Recep Pasha

Recep Pasha (also transliterated in the past as Rajab Pasha or Ragab Pasha or Receb Pasha; died 1726) was an Ottoman statesman.

Recep Pasha became a vizier in September 1707 and served as the Ottoman governor of Diyarbekir Eyalet (1707–10, 1725), Van Eyalet (1710–11), Sivas Eyalet (1711–12, 1726), Trabzon Eyalet (1712–13, 1724–25), Sanjak of Teke (1713–14), Sanjak of Jerusalem (1714–16), Damascus Eyalet (1716, 1718), Aleppo Eyalet (1719–1720, 1721–24), Egypt Eyalet (1720–21), and Tbilisi (1724).^[1][2]

He was of either Albanian^[1] or Bosnian^[3] origin.

Governorship of Egypt

According to al-Jabarti, upon arrival in Egypt as governor, Recep Pasha was ordered by the sultan Ahmed III to audit the accounts of his predecessor, Dellak Ali Pasha, and then kill him, as well as plan the assassination of a local bey named Ismail Bey ibn Iwaz and his partisans.^[4] Recep Pasha indeed proceeded to audit Dellak Ali Pasha and had him executed by decapitation, allegedly sending his skinned head to the sultan in Constantinople.^[5] Ali Pasha's body was buried in the City of the Dead necropolis, reportedly under the name "Ali Pasha al-Mazlum" (Ali Pasha the Oppressed).^[5]

Next, Recep Pasha asked a man named Mehmed Çerkes how to go about assassinating ibn Iwaz and his partisans. After hammering out a plan, which involved getting ibn Iwaz bey to a remote location and sending men to kill him there, the two executed it but failed to kill ibn Iwaz. Soon afterwards, Recep Pasha was dismissed from the governorship,^[6] being reappointed as governor of Aleppo.

See also

• List of Ottoman governors of Egypt
• List of Ottoman governors of Damascus

References

1. Mehmet Süreyya (1996) [1890], Nuri Akbayar; Seyit A. Kahraman, eds., Sicill-i Osmanî (in Turkish), Beşiktaş, Istanbul: Türkiye Kültür Bakanlığı and Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, pp. 1366–1367
2. 'Abd al-Rahman Jabarti; Thomas Philipp; Moshe Perlmann (1994). Abd Al-Rahmann Al-Jabarti's History of Egypt 1. Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart. p. 90.
3. Yılmaz Öztuna (1994). Büyük Osmanlı Tarihi: Osmanlı Devleti'nin siyasî, medenî, kültür, teşkilât ve san'at tarihi (in Turkish) 10. Ötüken Neşriyat A.S. pp. 412–416. ISBN 975-437-141-5.
4. 'Abd al-Rahman Jabarti; Thomas Philipp; Moshe Perlmann (1994). Abd Al-Rahmann Al-Jabarti's History of Egypt 1. Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart. pp. 90–91.
5. 'Abd al-Rahman Jabarti; Thomas Philipp; Moshe Perlmann (1994). Abd Al-Rahmann Al-Jabarti's History of Egypt 1. Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart. p. 91.
6. 'Abd al-Rahman Jabarti; Thomas Philipp; Moshe Perlmann (1994). Abd Al-Rahmann Al-Jabarti's History of Egypt 1. Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart. pp. 91–92.