Everything about Gedik Ahmed Pasha totally explained
Gedik Ahmet Pasha was a distinguished
Ottoman grand vizier as well as an army and navy commander during the reigns of sultans
Mehmed the Conqueror and
Beyazid II.
His background remains largely unknown. Some sources claim that he was of
Albanian descent, but this theory is almost exclusively based on his refusal to participate in a campaign to
İşkodra (
Shkodër) on one occasion. He undertook virtually all of his construction enterprises in
Anatolia, and their preferences in this domain usually give a clue on the respective origins of Ottoman statesmen.
Leading the Ottoman Army, he defeated the last
principality resisting Ottoman expansion in Anatolia, the
Karamanids. The Karamanids had been the strongest principality in Anatolia for nearly 200 years, even stronger than the Ottomans in the latter's beginning. They effectively succeeded the
Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate in the amount of possessions they held, among them the city of Konya, the former Selçuk capital. In this sense, Gedik Ahmet Pasha's victory against the Karamanids in 1471, conquering their territory as well as the Mediterranean coastal region around
Ermenek,
Mennan and
Silifke, proved crucial for the future of the
Ottomans.
Gedik Ahmet Pasha also fought against Venetians in the Mediterranean and was dispatched in 1475 by the Sultan to aid the
Crimean Khanate against
Genoese forces. In
Crimea, he conquered
Caffa,
Soldaia,
Cembalo and other Genoese castles as well as the
Principality of Theodoro with its capital
Mangup and the coastal regions of Crimea. He rescued the Khan of Crimea,
Meñli I Giray, from Genoese forces. As a result of this campaign,
Crimea and
Circassia entered into the Ottoman sphere of influence.
In 1479, in a daring move, Sultan Mehmet II ordered him to lead the Ottoman Navy in the Mediterranean Sea as part of the war against
Naples and
Milan. During his campaign, Gedik Ahmet Pasha conquered the islands of
Santa Maura (Lefkada),
Kefalonia and
Zante (Zakynthos). Since he'd conquered
Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II saw himself as the inheritor of the
Roman Empire and seriously considered the conquest of Italy to reunite Roman lands under his dynasty. As part of this plan, Gedik Ahmet Pasha was sent with a naval force to the heel of the
Italian peninsula.
After a failed attempt to conquer
Rhodes from the
Knights of St. John he took the harbor city
Otranto in 1480. The population was massacred. But due to lack of food, he'd to return with most of his troops to
Albania in the same year, planning to continue the campaign in 1481.
The death of
Mehmed II prevented this. Instead he sided with
Beyazid II in the struggle for who would succeed the Sultan. However Beyazid II didn't fully trust Gedik Ahmet Pasha and had him imprisoned and later killed on
November 18 1482 at
Adrianople.
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