S.A. Aali Pacha

Aali Pasha, the Ottoman Grand Vizier, is the minister whom Luigi Palma di Cesnola's Cyprus names as having tried to have him recalled and as having ordered the export of the Golgoi finds stopped. Wikidata gives the Grand Vizier Mehmed Emin Âli Paşa as born in Istanbul in 1815 and dead there in 1871³.

All three episodes rest on Cesnola's own book of 1878. When Cesnola's cavass Mustafa was seized, Cesnola says, the Grand Vizier proposed a mixed commission to Cyprus in place of redress; the commission, which included the American consul-general at Beirut, decided in Cesnola's favour¹. Cesnola also says that after he was reported willing to command Greek cavalry in a war with Turkey, "the thunderbolts of the Grand Vizier, Aali Pasha" fell on him: the Vizier was determined to have him dismissed or recalled, a demand reached Washington, and the matter dropped¹. On export, he writes that the Governor-General showed him a copy of the Vizier's despatch instructing the governor to prevent the shipment of the finds from Aghios Photios (Golgoi). Cesnola judged it useless to apply for justice to Aali Pasha "with his personal feelings towards me", and he shipped the finds regardless¹. The book gives no dates for these events.

The French correspondence names him in a different matter in 1865. On 3 September of that year the French chargé d'affaires at Constantinople wrote that he was pressing him to settle the customs difficulties over a statue found in 1862 near Larnaca, which was still in its case at the customs house. The editor of the correspondence adds that relations between Aali Pacha and the French ambassador were excellent, which made Edmond Duthoit's mission to Assos possible².