Gedik Ahmed Pasha (1450–1482)
Born 1450 CE, died 1482 CE.
Gedik Ahmed Pasha (Serbian: Гедик Ахмед-паша; died 18 November 1482) was an Ottoman statesman and admiral who served as grand vizier and kapudan pasha (Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Navy) during the reigns of sultans Mehmed II and Bayezid II. Very little was known about Gedik Ahmed Pasha in primary sources until late in historiography. Serbia and Albania had both been proposed as geographical regions for his birthplace and Mükrimin Halil Yinanç had even claimed that he was descended from the Byzantine Greek Palaiologos dynasty based on unnamed Western sources Yinanç claimed to have access to. Later research in the Ottoman archives of Vranje (southeastern Serbia) by Aleksandar Stojanovski established that Gedik Ahmed Pasha was a member of the local Serbian feudal families of the area and was born in the village Punoševce. Leading the Ottoman Army, he defeated the last Anatolian beylik (principality) resisting Ottoman expansion in the region, the Karamanids. The Karamanids had been the strongest principality in Anatolia for nearly 200 years, even stronger than the Ottomans in the latter's beginning.
Text from the Wikipedia article Gedik_Ahmed_Pasha, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.