He happened to live in an era when the peoples subject to the Ottomans more and more and more and more successfully took up arms. Ahmed Khurshid Pasha fought these uprisings, erecting supports for the crumbling empire, such as the Chele-Kul skull tower.
Neither the place nor the date of birth of Khurshid Pasha is known. In one of the Ottoman chronicles, it is reported that he came from Georgia. Perhaps a young man, his son or a relative, was sent to Istanbul as a hostage by some middle-class Georgian ruler. Although it is more likely that it was a "blood tribute", when Christian boys were taken from their parents and enrolled in the Janissaries, raising them to be fanatical adherents of Islam. One way or another, he made an excellent janissary career.
Fiasco in Egypt
In 1802, Khurshid received a responsible appointment as bey (ruler) of the largest Egyptian city of Alexandria. And he got caught like chickens. From the country, with the help of the British, the remains of the French expeditionary force had just been expelled. But the leaders of the Mamelukes, Osman Bardisi and Mohammed Elfi, did not want to reckon with the governor Mohammed Khosroi sent from Istanbul. The outcome of the confrontation largely depended on the position of Muhammad Ali - the commander of the four thousandth Albanian corps sent to Egypt back in 1799.
Ali initially supported the Mamelukes by placing Khosroy under arrest. The new Ottoman governor Ali Jezairli was killed by his own subordinates. Khurshid hid in Alexandria, and then made something like an alliance with Muhammad Ali. Moreover, one of his contemporaries spoke in the spirit that, they say, it was not difficult for them to agree - both are Albanians.
However, regardless of whether Khurshid was a Georgian or an Albanian, the alliance was short-lived. In March 1804, the sultan appointed Khurshid the ruler of all Egypt, but he could not pacify the Mamelukes. But Muhammad Ali repulsed their attempt to capture Cairo, gaining popularity among the townspeople, and then launched an offensive into Upper Egypt. Meanwhile, Khurshid, who had entered Cairo, imposed extortionate taxes on the townspeople, which led to an uprising.
Muhammad Ali returned to Cairo and was elected ruler at a meeting of local sheikhs. Khurshid locked himself up with his loyal units in the city citadel, but was forced to surrender his post after the appropriate decision of the Sultan.
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In Egypt, however, he remained and undertook to intrigue against the opponent, playing on his contradictions with the Mamelukes and using the secret support of the British. Everything was finally decided in 1807, when both Mameluk leaders somehow suddenly died, and Muhammad Ali defeated the 5,000th British corps. Realizing that there was nothing to catch in Egypt, Khurshid in March 1809 accepted a new appointment and went to suppress the uprising in Serbia.
Pyrrhic victory
Initially, the Serbian rebels fought only against the self-styled janissary rulers - dachyas, acting with the blessing and assistance of the Sultan himself.
However, in 1806, the Russian-Turkish war began, and the thousandth Cossack detachment, breaking through to Serbia, took part in the hostilities. The Cossacks were soon recalled, but the hope for help from the Orthodox Russian Empire made the rebels more radical in their demands. In 1808, their leader Karageorgy (George the Black) declared himself the supreme ruler of the country and decided to launch an offensive beyond the former Belgrade Pashalyk - to Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia.
The main events took place in the vicinity of the city of Niš, where the 16,000-strong Serbian group was concentrated. In the absence of Karageorgy, disputes broke out between the rebel leaders. The army was divided into six groups. Each detachment built a separate earthen fortification - a trench - and sat down in a deep defense.
Khurshid had an army of 30-35 thousand at his disposal, and he decided to attack the largest fortification - on Mount Chegar, protected by the detachment of Stefan Sinjelich. From the Nish bishop, the defenders knew both the exact date of the attack (May 31, 1809) and the place of the main attack. But due to internal squabbles, Sinjelich and his subordinates had to fight virtually alone.
The Turks made it to the moat that girded the trench five times, but retreated under the deadly fire of the Serbs. They managed to break through only when the defenders ran out of bullets. When the enemy was inside the fortification, Sinjelic blew up barrels of gunpowder. The garrisons of the neighboring trenches fled.
