Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-02T00:26:32.571Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The reign of Abdülhamid II

from PART I - OTTOMAN BACKGROUND AND TRANSITION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2009

By
Benjamin Fortna
Edited by
Reşat Kasaba
Reşat Kasaba
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access

Summary

Introduction

The place occupied by Sultan Abdülhamid II in late Ottoman and Turkish history is as important as it is controversial. As the only reign in the late Ottoman period to be known by the name of its sultan, the ‘Hamidian’ period (1876–1908) stands out among the other eras of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Turkish history. Opinions of Abdülhamid’s legacy reveal a striking degree of contradiction; some authors have criticised the sultan for being ‘undemocratic’ and authoritarian, while others have lionised him as ‘democratic’ and a builder of consensus; he has been both vilified as the ‘red sultan’ and lauded as the ‘last’ or ‘great sultan’. Debate over his place in history continues today, especially in Turkey where it has been the focus of a fascinating and ongoing re-evaluation. Even the subsequent fate of the sultan’s library at Yildiz palace became a subject of controversy, with staunch Kemalists attempting to disperse its collections so as to remove ‘an embarrassing monument to Abdülhamid’s memory’. Whether Abdülhamid is vilified as a reactionary despot or lauded as a key moderniser of the Ottoman Empire and the last defender of Islam from the encroachments of the West, his reign was crucial to many critical developments affecting Turkey and the modern Middle East.

Given the importance of Abdülhamid’s reign, it is hardly surprising that a vast literature has developed around it. Beginning while he was still on the throne, the stream of writings has been joined by a number of other sources to produce a veritable flood.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Turkey , pp. 38 - 61
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdülhamit, Sultan, Siyasî hatıratım (Istanbul: Dergah, 1987; repr. of 1974 Emek edn.)Google Scholar
Abu Manneh, Butrus, ‘The Islamic Roots of Gülhane’, Die Welt des Islams 34 (1994)Google Scholar
Akarlı, Engin Deniz, ‘Abdülhamid II (1842–1918): the 34th Ottoman sultan (r. 1876–1909)’, in The Great Ottoman Civilization (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000), vol. 1Google Scholar
Amin, Camrom Michael, Fortna, Benjamin C. and B.Frierson, Elizabeth (eds.), The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar
Çelik, Zeynep, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar
Clay, Christopher, Gold for the Sultan: Western Bankers and Ottoman Finance, 1856–1881 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000)Google Scholar
Deringil, Selim, ‘The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808–1908’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998)Google Scholar
Duguid, Stephen, ‘The Politics of Unity: Hamidian Policy in Eastern Anatolia’, Middle Eastern Studies 9, 2 (1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dumont, Paul, ‘Said Bey – the everyday life of an Istanbul townsman at the beginning of the twentieth century’, in Hourani, Albert et al. (eds.), The Modern Middle East: A Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar
Findley, Carter V., Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar
Fortna, Benjamin C., ‘Islamic Morality in Late Ottoman “Secular” Schools’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, 3 (2000)Google Scholar
Fortna, Benjamin C., Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar
Georgeon, François, Abdülhamid II: le sultan calife (1876–1909) (Paris: Fayard, 2003)Google Scholar
Gökalp, Ziya, Yeni hayat (Istanbul: Yeni Mecuma, 1918)Google Scholar
Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar
Karpat, Kemal H., Ottoman population, 1830–1914: Demographic and social characteristics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)Google Scholar
Karpat, Kemal H., The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar
Kasaba, Reşat, ‘A time and a place for the nonstate: social change in the Ottoman Empire during the “Long Nineteenth Century”’, in Migdal, J. et al., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
Kuran, Ercümend, ‘Küçük said Paşa (1840–1914) as a Turkish Modernist’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 1 (1970)Google Scholar
Lewis, Bernard, Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar
McCarthy, Justin, Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire (New York: New York University Press, 1983)Google Scholar
Ochsenwald, William, The Hijaz Railroad (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980)Google Scholar
Owen, Roger, The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800–1914 (London: Methuen, 1981)Google Scholar
Rogan, Eugene L., Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1851–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar
Rogan, Eugene L., ‘Aşiret Mektebi: Abdülhamid’s School for Tribes, 1892–1907’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996)Google Scholar
Shaw, Stanford J. and Shaw, Ezel Kural, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somel, Selçuk Akşin, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839–1908: Islamization, Autocracy and Discipline (Leiden: Brill, 2001)Google Scholar
Wasti, S. Tanvir, ‘The Last Chroniclers of the Mabeyn’, Middle Eastern Studies 32, 2 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×