The life of Ahmed Djevdet Pasha and his political activities (1823-1895)

This dissertation is a biography work which focuses on the civil duties and political career of Ahmed Djevdet Pasha, who is known as historian, jurist and scholar. At the same time, it is an effort to object to the fact that Pasha's writings about his life, political environment and events are mostly accepted without criticism. Pasha's activities in the provincial and central bureaucracy has been presented by a critical method comparing his own writings and archival documents, periodicals, memoirs and literature. It has also been sought answer to the question of how a half-century civil service shapes Pasha. It has been determined by concrete examples that Pasha who is often considered as a conservative-reformist Sunni Muslim, could use secular tools in the context of place and time for the interests of the state, distort the concepts for his purposes, construct events in a teleological way according to his altered personal relationships and take place in the middle of the matters that he tried to isolate himself from. In this context, it has been concluded that the source value of what told in Tezâkir and Ma'rûzât of the Pasha, who is considered an indisputable authority, should be questioned and used with caution.