Gazi Osman Pasha

Osman Nuri Pasha (1832 – 5 April 1900), known as Gazi Osman Pasha, was an Ottoman field marshal from Tokat. He is remembered above all for holding Plevna for five months against superior Russo-Romanian forces in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78; Sultan Abdul Hamid II gave him the title Gazi and the rank of field marshal, and he later served four times as Minister of War. ¹

His birth year is given as 1832 by both articles and by Wikidata, but two monographs listed in the English article's bibliography are titled with the years 1833–1900, so the year is not beyond dispute. ^{1 2}

Osman Nuri was born at Tokat into the Yağcıoğulları family; his father, a civil servant, was posted to Constantinople soon after his birth, and the boy was educated at the Kuleli Military High School and the Ottoman Military College, graduating in 1852. He served in the Crimean War, in Syria, in the Cretan revolt of 1866–69 and in Yemen, rising steadily through the ranks and holding army commands in Rumelia, Scutari and Bosnia before the Serbian war of 1876. ^{1 3}

When Russia declared war in April 1877, Osman was ordered to reinforce Nikopol; the town fell before he arrived, so he entrenched his army at Plevna instead. He repulsed the attacks of 20 and 30 July and the great assault of 11 September, and after the Russo-Romanian army settled into a siege he refused the surrender demanded of him, attempting a breakout on 9 December. Wounded in the leg, and with his army trapped between the besiegers, he capitulated the next day. ¹

Released after the Treaty of Berlin, Osman returned to a hero's welcome in 1878, received the title Gazi and the field marshal's rank, and became Marshal of the Palace; the Plevna March was composed in his honour. He died at Istanbul on the night of 4–5 April 1900 and was buried, as he had wished, beside the Fatih Mosque, in a tomb commissioned by Abdul Hamid II. ^{1 3}

No consulted source names a school for Osman Nuri Pasha personally: the English article describes his family as a Muslim Turkish family of Tokat, neither article carries a religion field, and Wikidata records no religion value for him. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown in the museum's data. ^{1 2}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.