The French family name points to Huguenot ancestry, as a descendant of Protestant refugees from France in the 16th or 17th century. During his teenage years in 1843 he ran away to sea, and traveled to the Ottoman Empire,[4] where he embraced Islam and was circumcised.[3] There, in 1846, Âli Pasha, later Grand Vizier, sent him to a military school. He received a commission in the Ottoman Army[3] in 1853 and fought against Russia in the Crimean War.