Semiz Ali Pasha
Ottoman statesman

Semiz Ali Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: سيمز علي پاشا, Serbo-Croatian: Semiz Ali-Paša) was an Ottoman Bosnian statesman from the Sanjak of Bosnia who served as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1561 to 1565. He was the beylerbey (governor) of Egypt Eyalet from 1549 to 1553. Semiz Ali Pasha was born in Prača in Bosnia (thus his secondary epithet), and replaced Rüstem Pasha as Grand Vizier. After palace schooling, he discharged high-level functions along the Ottoman Empire. His epithet "Semiz" means "fat" in Turkish.
In 1561 he negotiated with the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire, Ogier de Busbecq, on the terms of a peace treaty which was ratified in Vienna the following year.
In popular culture
In the TV series Muhteşem Yüzyıl, Semiz Ali Pasha was played by the Turkish actor Fatih Dokgöz.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Semiz Ali Pasha” is ottoman statesman. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Semiz, Pasha and Ottoman, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4893443. VIAF identifies the subject as 1821147665809560670008. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1561, 1565, 1549 and 1553.
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This entry incorporates text from “Semiz Ali Pasha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.