on, the heads of the janissaries massacred in the
At-meidan in 1826, were piled by order of Sultan Mahmood.

[5] The Turkish annalists do not fail to remark, that Kiuprili
crossed the imperial threshold at the moment when the call to
noon prayers was resounding from the minarets--an evident token
of the Divine protection extended to him!

Such were the circumstances of the elevation of this most celebrated of
Ottoman ministers, whose name stands pre-eminent, not only from his own
abilities and good fortune, but as the founder of the only family which
ever continued to enjoy, during several generations, the highest honours
of the empire. He was the son of an Arnaut[6] soldier, who had settled
in Anatolia, on receiving a _timar_ or fief in the district of Amasia,
near the town of Kiupri, ('the bridge:') from which (since distinguished
from other places of the same name as _Vizir_-Kiupri) his descendants
derived the surname under which they are generally mentioned in history.
He commenced his career as a page in the imperial seraglio; which he
left for a post in the household of Khosroo, afterwards grand-vizir, who
was then aga of janissaries. Passing through various gradations of rank,
he held several governments in Syria, and was raised to the grade of
pasha of three tails: till, at an advanced age, he obtained permission
to exchange these honours for the post of _sandjak_ of his native
district, to which he accordingly withdrew. But his retirement was
disturbed, in 1648, by the insurrection of Varvar-Ali, pasha of Siwas,
who, rather than surrender a beautiful daughter, the affianced bride of
his neighbour Ipshir, pasha of Tokat, to the panders of the imperial
harem, had raised the standard of revolt, and had been joined by the
pasha of Erzroom, Gourdji-Mohammed, (to whose suite the annalist Evliya
was then attached,) and by many of the Turkman clans of Anatolia. The
Sultana-Walidah herself, who was then at variance with her degenerate
son, secretly encouraged the insurgents, who endeavoured to gain over
Kiuprili to their party; but as they failed in all their efforts to
shake his loyalty, Varvar suddenly marched against him, routed the
troops which he had collected, and made him prisoner, with two
beglerbegs whom he had summoned to his aid. "I saw these three pashas"
(says Evliya, who had come to the rebel camp on a mission from
Gourdji-Mohammed) "stripped of their robes and turbans, and fastened by