Said Halim Pasha

Said Halim Pasha was an Ottoman statesman of Albanian origin who served as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1917. He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and later assassinated by Arshavir Shirakian as part of Operation Nemesis, a retribution campaign to kill perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. He was the grandson of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of the Khedivate of Egypt. He was educated by private teachers, and learned Arabic, Persian, English, and French. He later studied political science in Switzerland. He became a member of the Council of State in 1888, and held various positions in the Ottoman administration, such as Rumeli Beylerbeyi, General Secretary of the Committee of Union and Progress, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Chief of the Council of State. He was appointed as Grand Vizier after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha in 1913, and remained in office until 1917. He was one of the signatories of the Ottoman-German Alliance, which brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of the Central Powers. He also signed the Treaty of Bucharest, which ended the Second Balkan War and secured the Ottoman border at the Maritsa river. He resigned from his post in 1917, after the CUP central committee lost confidence in him. He was exiled to Malta by the British in 1919, and later moved to Rome, where he was killed by Shirakian in 1921. He was buried in the II. Mahmud Türbesi in Istanbul.