In the beginning of his second term, news arrived from Istanbul that the Ottoman Empire had had a brief victory in the Russo-Turkish War (1787–92) when they overran the Banat region previously taken by the Russians (although the Ottomans would go on to lose the war), ordering a day of celebration in Cairo.[7] Ismail Pasha then proceeded to whitewash and clean the walls of Al-Azhar University, among other things. News also arrived that sultan Abdülhamid I had died on April 7, being replaced by Selim III, and that Ismail Pasha's former employee Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha had been dismissed from the post of Kapudan Pasha after holding the office for 20 years.[7] At one point, Ismail Pasha became very angry with a man named Abdul Wahhab Efendi the Bosnian, and hearing of his derisions of him, slapped him in the face and plucked his beard before his ministers pulled him away.[8]