Abdul Hamid II

Abdülhamid II or Abdul Hamid II (Ottoman Turkish: عبد الحميد ثانی, romanized: Abd ul-Hamid-i s̱ānī; Turkish: II. Abdülhamid; 21 September 1842 – 10 February 1918) was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1876 to 1909, and the last sultan to exert effective control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a period of decline with rebellions (particularly in the Balkans), and presided over an unsuccessful war with the Russian Empire (1877–78), the loss of Egypt, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Tunisia, and Thessaly from Ottoman control (1877–1882), followed by a successful war against Greece in 1897, though Ottoman gains were tempered by subsequent Western European intervention.

Elevated to power in the wake of Young Ottoman coups, he promulgated the Ottoman Empire's first constitution, a sign of the progressive thinking that marked his early rule. But his enthronement came in the context of the Great Eastern Crisis, which began with the Empire's default on its loans, uprisings by Christian Balkan minorities, and a war with the Russian Empire. At the end of the crisis, Ottoman rule in the Balkans and its international prestige were severely diminished, and the Empire lost its economic sovereignty as its finances came under the control of the Great Powers through the Ottoman Public Debt Administration.

In 1878, Abdul Hamid consolidated his rule by suspending both the constitution and the parliament, purging the Young Ottomans, and curtailing the power of the Sublime Porte. He ruled as an autocrat for three decades. Ideologically an Islamist, the sultan asserted his title of Caliph to Muslims around the world. His paranoia about being overthrown, like his uncle and half-brother, led to the creation of a notorious secret police and censorship regime. The Ottoman Empire's modernization and centralization continued during his reign, including reform of the bureaucracy, extension of the Rumelia Railway and the Anatolia Railway, and construction of the Baghdad Railway and the Hejaz Railway with German assistance. Systems for population registration, sedentarization of tribal groups, and control over the press were part of a unique imperialist system in fringe provinces known as borrowed colonialism. The farthest-reaching reforms were in education through the establishment of many professional schools and a network of primary, secondary, and military schools throughout the Empire.