“Angels of the Angels”: Abdüllatif Subhi Paşa’s Coins, Egypt, and History

Abstract

This article revisits the bureaucratic career of Abdüllatif Subhi Paşa (d. 1886), the prominent Ottoman statesman and pioneering numismatist of the nineteenth century, whose much-overlooked early migratory life between Morea and Egypt shaped his contributions to the principal Tanzimat institutions. By weaving together fragmentary biographical accounts, institutional histories, and Subhi’s understudied academic work, the article also offers new historiographical approaches to nineteenth-century Ottoman antiquarianism, archaeology, and museology. The varied trajectories of Subhi’s itinerant professional life allow us to trace intellectual networks between Istanbul and Cairo, academic initiatives of a diverse cast of Ottoman high officials, changes in the scope of the translation movement, and the growing centrality of history and its writing in cultural undertakings.