Abdul Hamid II, 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
Abdul Hamid II (September 21, 1842 - February 10, 1918) was the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He oversaw a period of decline, with rebellions, and an unsuccessful war with the Russian Empire. He ruled from August 31, 1876 until he was deposed after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, on April 27, 1909. The Hamidian massacres were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that took place in the mid-1890s. It was estimated casualties ranged from 80, 000 to 300, 000, resulting in 50, 000 orphaned children. The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to maintain the imperial domain of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, reasserted Pan-Islamism as a state ideology. Abroad, Abdul Hamid was nicknamed the Red Sultan or Abdul the Damned due to the massacres committed against minorities during his rule and use of secret police to silence dissent and republicanism. He spent his last days studying, carpentering and writing his memoirs in custody at Beylerbeyi Palace in the Bosphorus, in the company of his wives and children, where he died in 1918, at the age of 75. In 1930, his nine widows and thirteen children were granted $50 million from his estate, following a lawsuit that lasted five years. His estate was worth $1.5 billion
