilayet). Midhat then became governor of the Tuna (Danube) vilayet, the first one created, a Bulgarian area with its capital at Rusçuk. Midhat's reputation as an effective provincial governor continued to grow as he built roads and bridges, curbed banditry, settled refugees, and started small factories. He established the first official provincial newspaper in the empire, and created agricultural credit cooperatives that evolved into modern Turkey's Agricultural Bank (Ziraat Bankasi). He tried to incorporate Bulgarians into the government councils, but he repressed Bulgarian nationalists.

In 1868 Midhat was appointed head of the new Council of State, created to draft laws, in Istanbul. But friction with Grand Vizier Mehmed Emin Ali Paşa led to his transfer in 1869 to the governorship of the Baghdad vilayet, together with command of the Sixth Army. Midhat used his civil and military powers with partial success to settle tribes, to collect taxes, and to institute conscription. Thereafter, Iraqi nomads declined in numbers, and cultivators increased. Midhat's application of the 1858 Ottoman land code furnished tapu (title) deeds to individual cultivators, but principally tribal shaykhs, city merchants, and former tax farmers took advantage of the law. In the city of Baghdad, Midhat introduced municipal improvements including street lighting and paving, a bridge over the Tigris, schools, and a horse-car tramway line to a suburb. Here also he established the first Iraqi newspaper, the Zawra, a semi-weekly in Turkish and Arabic. In the Baghdad vilayet, he established government schools - a technical school and two secondary schools, one preparing students for the military and one for the civil service, with free tuition. Disagreements with the grand vizier, Mahmud Nedim Paşa, caused Midhat's resignation in 1872.

Returning to Istanbul, Midhat persuaded Sultan Abdülaziz to appoint him grand vizier, on 31 July 1872. But political opponents, backed by the Khedive Ismaʿil of Egypt and the Russian ambassador, managed his dismissal on 18 October. He had been impolitic, too outspoken. During this time, Midhat had begun to think about a constitution for the empire. Such thoughts occupied him during the next three years, when he had two brief terms as minister of justice, one as governor of Salonika, and periods out of office. By the spring of 1876, Midhat was a key member of a group that sought to bring change to an Ottoman government perceived as ineffectual in the face of financial bankruptcy and of revolts in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Midhat and others used popular discontent to force the dismissal of Grand Vizier Mahmud Nedim, and then engineered the bloodless deposition of Sultan Abdülaziz on 30 May. Sultan Murat V succeeded. Midhat became president of the Council of State again, and began pressing for a constitution. When Murat V suffered a nervous breakdown, following the deposed Abdülaziz's suicide, Midhat and the ministers deposed Murat in turn for his younger brother. Abdülhamit II succeeded on 31 August 1876 after promising Midhat that he would speedily promulgate a constitution.

Midhat chaired a commission in the fall of 1876 that drafted a constitution providing for an elected chamber of deputies. The sultan accepted it only after his own powers were augmented to include the power of exiling. On 19 December Abdülhamit appointed Midhat grand vizier, and on 23 December promulgated the constitution. At the same time, representatives of the European great powers were meeting in Istanbul to devise reformed administration for the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Midhat's hopes that Europe would accept the constitution as the fundamental reform were deceived. An Ottoman consultative council, convened by Midhat, in turn rejected the powers' proposals. The stand-off eventually led to Russia's invasion in April 1877 and the Russian-Ottoman Wars of 1877/78.

Meanwhile, Midhat seemed to act less like a grand vizier responsible to the sultan, and more like a prime minister responsible to the nation. Abdülhamit, who feared Midhat also as a sultan-deposer, exiled him to Europe on 5 February 1877. In late 1878, Midhat was allowed to return, but not to Istanbul. He became governor of the Syrian vilayet. In Damascus he was almost as vigorous as in Rusçuk and Baghdad but was refused the broader military power he requested. Abdülhamit transferred Midhat in August 1880 to İzmir as governor, apparently to keep a closer eye on him. There Midhat was arrested on 18 May 1881, taken to Istanbul, tried on trumped-up charges of having participated in the murder of former Sultan Abdülaziz, and convicted. Abdülhamit converted his death sentence to life banishment. Midhat was transported to a prison in al-Ta'if in Arabia. On 8 May 1884 he was strangled by soldiers, presumably on Abdülhamit's order.

As administrator, especially as provincial governor, Midhat achieved much, although some of his innovations were superficial. He was known for his energy, his fairness, his honesty, his Ottoman patriotism, his secular-mindedness, and his zeal for borrowing Western techniques and institutions. Midhat was also known for his blunt speech and his haste to act, qualities that helped terminate his two short grand vizierates. But without him, there would have been no 1876 constitution.

Bibliography

Ali Haydar Midhat. The Life of Midhat Pasha (1903). New York: Arno Press, 1973.

Davison, Roderic H. Reform in the Ottoman Empire,1856 - 1876. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Devereux, Robert. The First Ottoman Constitutional Period: AStudy of the Midhat Constitution and Parliament. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963.

Midhat Pasha. "The Past, Present, and Future of Turkey." Nineteenth Century 3, no. 18 (June 1878): 981 - 993.

— RODERIC H. DAVISON