Abdulmecid I

Abdulhamid II (1842-1918) ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1909, the last sultan to exercise real power. He promulgated the empire's first constitution, suspended parliament within two years, governed personally for three decades, and was deposed after the Young Turk Revolution.

Abdulmecid I (1823-1861) became Ottoman sultan at sixteen and presided over the Tanzimat, the empire's most sweeping programme of legal and administrative reform. He issued the Edict of Gulhane in 1839, survived the Crimean War, and fathered four future sultans.