 Upon returning to the Ottoman Empire, he worked as a teacher for a couple of years, after which he took up a post in 1837 in the Dragoman's office of the Ottoman Empire.Rising through the ranks of the state bureaucracy, he was promoted to the rank of "Pasha" at the same time as his assignment as a founding member to the Ottoman Academy ("Encümen-i Daniş"), established along lines similar to those of the Académie française and which also acted as a consultative council for the Sultan.He wrote the novel "Akabi's Story" in 1851, while he was a member of the Academy, and a long story, also in Turkish, treating the deep divide and the strife between Gregorian and Catholic Armenians, a secondary theme in Akabi's novel, followed the next year.