text:  At an early age he had been placed under the historian Abdul-Aziz Effendi as a student of divinity and law in the _medressah_ or college attached to the mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror and had attained in due course the rank of _muderris_ or fellow therein; but the elevation of his father to the vizirat transferred him from the cloister to the camp and he held the governments successively of Erzroom and Damascus--in the latter of which he distinguished himself by his moderation and firmness in reducing to order the refractory chiefs of the Druses of the two great rival houses of Shahab and Maan-Oghlu