The Making of a Pasha: Charles Moore Watson
Dr Michael Talbot Lecturer in the History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Middle East, University of Greenwich BBC & AHRC New Generation Thinker ‘My dear Watson, Long live the Pasha! May Your Excellency enjoy every bliss, and flourish like the palm in which the doves sit and sing their love songs.’ Herbert Kitchener, cited in Stanley Lane-Poole, Watson Pasha (1919) With this rather teasing note, Herbert Kitchener congratulated Charles Moore Watson on being awarded the rank of mirliva, or major-general, in the Egyptian army in 1885. This high office came with the Ottoman title pasha, with the result that Watson would ever be known as “Watson Pasha“. An engineer by training with an interest in surveying, Watson was keen supporter of the Royal Geographic Society. A visit to Palestine in…
