Biography
Jazzar Pasha was a Christian slave boy from Herzegovina who, escaping after committing a murder, sold himself to the slave-markets of Constantinople. There he was bought by an Egyptian ruler who converted him to Islam and used him as his chief executioner and hit-man. He began his rise as governor of Cairo but made his name defending Beirut against Catherine the Great´s navy. Beirut was honorably surrendered to the Russians after a long siege and the sultan rewarded al-Jazzar with promotion to Governor of Sidon, and sometimes also that of Damascus. He set up his capital in Acre after the fall of Dhaher al-Omar. He earned the nickname "the Butcher" for his bravery and powerful effort to defeat his enemies. He is reputed to have walked around with a mobile gallows in case anyone displeased him.
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Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)