Arshad al-Umari

Who was Arshad al-Umari?

Arshad Pasha al-Umari was born in Mosul, Iraq on April 8, 1888, when his father was Mayor of Mosul. He obtained his high school degree in 1904 when he was 16 years old. After finishing high school at Mosul he left for Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to complete his studies. He did the trip by horses via Aleppo to the port of Alexandretta on the Mediterranean Sea. Such a trip in those days took about 40 days. From Alexandretta he took the steamer to Istanbul where he was admitted to the Architectural Division of the Royal Engineering College. The teaching staff of the college were professors from Germany, Belgium and Austria.

He graduated as an architect in 1908 when he was 21 years old, and was appointed in the Architectural Division of the Municipality of Istanbul. When World War I broke out in 1914 he was conscripted as an engineer in the Ministry of Defense and when the war was over in 1918 he returned to the Municipality of Istanbul as Chief Engineer when Jamil Pasha Topuslu was Lord Mayor of Istanbul. He married Rafi'a Khanim, the younger sister of Jamil Pasha the Lord Mayor of Istanbul.