Born in Albania, Arif Tahir Bey held the rank of a captain of the operations staff in the Ottoman army. As an educated and cultivated officer he belonged to the inner circle of the reformed Ottoman army, representing a minority in the officer corps. After the ‘Young Turk Revolution’ he served in different regions of the Muslim Mediterranean. In fact after the failure of the Counter Revolution in April 1909 which aimed at bringing former Sultan Abdulhamid II back to power, the Young Turks started to re-establish their control of power. It seems that Arif Taher left under these circumstances after the Counter Revolution of April 1909. From 1909 to 1910 he led the Ottoman military mission to Morocco. I will try to address the question what were his professional achievements during his mission in Morocco? Afterwards, we see him introducing himself as correspondent to an Egyptian journal. Even if this serves as camouflage in the first place, he was working as a journalist all the same. In fact, he allied himself in particular with the network of Al-Ittihad Al-Maghreby, founded by Shereï Pasha in Egypt and was an active agent of this Society, of which Sheikh Aly Youssef, editor of an Egyptian journal called “Al Muayyad” was a collaborator. Reconstituting the itinerary of this military man will enable us to grasp his strategies, his career perspectives, and multiple allegiances - towards the Ottoman empire, vis-à-vis the Hamidian ancien regime, and the Young Turks; his connections with the ‘panislamist’ movement, and Egyptian centers of agitation. It poses the question in what way did he contribute to both the process of nation-building and the definition of states in the Muslim Mediterranean? The narrative contributes to the social history of interactions between the southern countries of the Mediterranean. By tracing the socio-cultural trajectory of an Ottoman military expert it will follow a micro-historical approach. At the same time, this case study will permit us to examine more closely his professional career in order to understand better professional expertise in the Muslim Mediterranean in the early 20th century.