The Sultan: The Life of Abdul Hamid II

The Turkish sultan Abdul-Hamid II (1842-1918) was the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Sultan to exert effective autocratic control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a period of decline in the power and extent of the Ottoman Empire, including widespread pogroms and government-sanctioned massacres of Armenians and Bulgarians, as well as an assassination attempt, ruling from 1876 until he was deposed shortly after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution of 1909. Joan Haslip’s 1958 biography is considered one of the most comprehensive on this important figure in Turkish history.