Having lost up to 10 thousand people, Khurshid put his army in order for a whole week. The Serbs lost about four thousand. Khurshid, of course, understood that his victory was Pyrrhic, but he tried to obscure this fact and instill fear in the rebels.
The bodies on the battlefield were beheaded, skinned, stuffed with straw, and sent to Istanbul. The skulls were mounted into the walls of the Chele-Kula tower, which was built as an edification to potential rebels. But the effect of intimidation was weaker than the effect of anger. The fight continued.
Initially, there were 952 skulls in the tower, but by the time Chele-Kulu was declared a cultural monument in 1979, there were only 58 of them left. According to legend, there is also a skull of the brave Sinjelich among them, although in case he did shoot at the powder store, it had to be torn apart.
A worthy "reward"
One of the points of the Bucharest Peace concluded between Russia and Turkey in 1812 spoke of the Serbs' right to autonomy. It was ordered to determine the size of this autonomy to Khurshid, who received the post of Grand Vizier, that is, in fact, the head of government. But he, taking advantage of the fact that Russia was busy with the war with Napoleon, pulled all the available forces and suddenly broke the truce, walking across Serbia with fire and sword.
The recalcitrant villages were cut out to the root. But those who bowed their heads before the Sultan received forgiveness. Khurshid returned to Istanbul as a triumphant. But he did not triumph for long. In the fall of 1814, an uprising broke out in Pozhegskaya Nakhia, led by Hadji-Prodan. He was quickly suppressed. Hegumen Paisiy and 36 more people were impaled, and 115 more people were taken to Belgrade and beheaded in front of Khurshid.
The European powers celebrated the victory over Napoleon and simply did not pay attention to it. However, the new uprising that engulfed the whole of Serbia in the spring of 1815 was hard to miss. By force and dexterous diplomacy, its leader Milos Obrenovic bargained for autonomy for his compatriots. And Khurshid lost the position of vizier and went as governor to Bosnia - a problematic region next to Serbia, extremely motley in ethnic composition.
A significant part of it, together with neighboring Albania, was controlled by Ali Pasha Tepelensky, who had long spat on the sultan and ruled like an autocratic monarch. The ex-vizier gathered an army and in 1820 laid siege to the separatist capital Ioannina. Before the campaign, Khurshid also received the governorship in the Peloponnese, which made it easier for him to obtain additional resources from Greece.
But Greece had also become a problem by that time. While Khurshid was besieging Ioannina, the Greeks also rose in revolt and laid siege to the Turkish stronghold in the Peloponnese - Tripolitsa. The ex-vizier did not rush to save his treasury and harem and continued operations against Ali Pasha until his surrender on February 1, 1822. The 80-year-old rebel, the Turks promised to save his life. But they did not keep their word - they executed, and sent the head to the Sultan.
Tripolitsa fell back in September 1821. The winners massacred about 30 thousand Muslims and 5 thousand Jews. But Khurshid's harem was not touched, apparently, having decided to save it for exchange.
Meanwhile, the position of the ex-vizier himself was shaken. The sultan hoped that in addition to the head of Ali Pasha, the treasury seized from the rebel would be sent to him - about 500 million piastres. But Khurshid sent only 40 million - they say, there was no more. Then Mahmed Dramali Pasha was appointed commander of the army sent against the Greeks, and Khurshid was ordered to be in his arms.
In July 1822, at Dervenakia, the 30,000-strong Ottoman army was defeated by the 20,000-strong Greek army. There was no one to save the situation, and the sultan again endowed the highly experienced dignitary with special powers. But already on November 30, 1822, Khurshid committed suicide, taking, according to the official version, poison. It is not clear what prompted him to do this. Perhaps it was a disguised murder, and not carried out by order of the Sultan, but by the enemies of the ex-vizier, who did not get him in Istanbul, but were able to get him in Greece.
The fact is that hardly anyone cried especially about this.
Dmitry MITYURIN