Ziya Pasa, Abdülhamit Ziya-Bey

Born 1825, in Istanbul; died 1881. Turkish poet, publicist, and public figure during the Tanzimat (regulations) period.

Ziya Paşa, who headed a moderate faction of the Society of New Ottomans, published the newspapers Muhbir (Informer) and Hürriyet (Freedom) with Nemik Kemal in London. In 1876 he collaborated in the drafting of the Turkish constitution. Although he sought to impart a folk character to Turkish literature and advocated the democratization of language, he confined himself to traditional forms in his own poems. He wrote the divan The Verses of Ziya (1881) and two other collections of poems that contained Sufi motifs and rationalist ideas. Ziya Paşa also wrote The Book of Victory, which is considered to be the model for satirical Turkish literature, and the prose work Sleep. Ziya Pa§a translated Tartuffe by J. B. Molière and works by Rousseau and La Fontaine into Turkish.