Abraham Salomon Camondo

Count Abraham Camondo (1781, Constantinople – March 30, 1873, Paris) was a Jewish Ottoman-Italian financier and philanthropist and the patriarch of the Camondo family.

He was born in Constantinople, during the Ottoman Empire. In 1832 he inherited a banking business and a fortune from his brother Isaac (who had died without children), and he was able to expand it greatly during his life, partly through real-estate investment. Camondo lived in the Galata district with his wife Clara, whom he had married on 25 May 1804, and their son Raphael (1810-1866). While Venice was under Austrian rule, he received as an Austrian subject the title of Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph, and in 1854, as the representative of the Austrian community of Constantinople, he and his family went to Vienna to attend the wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph. From his ancestors, who had settled in the Veneto, he had a cultural affinity with Italy and on 18 November 1865 he and all members of his family obtained Italian nationality. When Venice again became an Italian possession, Camondo, as a Venetian citizen, presented large gifts to several Italian philanthropic institutions, in recognition of which King Victor Emmanuel conferred upon him the title of count on 28 April 1867, with the privilege of transmitting it in perpetuity to the eldest son of the family.

Count Camondo exercised substantial influence with the sultans Abdülmecid I and Abdülaziz, and over the Ottoman grand viziers and ministers. He was banker to the Ottoman government before the founding of the Ottoman Bank. He obtained from the Porte a firman extending the privilege of possessing real estate in the empire, which until then had been restricted to subjects of the Ottoman Empire, to foreign nationals.

...
Wikipedia