Said Halim Pasha

Mehmed Said Halim Pasha (19 February 1864 – 5 December 1921) was an Ottoman statesman and a leading thinker of the Islamist current, and a grandson of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of modern Egypt. ^{1 2}

He was Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 12 June 1913 to 3 February 1917, holding the foreign ministry as well in his first years — a grand vizier more in name than in power, since real authority lay with the Committee of Union and Progress and its triumvirate of Talaat, Enver and Cemal. ^{1 3}

He signed the Ottoman–German alliance at his own mansion in 1914 although he opposed entering the war, and he signed the Armenian deportation orders; after the war he was tried, exiled to Malta and acquitted, and was then assassinated in Rome by a gunman of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. ^{3 2}

He was born at the Shubra Palace in Cairo to Prince Muhammad Abd al-Halim Pasha, one of the sons of Muhammad Ali Pasha; he was of Albanian origin, and in 1870 he and his family settled in Istanbul. ^{3 2}

He was educated by private teachers and learned Arabic, Persian, English and French as a boy, then studied political science in Switzerland for five years. ^{3 2}

In 1890 or 1895 he married Emine İnci Tosun, daughter of Mehmed Tosun Pasha; in the late 1890s the Prince Said Halim Pasha Palace in downtown Cairo was built for him by the Italian architect Antonio Lasciac. ³

On 21 May 1888 he was appointed to the Council of State with the civil rank of Pasha, and in 1900 he became Beylerbeyi of Rumeli, standing in the favour of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. ^{3 2}

Jealous courtiers denounced him to the Sultan for keeping dangerous papers and weapons at his Yeniköy mansion; he withdrew to his mansion, never formally dismissed, and in 1903 he was exiled from the capital for his relations with the Young Turks, going first to Egypt and then to Europe, where he gave the Committee of Union and Progress material and intellectual support and became its inspector in 1906. ^{3 2}

After the 1908 revolution he returned to Istanbul, chaired the Yeniköy municipality and became second chief of the general municipal association, joined the Ottoman Senate on 14 December 1908, served as President of the Council of State from January to July 1912, and was sent to Lausanne to negotiate an end to the Italo-Turkish War, returning when the cabinet fell. ^{3 2}

He was then elected General Secretary of the CUP, and in January 1913 became President of the Council of State a second time in Mahmud Şevket Pasha's cabinet, and Foreign Minister three days later. ^{3 2}

After the assassination of Mahmud Şevket Pasha on 11 June 1913 he was given the rank of vizier and made acting grand vizier, and the next day, 12 June 1913, Grand Vizier, keeping the foreign ministry. ^{3 2}

He was a compromise candidate for the CUP: more conservative and Islamist than the central committee wanted, but acceptable to it for the prestige of his ancestry and his lack of a political power base. ^{3 4}

In September 1913 Sultan Mehmed V honoured him with the Order of Distinction for the peace with Bulgaria, which kept Edirne and fixed the border on the Maritsa river. ^{3 2}

The Ottoman–German alliance was signed in his Yeniköy mansion with Ambassador Wangenheim on 2 August 1914. ^{3 2}

The Empire entered the war through the fleet's attack on Russian ports, made without his approval, as the TDV encyclopedia states; he tried to resign, and it is claimed Sultan Reşad asked him to stay as a man he trusted — after which his grand vizierate became largely nominal. ^{2 3}

When Britain annexed Egypt in 1914 he claimed the throne of Egypt on the basis of the 1866 firman that had changed the Egyptian succession law. ^{3 4}

He lost the foreign ministry to Halil Menteşe on 15 October 1915, and remained Grand Vizier until he resigned on 3 February 1917, after his rift with Talaat Pasha and the committee widened; Talaat succeeded him. ^{2 3}

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

During the Armenian genocide, Said Halim signed the deportation orders for the Armenian population, according to the English article; the Armenian Patriarch Zaven I appealed to him to stop the terror against the Armenians, and he replied that reports of arrests and deportations were greatly exaggerated; the Patriarch himself was later deported. ³

The English article says he is "said to be" one of the perpetrators of the genocide, yet that his actual involvement is unsure, because he held little real power and was kept in the dark by the CUP central committee; it also quotes Eşref Kuşçubaşı, who was involved in planning the Armenian death marches, that Said Halim knew nothing of the genocide. ³

After the war he was accused of treason in the Ottoman courts martial for his role in the deportations and for signing the secret alliance with Germany, and exiled to Malta on 28–29 May 1919; no evidence of a crime being found, he was released on 29 April 1921. ^{3 2}

His request to return to Istanbul was refused and he settled in Rome, where on 5 December 1921 Arshavir Shirakian, an agent of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, assassinated him as part of Operation Nemesis, the campaign against those held responsible for the genocide; the English article and the Turkish article's narrative give 6 December, and the museum follows the TDV encyclopedia and Wikidata. ^{2 3 1}

His body was brought to Istanbul and buried beside his father in the garden of the tomb of Mahmud II in January 1922. ^{1 2}

He wrote most of his works under the nom de plume "Mehmed" and contributed frequently to Sebîlürreşâd, the pro-CUP Islamist journal. ³

The TDV encyclopedia lists eight treatises: Ta'assup ("Fanaticism", book form 1917), Mukallidliklerimiz ("Our Imitations", 1911), Meşrutiyet ("Constitutionalism", 1911), Buhrân-ı İçtimaîmiz ("Our Social Crisis", 1916), Buhrân-ı Fikrîmiz ("Our Intellectual Crisis", 1917/1919), İnhitât-ı İslâm Hakkında bir Tecrübe-i Kalemiyye ("An Essay on the Decline of Islam", 1918), İslamlaşmak ("Islamisation", 1918), and İslâm'da Teşkîlât-ı Siyâsiyye ("Political Organisation in Islam", 1921); the first seven were collected in 1919 as Buhranlarımız ("Our Crises"). ^{2 3}

In İslamlaşmak he argued, as the TDV entry summarises, that Islam is a whole comprising belief, morality, society and politics; the treatise was translated from his French by Mehmed Âkif Ersoy and serialised in Sebîlürreşâd from November 1918. ²

In his social analysis, as the English article presents it, he held that (Sunni) Islam's lack of clergy and aristocracy made Islamic civilisation in principle more egalitarian than the West, diagnosed decline in the imitation of Western institutions and in society's abandonment of its religion and culture, and argued that recovery begins with morality and virtue before science. ^{3 2}

The TDV encyclopedia describes him as one of the most important idea-leaders of the Islamism current, an intellectual who knew Western civilisation and social life at close quarters yet remained bound to his own culture and civilisation. ²

This section reports what the sources record, without a verdict from the museum.

Wikidata records his religion as Islam, with no school; none of the sources used names a madhhab for him. His description as a conservative Islamist thinker names an intellectual and political current, not a school attestation, so his record keeps the school unclassified. ^{5 2}

• English Wikipedia article on Said Halim Pasha (revision 1370289223); Arabic Wikipedia article (revision 76474106); Turkish Wikipedia article (revision 38092722); Wikidata item Q2034890; TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi entry "Said Halim Pasha" by M. Hanefi Bostan (2008; web edition updated 17 February 2023).
• The sources differ on his birth: 19 February 1864 in the Turkish article, the TDV encyclopedia and Wikidata (followed here), against 1865 variants in the English article, 1863 in the Arabic article, and the (1865–1921) of Şeyhun's biography title. On his death: 5 December 1921 (followed) against 6 December in the English lead and the Turkish narrative. The Arabic article alone ends his grand vizierate in 1916, against 3 February 1917 in the other sources.