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Sultan Abdul-Hamid : Abd-ul-Hamid II (1842-1918), was the 34th & last Sultan (1876-1909) of the Ottoman Empire to exert effective control over the fracturing state; he delayed for a quarter century the liberal movement in the empire. He obtained the throne in 1876, when his brother Murād V was ousted by a liberal reform group led by the grand vizier Midhat Pasha. In fulfilment of promises made before his accession, Abdul-Hamid issued the empire’s first constitution on Dec. 23, 1876, a document largely inspired by Midhat Pasha. It provided for an elected bicameral parliament & for the customary civil liberties, including equality before the law for all the empire’s diverse nationalities. But in February 1877 he exiled Midhat Pasha & prorogued the new parliament in May. Anxious to appear as a religious champion against Christian encroachment, he encouraged the building of the Mecca railroad to make Islam’s holy places more accessible, subsidized the pan-Islamic policy of Jamal-ud-Din al-Afghani, whom he invited to Istanbul but virtually imprisoned there, & encouraged widespread support for himself as the head of the caliphate. But neither pan-Islamic nationalism nor the economic development with German aid could quiet the internal unrest. By 1907 both military & civilian protests were widespread; its leadership fell to the Committee of Union & Progress, a liberal reform group based in Salonika. In the summer of 1908, the Young Turk Revolution broke out & Abdul-Hamid, upon learning that the troops of the 3rd Army Corps in Salonica were marching on to Istanbul Constantinople (23 July), at once capitulated. On 24 July his irade announced the restoration of the suspended constitution of 1876 & elections & appointed a liberal grand vizier. The next day, further irades abolished espionage & censorship, & ordered the release of political prisoners. But the Sultan’s intrigues with the powerful conservative elements were confirmed when their counter-revolution broke out on 13 April 1909. When the government of the Young Turks (q.v.) was restored by soldiers from Salonica, they decided on Abdul-Hamid’s deposition, & on 27 April his brother Reshad Effendi was proclaimed Sultan Mehmed V. He spent his last days studying, carpentering & writing his memoirs in custody at Beylerbeyi Palace in the Bosporus, where he died on 10 February 1918, just a few months before his brother, the Sultan.