ABSTRACT
Hristo Stambolski may be regarded as one of the most fascinating figures of the period known in Bulgarian historiography as the "National Revival". The Bulgarian binbasi whose name Mehmed Ali Ayni was unable to remember was Dr. Hristo Tanev Stambolski. Due to the size, power and wealth of the Bulgarian community in the Ottoman capital, the locus of the church struggle, paradoxically, was in Istanbul. The School of Medicine was, according to some, in fact, by far the most important institution for the fostering of a Bulgarian elite. Examinations used to take place, as in all state schools, in the month of Sha'ban, prior to Ramadan, the month of fasting and celebrations. Cevdet Pasha, who figures quite frequently in Stambolski's memoirs, was considered by his Bulgarian contemporaries as a "Turkicized Bulgarian Pomak". The case of Suleyman Pasha is particularly intriguing since, according to Stambolski, the well-known Turkish general was born in Salonika to Jewish parents.
