Alemdar Mustafa Pasha

Who was Alemdar Mustafa Pasha?

Alemdar Mustafa Pasha was an Ottoman military commander and a Grand Vizier born in Khotyn in then Ottoman land Ukraine in 1765. Both alemdar and bayraktar mean "the standard bearer" and were the names given to the same rank in the Janissary corps.

He was originally the ayan of Rusçuk, and one of the strongest ayans of his time. The deposition of the reformer Sultan Selim III in 1807, and his replacement with the reactionary Mustafa IV by the Janissaries and other opponents of reform, provoked Alemdar Mustafa Pasha to lead his army of Albanians and Bosnians to Constantinople in an attempt to reinstate Selim III and restore his reforms. After he arrived, Mustafa IV ordered Selim III and Mahmud II to be killed, he succeeded in getting the former killed. Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, seeing Selim III dead, showed fealty to Mahmud II, and he was instated the sultan, with Alemdar as his Grand Vizier. As vizier, Bayraktar purged the soldiers who had rebelled against Selim, removed conservatives from governmental positions and replaced them with men sympathetic to reform.