photo of Osman Ali Kahn
Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886 -1967)

The pasha?

I wonder if the Hyderabad "pasha" referred to was in fact the last Nizam of Hyderabad?
I like to think so!
In the early 1950s I caught a glimpse of the Nizam when he boarded a DC-3 Dakota that I was travelling on at Hyderabad. I was on my way back to England, flying from Bangalore. Like me, he got out at Bombay. We other few passengers had to wait while he was ceremoniously disembarked.

He was once the richest man in the world and a generous and charming philanthropist but, following Indian Independance, he was deposed as Nizam in 1948. He remained the Rajpramukh of Hyderabad but was evidently not too proud to share a plane with other mortals.
Here is his Wikipedia entry.

Whoever the "Hyderabad pasha" really was, all praise and thanks to him for looking after Seitz for perhaps the most pleasant few years of his troubled life!
Back to the life of Matthias Seitz