page_title: Hadji Ali Haseki
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Hadji Ali Haseki / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Hasseky-agassy, ou lieutenant du bostanji bachi. English: Haseki agasi, Lieutenant of the imperial guards. Drawing from Album of Turkish Costume Paintings. Русский: Хасеки-агаси, лейтенант стражи султана. Рисунок из альбома турецких костюмов.
context_page_description: Hadji Ali Haseki was an 18th-century Ottoman Turk and for twenty years on-and-off ruler of Athens, where he is remembered for his cruel and tyrannical rule.
context_section_description: The career of Hadji Ali Haseki is known chiefly from two sources, written by contemporaries: the journals of the Athenian scholar Ioannis Benizelos, and the memoirs of Panagiotis Skouzes. They are complemented by the reports of Western European travellers, and subsequent Greek historians.
  According to Skouzes, Hadji Ali was born in central Anatolia, and had entered the palace service (Enderûn) as a youth. He eventually became a personal bodyguard (haseki) to the Sultan Abdul Hamid I (r. 1773–1789), as well as of his sister Esma Sultan. Skouzes reports rumours that Haseki and Esma were lovers, and that she greatly favoured him and promoted his interests because of this. According to Benizelos, prior to coming to Athens, he had served as voivode (civil governor) of Durrës.
caption: Depiction of a haseki of the Sultan's guard
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