Qualla: Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha Monument

Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha Monument: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justinianus, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a lion beside the admiral, cast in bronze and entirely calm, and it is not a flourish - it is biography. Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha really did keep a domesticated lion, brought back from his years in North Africa, and the animal is said to have followed him everywhere. The statue in front of Çeşme Castle remembers him exactly as his contemporaries did: a sailor who survived a catastrophe, with a lion at his side.

Image: Justinianus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha Monument: The Man Behind the Bronze

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cengizhankilicoglu, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha lived from 1713 to 1790, and his life ran the full length of the eighteenth-century Ottoman world. Sold into slavery as a young man, he was raised in Tekirdağ as a near son of the household that bought him, then rose through the military and spent years...

Image: Cengizhankilicoglu | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha Monument: The Defeat He Survived

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nedim Ardoğa, CC BY-SA 4.0. The reason the monument stands in Çeşme, of all places, is a battle the Ottomans lost. In July 1770 a Russian fleet trapped the Ottoman navy in the bay here and destroyed it in a single night of fire, one of the worst naval disasters in the empire's history. Hasan Pasha was in th...

Image: Nedim Ardoğa | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha Monument: The Monument Today

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nedim Ardoğa, CC BY-SA 4.0. The statue was created in 1974 by the sculptor Haluk Tezonar, who lived from 1942 to 1995 and taught at the State Academy of Fine Arts. He depicted the admiral standing in command, the lion at his heel, planted in the heart of downtown Çeşme directly in front of the historic cast...

Image: Nedim Ardoğa | CC BY-SA 4.0