The life of Midhat Pasha; a record of his services, political reforms, banishment, and judicial murder

by Ali Haydar Mithat

After the late exploits of these committees in Bulgaria, Midhat had organised a system of surveillance at the headquarters of these committees, and information having reached him that emissaries had been despatched from Galatz to Belgrade in order to organise a new raid into Bulgaria, he ordered these emissaries to be closely watched and followed in all their movements. On their embarkation at Rustchuk, on board the Austrian vessel Germania, he sent photographs of them to the Austrian Consul, with a request that the Ottoman authorities should be allowed to examine the passports of the passengers. Accompanied by an Austrian Consular Agent the Turkish authorities accordingly proceeded on board, where they were immediately received by shots from revolvers on the part of the two suspected agents, who had barricaded themselves in the saloon of the vessel, and had determined to resist arrest. After an indescribable scene of confusion among the panic‐stricken passengers aboard, the Turkish gendarmerie, acting with the consent of the Consul, succeeded in effecting the capture of the agents, who were both mortally wounded in the encounter.

The capture of these revolutionary agents made a great noise in Europe. General Ignatieff at Constantinople, seized on the circumstance as a pretext to demand the recall of Midhat, accompanying the Servian Agent to the Palace in the audience accorded to the latter, whose complaints were founded on the fact that one of the captured agents was a Servian. Midhat’s influence, however, was still in the ascendant, and these intrigues remained for a time without effect.

Other means failing, a desperate and criminal attempt was now made to get rid of this too energetic Pasha. Two attempts to assassinate him followed in quick succession, the first at Rustchuk, where the overseer of the training school fired a shot, fortunately without effect, on the Pasha as he was walking in the school enclosure; and the other by a Servian, who attempted to enter his service with the view to assassinating him, and who made a full confession seriously compromising two important personages in Servia. He was sent to Constantinople, tried, and condemned to penal servitude for life, in spite of the strenuous efforts of General Ignatieff in his favour.

Not very long after these stirring events (1868) Midhat was summoned to Constantinople, where he was placed at the head of the Council of State, and he was succeeded in the governorship of the province, for which he had done so much, by Sabri Pasha, the deputy‐governor of Nish.

As President of the Council, Midhat marked his short tenure of that office by the institution of a school of Arts and Sciences at Sultan Ahmed, in Stamboul, and by the establishment of a bank for loans, with the special purpose of relieving small employers from the tyranny of usurers. This bank (Emniet Sandighie) still exists. It soon, however, became obvious to Midhat that his system of usefulness in his new ministerial position was strictly limited; his authority in matters pertaining to his own office was constantly overruled on important matters, especially those concerning finance, by the Grand Vizier, acting on the authority of the Sultan, and this incompatibility of views culminated on the question of Turkish railways, whereupon Midhat insisted on resigning. Just at this time Nakieddine Pasha was dismissed from the governorship of the province of Bagdad, and Midhat was appointed Vali of Bagdad (1869).

Hardly had the new Vali reached his post, when he found himself confronted with some difficult problems of quite a different order from those he had dealt with on the Danube, but of a not less serious description. The question of recruiting was the most urgent, and called for immediate solution. The Arab tribes, turbulent and independent by nature, had always shown themselves refractory to enlistment, and were now in open revolt against its enforcement. One of the difficulties of the situation consisted in the fact that the military authority in the province was separated from the civil, and was in the hands of the commander of the 6th Army Corps, Samih Pasha, whereas the situation required all authority, military as well as civil, to be concentrated in the hands of a single strong central authority. Midhat did not hesitate at such a crisis to assume the full responsibility of this concentration, and took immediate military steps to suppress the insurrection by force. He ordered the city of Bagdad to be surrounded by cavalry, and sent infantry and artillery to protect the foreign Mission Houses and the non‐Mussulman quarters from the fanaticism of the Arabs. He at the same time ordered the bridge over the Tigris to be cut, so as to prevent intercommunication among the rebels; and when these energetic measures had fairly intimidated the Arabs, he offered them a general amnesty on condition of immediate surrender. These conditions were now accepted, and the insurrection suddenly collapsed, and no further resistance was offered to the recruiting. The promptitude with which this dangerous rebellion was suppressed was appreciated by the Porte, and a telegram was received from Constantinople approving the measures he had taken, and placing officially the supreme command of the 6th Army Corps in his hands.

