Dania Hany

I Have Been There Before

‘I Have Been Here Before’ attempts to mend the distance between the past and the present. When faced with the decision to leave, home is no longer a tangible space but a notion that moves back and forth, oscillating between personal and inherent memory. In this project, the past carries the story of the displacement of my great grandfather (twice removed) Ali Pasha Hilmi. In the 1840s, he was snatched as a young boy from his home in the Caucasus – modern-day Georgia – to become a Mamluk* of the Ottoman Empire. He served in the court of Prince Ibrahim Ilhami Pasha, son of Abbas Hilmi I of Egypt. Back in the time and long before, recruiting and enslaving young boys and girls from the Caucasus was a widely established practice.

* Commonly referring either to slave soldiers, freed slaves, Muslim converts assigned to military duties in the Ottoman Empire.

Ali Pasha Hilmi’s real name remained a mystery. He was named after his master’s family, as was the tradition of the time. Tracing and locating historical documents mentioning Ali Pasha is challenging. The last document that mentions his name, called the “Waqf”, was drafted in 1921. It ensures a manumitted* person can inherit from his master. The document suggests that he was manumitted by Ibrahim Ilhami Pasha, who died in a boat accident while crossing the Bosphorus near Bebek Palace in 1860.

Ilhami’s household was predominantly Ottoman, something which he consequently passed to the next generations of his family. My family identified as Osmanli then as Turkish, following the fall of the empire. Even though their true origin was Georgian, my family did not keep a solid affinity for this identity.

Words by Dania Hany

About Dania Hany

Dania Hany (b.1995) is a photographer/visual storyteller based between Turkey and Egypt. Driven by a curiosity to learn more about her family history that extends to the Caucasus mountains, her work engages intimacy and relationships as primary subject matters. Working primarily with archives and digital montages, she uses her camera as a medium to document places and people. Her work has been published in online magazines and blogs such as iGNANT and World Press Photo's Witness and exhibited at Medrar for Contemporary Art and Cairo Photo Week, LoosenArt Gallery in Rome, Stockholm Independent Art Fair and the International Summer School of Photography in Latvia. In 2019, she was selected for the Arab Documentary Photography Program (ADPP) and mentored by Eric Gottesman.