Ibrahim Edhem Pasha (1819–1893) was an Ottoman statesman, who held the office of Grand Vizier in the beginning of Abdul Hamid II's reign between 5 February 1877 and 11 January 1878. He resigned from that post after the Ottoman chances on winning the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) had decreased. He furthermore served numerous administrative positions in the Ottoman Empire including minister of foreign affairs in 1856, then ambassador to Berlin in 1876, and to Vienna from 1879 to 1882. He also served as a military engineer and as Minister of Interior from 1883 to 1885. In 1876–1877, he represented the Ottoman Government at the Constantinople Conference. Early life He was born in Chios of Greek ancestry, in a Christian Greek Orthodox village on the island of Chios. Strangely, his connection to Chios is not well-documented: his son Osman Hamdi Bey claimed that he was a member of the Skaramanga family, but Edhem Pasha himself tried to efface his Greek connections. As a young boy in 1822, he was orphaned and captured by Ottoman soldiers during the massacre of the Greek population of Chios. He was sold into slavery, brought to Constantinople, and adopted by the (later) grand vizier Hüsrev Pasha. Lacking his own children and family, Hüsrev Pasha raised about ten children who had been orphaned or bought as slaves, many of whom ascended to important positions. The child, now named İbrahim Edhem, quickly distinguished himself with his intelligence and after having attended schools in the Ottoman Empire, he was dispatched along with a number of his peers, and under the supervision of his foster father, then grand vizier, and of the sultan Mahmud II himself, to Paris to pursue his studies under state scholarship. There he returned a Bachelor of Arts, and was one of the top pupils at the École des Mines. He was a classmate and a friend of Louis Pasteur. He thus became Turkey's first mining engineer in the modern sense, and he started his career in this field. Family and legacy Ibrahim Edhem Pasha was the father of Osman Hamdi Bey, a well-known archaeologist and painter, as well the founder of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum and the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. Another son, Halil Edhem Eldem took up the archaeology museum after Osman Hamdi Bey's death and had been a deputy for ten years under the newly founded Turkish Republic. Yet another son, İsmail Galib