Re: Historical Who Am I Riddles
Correct, Djemal Pasha is indeed the right answer! Dissecting the hints:
1. He was born in Lesbos (Sappho).
2. He was a Francophile (Parnasse, a French cultural movement of the late 19th century). That's seemingly a trivial information, but it's useful to nuance the rather simplistic view that the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, because of Enver Pasha's germanophilia. Personal preferences actually played a minor role and sources indicate that Djemal Pasha, who wasn't really less influential than Enver (although definitely less famous in posterity), was much more fond of France than Enver was of the German military.
3. He traveled in Istanbul, Damascus and Baghdad (the residences of emperors, sultans and caliphs).
4. He was minister of the Navy. Technically Ottoman ships under his command led to the entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I, by bombarding Russian military facilities in the Crimea.
5. He's mainly known/notorious for his administration in the Levant (Phoenicia and Syria: "purple land", the place where Europe was kidnapped and from where Cadmus began his investigations). He executed a few local notables suspected of seditious intentions (magnates hanging from cedar trees, the national symbol of Lebanon).
6. The Ottoman Empire ended up partitioned, having lost the Aegean (Sappho), the Levant (Cadmus) and Iraq (Gilgamesh).
7. Like his colleagues, Djemal managed to escape his pursuers, but he was eventually assassinated in Georgia (Phrixus/Golden Fleece) by Armenian nationalists during Operation Nemesis (Hubris/Tisis).
Too many classical references, which were admittedly a tad misleading, because they gave the impression that our mysterious figure lived in Antiquity.
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