Mehmed Fuad Pasha

Mehmed Fuad Pasha
Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire
Personal details
Born	1814 Constantinople (now Istanbul), Ottoman Empire
Died	February 12, 1869 (aged 55) Nice, Second French Empire

Mehmed Fuad Pasha (1814 – February 12, 1869), sometimes known as Keçecizade Mehmed Fuad Pasha and commonly known as Fuad Pasha, was an Ottoman administrator and statesman, who is known for his prominent role in the Tanzimat reforms of the mid-19th-century Ottoman Empire, as well as his leadership during the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war in Syria. He represented a modern Ottoman era, given his openness to European-style modernization as well as the reforms he helped to enact.

Among other posts, he served as Grand Vizier, the equivalent of Prime Minister, on two occasions between 1861 and 1866. He is often regarded, along with Mehmed Emin Âli Pasha, as one of the most influential Ottoman statesmen, who favoured a French-inspired civil code for the newly established civil courts in 1868.^[1]

Fuad Pasha was a fervent supporter of keeping the empire an absolute monarchy, rejecting the ideas of being legally bounded or restricted by a constitution or legislature. He often clashed with liberal intellectuals like Namık Kemal, Ziya Pasha and İbrahim Şinasi.^[2]