Mehmed Ali Pasha (18 November 1827 – 7 September 1878), born Ludwig Karl Friedrich Detroit, was a Marshal of the Ottoman Empire.
Biography[]
Ludwig Karl Friedrich Detroit was born in Magdeburg, Prussia on 18 November 1827 to a Protestant Huguenot family. In 1843, he ran away to sea and settled in the Ottoman Empire, where he embraced Islam. In 1846, Grand Vizier Mehemed Emin Aali Pasha sent "Mehmed Ali" to a military school, and he received a commission in the Ottoman Army in 1853, fighting against the Russian Empire in the Crimean War. In 1865, he was made a Brigadier-General and Pasha. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, Mehmed Ali led the Ottoman army in Bulgaria, and his failure to effect a junction with Suleyman Husnu Pasa led to Suleyman Husnu superseding him. In September 1878, he was sent to quell the Albanian League of Prizren, but he was killed in battle in Kosovo in 1878. His grandson Ali Fuat Cebesoy would become a Republican People's Party politician.