Mesih Pasha

Mesih Pasha
Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire
In office spring 1501 – November 1501
Monarch	Bayezid II
Preceded by	Yakub Pasha
Succeeded by	Hadım Ali Pasha
Personal details
Died	November 1501
Relations	Constantine XI Palaiologos (uncle, uncertain), Hass Murad Pasha (brother)
Family	Palaiologos dynasty
Ethnicity	Byzantine Greek
Military service
Allegiance	Ottoman Empire
Years of service	1470–1501
Battles/wars	Siege of Negroponte, Siege of Rhodes (1480), Battle of the Cosmin Forest, Ottoman–Venetian War (1463–79), Ottoman–Venetian War (1499–1503)

Mesih Pasha or Misac Pasha (died November 1501) was an Ottoman statesman of Byzantine Greek origin, being a nephew of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos. He served as Kapudan Pasha of the Ottoman Navy and was Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire in 1501.

Mesih was related to the Palaiologoi, the last dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. According to the 16th-century Ecthesis Chronica, he was the son of a certain Gidos Palaiologos, identified by the contemporary Historia Turchesca (attributed to Donado da Lezze or Giovanni Maria Angiolello) as a brother of a Byzantine Emperor. This is commonly held to have been Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, who fell during the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. If true, since Constantine XI died childless, and had the Ottomans failed to conquer Constantinople, Mesih or Hass Murad may have succeeded him. Instead, Mesih rose to become one of the most powerful men in the state that destroyed the Byzantine Empire. The Byzanto-Italian chronicler Theodore Spandounes, who claimed that Mesih was the brother of his paternal grandmother, wrote that Mesih was ten years old at the time of Constantinople's fall. He and two of his brothers, one of whom was Hass Murad Pasha, were captured, converted to Islam, and raised as pages under the auspices of Mehmed II as part of the devşirme system.

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