Damad Ferid Pasha

Who was Damad Ferid Pasha?

Damat Ferid Pasha was an Ottoman statesman who held the office of grand vizier during two periods under the reign of the last Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI Vahdeddin, the first time between March 4, 1919 and October 2, 1919 and the second time between April 5, 1920 and October 21, 1920. Officially, he has been brought to the office a total of five times, since his cabinets were recurrently dismissed under various pressures and he had to present new ones.

He was born in 1853 in Istanbul, son of İzzet Efendić, a member of the Ottoman Council of State and Governor of Beirut and Sidon in 1857, who was born in the village of Potoci near Pljevlja, in today's Montenegro. In 1879, Ferid was enrolled at the Schools of Islamic charities in Sidon. He served several positions in Ottoman administration before he entered the foreign office of the Ottoman Empire and was assigned to different posts at embassies in Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and London. He married a daughter of Abdülmecid I, Mediha Sultan, which earned him the title of "Damat". Like his father, he became a member of the Şûrâ-yı Devlet in 1884 and earned the title of vizier soon afterwards. Refused the post of ambassador in London by the sultan Abdülhamid II, he resigned from public service and returned only after two decades, in 1908, as a member of the Senate of the Ottoman Parliament.