Iskander Pasha

The origin is not known for certain, it may have come from a family of wealthy landowners. Born in the Rumeliyskiy Beylebeyvstvo . He was a Serb or a Bosnian by origin.

He began the service under the leadership of Tiryaka Hassan Pasha, who contributed to the career of Iskander Pasha. In 1601 he distinguished himself in the defense of the Kanizh fortress.

In 1612 he was appointed the pasha of the Kanizhsky Eylet . In 1613, he was appointed as a pasha until the Bosnian Eylet . At this time, he supported Gabor Betlen , who arrived in Istanbul . With the help of troops, Iskander Pasha Betlen defeated the Transylvanian ruler Gabor Batoria, placing him in 1614 at the head of Transylvania .

In 1614, the Pasha of the Eger Eylet was translated. In 1616 he became Bosnian Pasha. Soon he was appointed a serdar in Moldova , where, on the orders of the Sultan, he opposed the sovereign of the Grave of Alexander , who was too close to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth . At the battle of Sasov Rog, the Moldovan-Polish army defeated, and then captured the Grave with his family. Then he sent them to Istanbul, and set the ruler of Moldova to Radu Michn , who had previously been the ruler of Wallachia.

In 1616 he was appointed Pasha of the Temeshvar Eylet . In 1617, at the head of the army, with the support of Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldova, he made a demonstration campaign in the direction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, besieging the Rashkov fortress on the Dniester. Crown hetman Stanislav Zholkevsky opposed Iskander Pasha, forcing him to retreat. At the same time, the actions of the Ottoman Pasha led to the conclusion of an agreement between King Sigismund III and the Sultan, according to which the Commonwealth refused to intervene in the affairs of the Ottomans dependent principalities on the Danube. Also, the king undertook to prevent the attack of the Zaporozhye Cossacks on Ottoman lands. In the same year, he became a Pasha of Silistra’s Eylet .

He tried in every possible way to provoke a war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, sending exaggerated reports of the Cossack flotillas entering the Black Sea. In 1620 he led the Ottoman troops, which moved to Moldova. Here he was joined by the Crimean Tatar horsemen headed by the kalga Shagin-Gerai, Transylvanians led by Gabor Batore, bujaks and Volokhs. In the battle of Tsetsora of the same year, he defeated Stanislav Zholkevsky , the great crown hetman of the Commonwealth. After that, the Tatars ravaged a significant part of Galicia and Pokuttya , capturing 100 thousand people of barren .

He did not take part in the campaign of Sultan Osman II against the Commonwealth, providing the rear supply of the army. In November 1620 or 1621, Iskander Pasha died in Akkerman at the hands of his servants.

• Stanford Jay Shaw &: Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Cambridge University Press, 1977, ISBN 9780521291637 .
• Biščević Vedad, “Bosanski namjesnici Osmanskog doba (1463-1878)”, Sarajevo, 2006.
• İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi Cilt III Syf 54-59
• İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi Cilt III Syf 57
• History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey by Ezel Kural Shaw p. 191
• MJ Mikoś, Polish Baroque and Enlightenment Literature: An Anthology . Columbus-Ohio / Bloomington-Indiana, 1996, ISBN 0893572667 , pp. 104-108.
• Hetmani Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów , Bellona (Varsavia), 1994, ISBN 8311082758 .
• M. Naima, trad. C. Fraser, Annals of the Turkish Empire from 1591 to 1659 of the Christian Era (trad. C. Fraser), vol. 1, Londra, 1832.