The next serious difficulty was connected with the levying of taxes. This had always been a difficult operation among the nomad tribes, of which the population in a great measure consisted, and was the cause of continual disputes and insurrections. Matters had, however, now reached a crisis, for a colonel at the head of a battalion of regulars sent to Divanie and Dogara to collect the tithes was surrounded by tribesmen to the number of ten thousand men, and himself killed and his troops killed or dispersed. The new Vali seized at once the seriousness of the situation, for the encouragement which this success afforded the tribesmen threatened to give rise to a general insurrection of all the surrounding nomads.

It was necessary to avenge the defeat at once and to make a signal example of the tribesmen concerned. Midhat accordingly ordered a large force, consisting of seven battalions of infantry, four thousand cavalry, with a complement of artillery, to proceed directly to Dogara, under the command of Samih Pasha, whilst with three thousand chosen troops he hastened himself to the disaffected district. A pitched battle now took place between the Arabs and the troops, which resulted in the complete defeat of the former and the capture of their chief. A not unusual incident accompanied the close of the battle. A Shiite Sheik, Abdul Kerim, was marching at the head of a considerable force of tribesmen from the Shiite districts of Urfa and Aleppo to join the rebels, when he received the news of their defeat. Pretending that he was on the road to offer his services to the Government, he joined his forces to those of the Vali, and accompanied the victorious troops on their entry into Bagdad. A military tribunal was at once instituted to try the rebels; the rebel chiefs were condemned and executed, but the tribesmen, on the promise of future good behaviour, were released.

Midhat Pasha clearly discerned that if an end was to be put to these chronic troubles, and these nomad tribes were to be reduced to anything like permanent order, it was not sufficient to defeat them in battle, and that a radical change had to be brought about in their general status, and especially the conditions of land tenure in the country. The Arab cultivator, for the most part, held his lands from the State on the condition of giving three‐fourths of the produce to the State, retaining one‐fourth for himself. Such a system naturally discouraged agriculture and rendered all improvements in cultivation impossible. The consequence was that, for the most part, the Arab shunned the soil, preferring predatory to industrial modes of gaining his living. Midhat determined to attach him to the soil by giving him rights of proprietorship, and divided large tracts of land into plots, which were offered for sale on easy and advantageous terms, special provision being made against accumulation of plots into single hands. The success of this policy was remarkable, and whereas the revenues of the State increased, the turbulence of the tribesmen, and the risings which had become chronic, greatly diminished.

The agricultural prosperity that resulted from these measures stimulated other branches of industry and rendered it necessary to provide outlets for the newly created surplus of the country. The first step in this direction was to render navigable the Tigris and Euphrates, the great arteries of the country, and to improve or create the means of communication between their two banks, and between the different towns situated along their course. The only service of the kind that existed consisted of the boats of an English company plying between Bagdad and Bussora. Midhat determined to start a service of Turkish boats to supply adequately the needs now felt, in the same way that he had formerly done on the Danube when he was Governor of Bulgaria. He ordered the existing vessels to be repaired, new vessels of a larger tonnage to be constructed, and coal dépôts to be formed at Mascat, Aden, Bender and Bushire; and now, for the first time in history, steamers under the Ottoman flag were to be seen periodically in the Suez Canal, on their way to Constantinople. The Babel, one of these vessels, which had originally cost £T88,000 for construction, was bought for the sum of £T33,000 from a bankrupt company, and on its very first voyage between Constantinople and Bussora, which coincided with the time of the pilgrimages, it cleared £T35,000—more than sufficient to cover its purchase price. A net surplus of £T1000 a month resulted from this improved river navigation, and Midhat now determined on extensive dredging works, with a view to extending the navigation northwards and adapting it to vessels of a larger tonnage. Chakir Bey (afterwards Marshal and Ambassador to St Petersburg, and one of Midhat’s faithful partisans) was despatched north with a company of engineers, and reported favourably on the enterprise. Thereupon dredging and other engineering works were immediately ordered to be undertaken.