2-982-142 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Assassinations at Constantinople: Halil Sherif Pasha, Minister of Justice, 1876. Engraving from a photograph by Abdullah Freres. 'Another shocking crime has taken place in the seat of Government at Constantinople...while the Ministers of State forming the new Sultan's Government were sitting together in the Council-Chamber, a person named Hassan, who had been an officer in the army, forced his entrance into the room and killed Hussein Avni Pasha, the Minister of War, with a shot from a revolver. The others attempting to seize him, he shot dead the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed Raschid Pasha, and two of the attendant officers...Halil Sherif Pasha has been successively Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador at Vienna, and Chief Secretary for Foreign Affairs under Midhat Pasha. He belongs to the advanced European school, and...after Midhat, [is] the ablest man in Turkey'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.