Introduction
Ishak Pasha (Turkish: İshak Paşa; fl. 1444 – died 30 January 1487) was an Ottoman general, statesman, and later Grand Vizier.
Origin
Jean-Claude Faveyrial reveals that Ishak Pasha was Albanian. Turkish orientalist Halil Inalcik (1916–2016) believed that Ishak Pasha was created by the confusion between several Ottoman Ishak Pashas (particularly Ishak bin Abdullah and Ishak bin Ibrahim) and Ishak Bey, but according to him Ishak Pasha was Albanian . According to German orientalist Franz Babinger (1891–1967) he was a convert of Greek origin.
Career
In circa 1451 he was appointed as the beylerbey (provincial governor) of Anatolia; the same year, the newly ascended Sultan Mehmet II ("the Conqueror") forced him to marry his father Murad II's widow Sultan Hatun.
His first term as a Grand Vizier was during the reign of Mehmed II. During this term, he transferred Oghuz Turk people from their Anatolian city of Aksaray to newly conquered Constantinople in order to populate the city, which had lost a portion of its former population prior to the 1453 conquest. The quarter of the city where the migrants were settled is now called Aksaray.
His second term was during the reign of Beyazıt II. He died on 30 January 1487 in Thessaloniki.
In popular culture
- Ishak Pasha is referenced in the 2011 video game Assassin's Creed: Revelations, as the leader of the Assassin Brotherhood in the Ottoman Empire, in which his armor was hidden underneath the Hagia Sophia, and was later recovered by the protagonist Ezio Auditore da Firenze by recollecting his Memoir Pages.
- In 1951 film, İstanbul'un Fethi, Alev Elmas played Ishak Pasha.
- Ishak Pasha is played by Yılmaz Babatürk in 2012 film Fetih 1453.
- Mentioned together with Mehmet II in the song The Fall Of Constantinopel by the neofolk band H.E.R.R.